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Obama's Strange Obsession
Jim Watson, AFP / Getty Images
As the Judd Gregg nomination bites the dust, the president ought to officially give up on bipartisanship.
Obama’s going to win his stimulus package—but only after he’s gone through the political equivalent of a near-death experience. What has he learned from it?
I for one hope he dumps his obsession with “bipartisanship.” It’s time for him to recognize that overrated concept as what it was: a campaign theme designed to sharpen the contrast between his own reassuring serenity and the Republicans’ crazed, kill-’em-all negativity. It worked—but now the election’s over.
This president and his party received a full-throated mandate to promote a new political agenda. He knows that we all know that the country was run into the ground by his predecessor and his predecessor’s party. So why in these desperate times does he seem to care so much about being liked by the side he defeated? On inauguration eve, he bestowed on Sen. John McCain the very nice gesture of a dinner honoring his service. But McCain understood this as a mere pause in political combat, like that First World War Christmas truce when British and German troops played soccer and sang carols together for a few hours before returning to the slaughter.
This past week you could feel a dry-mouthed, stomach- knotted apprehension in the national perception of our brave new president.
Last week, a rejuvenated McCain headed right back to his Senate trench to machine-gun Obama’s stimulus package as if nothing had happened on November 4 or January 20. The Republicans, in a sudden resurgence of discipline, turned themselves back into the insurgents rather than the architects of the present chaos. And Obama himself seemed taken aback, as if he was really surprised that his friendly overtures didn't get him a single Republican vote in the House and only three predictable ones in the Senate.
Obama has let everybody think that “bipartisanship” means that the party that just lost the election after screwing up the country and the world gets to have veto power over the party that won. Or that if the Republicans choose to vote against his program it must be his fault. Or that for a policy to be good it has to be supported by the very politicians who just got through spending a year denouncing it. Meanwhile, the economic avalanche that will bury us all ominously gathers force.
Obama should talk to Bill Clinton about the difficulties he had at the beginning, when he inherited an economic mess from a departing president named Bush. Clinton passed his first budget without a single Republican vote in either the House or the Senate. Before it led to the longest economic expansion in US history, it led to a Democratic defeat in the 1994 midterms. But Clinton’s problem was high interest rates, and he had to raise taxes and curb spending to cut the deficit. Now, interest rates are near zero, and Obama is cutting taxes and raising spending, neither of which is political poison. With the unemployment figures for January climbing to 7.5 percent and almost certainly going higher, elaborate rituals of “civility” are low on the list of things anyone cares about.
The strange thing is that Obama, famous for his stirring rhetoric, is only today boarding Air Force One for a manic few days of stimulus selling (though he’ll have more flak still when the financial rescue for ailing banks hits the fan on Tuesday).
Yet right after his thrilling assumption of office there would have been no better time to stand up for social programs in the package he presumably cared about. Instead, Democrats started acting as if the NEA had caught a STD. And if he didn’t really care about those programs, how come he exposed himself to easy ridicule that tarred the whole initiative?
For a solid week, the media noise was nothing but an echo chamber of Republican talking points about the Democrats having crammed in frivolous pork that had nothing to do with “real” recovery. Obama could have fought for more and given up less, arguing that his economic plan is a vision of how to rebuild America. The Bush tax cuts were social engineering, too, and they passed with Democratic votes. Bipartisanship indeed! There’s no such thing as a budget that isn’t social engineering. The only question is which end of society gets to drive the engine.
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Jacob Bernstein is a senior reporter at The Daily Beast. Previously, he was a features writer at WWD and W Magazine. He has also written for New York magazine, Paper, and The Huffington Post.
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Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
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Jeff Madrick is a contributor to the New York Review of Books and a former economics columnist for the New York Times. He is editor of Challenge Magazine, visiting professor of humanities at Cooper Union, and senior fellow at the New School's Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis. He is the author of Taking America, The End of Affluence (Random House) and The Case for Big Government.
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Tina Brown is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast. She is the author of the 2007 New York Times best seller The Diana Chronicles. Brown is the former editor of Tatler, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and Talk magazines and host of CNBC's Topic A with Tina Brown.
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Tina Brown is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast. She is the author of the 2007 New York Times best seller The Diana Chronicles. Brown is the former editor of Tatler, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and Talk magazines and host of CNBC's Topic A with Tina Brown.
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Tina Brown is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast. She is the author of the 2007 New York Times best seller The Diana Chronicles. Brown is the former editor of Tatler, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and Talk magazines and host of CNBC's Topic A with Tina Brown.
I did not vote for timidity and stomach-turning overtures to Republican cannibals. Obama flattened these fiends in the election, I'm waiting for him to act as if he knows this.
I agree. Do that. Dump all this talk of bipartisanship. Let you ship sail with the aid of Pelosi, Reid, Frank et al......
Then we will see.My guess is that you lose both the Senate and the Congress in '10.......
Overreaching. It's a Democratic Party disease!
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Obama's "mandate" was for a very different set of economic circumstances.
Time to give Obama a new "mandate": Be smart with our money. Just like you promised.
This is accurate. There's also an inherent contradiction in Obama's lofty call for bipartisanship, and his focus on leveraging the millions of voters (and email addresses) he's collected so that he can go directly to the people. Seems like he wants to have it both ways, to work within the system and go over the heads of the politicians, at the same time. But those strategies are mutually exclusive. Either you lead by transcendence or by horse-trading. I think Obama confuses bipartisanship with civility and a respect for intelligent discourse. Neither Lincoln nor Roosevelt were bipartisan -- in the sense that they struggled to create coalitions out of some philosophical commitment for amity. They used the other side when they had to, and found strategically smart ways to form temporary consensuses.
Hear, Hear!, Sob!! "I love this woman".....
If he's learned one thing this week, it's that the so-called Loyal Opposition is just 'not nice.' And if you're nice to them, they'll chew you up and spit you out. But then again, it's the Democrats who always do 'nice' and get stuffed. The campaign was one thing: he did 'nice' then and came across as dignified and controlled in the face of McCain's blathering. But now, we're all panicking, and to a lot of the populace, 'blathering' looks normal. He should nail them. Now. He got the mandate. Sell his idea and move on.
Tina,
This is not about bipartisanship. It's about whether or not it's a good bill. The problem with it is that it is arguably everything thing the republicans did wrong over the last eight years - run away spending and uncontrolled deficits - on steroids. Your cheering for it looks like it's driven by a desire to defeat the other guys - at the cost of common sense. Economically its WAY more of the same recklessness that helped create this mess.
My understanding of Obama's message about bipartisanship was that he would give them an audience and listen to their side of the argument. I think that that is a good idea. It's way to easy to mess up if you don't listen to others as you make momentous decisions that affect the rest of the world if very serious terms.
It's unfortunate that the Republicans seem to have misinterpreted the message as he will compromise until they are happy. That won't happen, mainly because what makes the Republicans (those that we are hearing from at least) happy doesn't seem to be good for most of the rest of us.
But, he did have to give them the chance - he seems to be a man of his word and he said he would support bipartisanship. Now that the Republicans (that are speaking) have shown that they have very little of value to share maybe he can get on with the rest of his promises.
Another but, we need to support him in this by telling the Democrats in congress to stop acting like a herd of cats and get on board. Tell your congresswoman/man and Senators that you support Obama and they should to if they want your vote in two, four or six years. Tell them that you will remember how well they represented your support for the president and vote accordingly. Tell your friends as well, that they need to speak up and inform our representatives that we are watching (for voting records of your representatives check out themiddleclass.org).
And if you are represented by a Republican, inform them of the way things are in the real world. That we see what they do and have done and that they need to represent you and your interests, NOW.
I think he had to try--to be able to say he tried. Now that they have been exposed for the self-promoting plutocrats that they are, the gloves should come off. Obama came halfway, at least, and got no cooperation from the loser party. Fuggedaboutit!
I couldn't agree more with Ms. Brown. I am grinding my teeth daily over this "making nice" with people who still do not get it. For all the nay saying by the Republicans, I have not heard one contractive idea come from them. Let's vote & get going.
well said! esp. about the 'echo(ing) media noise'...geesh. well said. keep it up Tina!
I disagree. This was the same thing the pundits were saying during his campaign. "They're talking bad about you Obama! Fight back, get mad" He didn't and that grace under pressure style earned him points.
He ran on a platform of promising to engage the other side. I'm glad to see that he's really trying to change the political culture a bit because it's swung too for to the either/or side of things for me.
He knows he's got the numbers to barrel through policy if he has to. What's wrong with trying what he said he was going to do? And why is it that so many, who've never had to and never will be in his shoes so quick to be sure it won't work?
Obama's efforts to "reach out" to Republicans have been extraordinarily effective. Those efforts have illustrated better than any of the whiney carping from Congressional leadership how useless and uncooperative the Republicans are. And he did it while maintaining his own popularlity. By contrast when Congressional Democrats carp and whine about Republicans, they only hurt themselves.
Obama's only misstep was to raise the expectation that he could get more than 60 votes for the stimulas package from this Congress. Instead he should be selling 60 votes as a remarkable achievement. I read an article a while ago about portion size. If you tell a child she can only have a small portion of ice cream she will be unhappy with almost whatever portion she gets. If you tell a child she's getting a big dish of icecream she'll be happy with even a single scoop. So, 60 votes is a big dish of ice cream. While you cannot have too votes, once you have 60 you don't need to beg anyone for more. Just leave the door open so that Senators can join--or be defeated. Can't wait for 2010. It's going to be a good year.
Clinton was idealistically planning to improve the status of gays in the military and create a fair and equitable health care system when he first became president, but soon fizzled into Republican Lite when he got little support. I have the feeling Obama will do the same, because politics boils down to what you can get away with, not what's good for America. He's not much of a liberal anyway, by my standards. It won't be a difficult transition for him.
You write:
"But Clinton's problem was high interest rates, and he had to raise taxes and curb spending to cut the deficit. Now, interest rates are near zero, and Obama is cutting taxes and raising spending, neither of which is political poison."
Correction: The federal funds rate which the Fed sets may be near zero, but long-term rates, voice of the markets, are trending higher. Markets are screaming 'short long-term Treasurys, here comes big-time spending.' Obama and his team stand on the razor's edge of deficit spending to stimulate the economy and fiscal prudence. Blood will be spilled -- but whose?
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I couldn't agree more, Ms. Brown. Obama needs to lead, teach, and explain like he did in the campaign. If the republicans want to join the efforts to mend our fractured country fine. If not, then ignore them while they pitch their tantrums. If Obama sells the American people on something, the republicans will come around, I imagine.
Obama has been studies the wrong presidents,the President,
he should study is Lydon Johnson.Lydon didn't know "Jack"
about foreign policy,but he knew Everything about getting his
agenda thru congress.Yes,Hillary was right on target when she said;"He is not tough"!.Obama,is scholarly,bookish,
academic,but he is not the man you want to help you in a
school-yard fight.He is not a "point guard",he won't take the ball to the basket,nor will he "go over the middle",nor does he have the"Knock-out punch.Doing his formative years he was never known as a "BadAss" or a guy with "Big Stones"!This is
the reason he wants to be Loved by everyone.
The Republicans didn't like Lydon Johnson,but they knew if they crossed him,there would be Hell to pay.I dare say, Pres
Obama,doesn't strike fear in Anybody.He's smart like a
professor,but who needs a professor in a alley fight.
Maybe it's time the Democrats and Obama carve "we won" in their desk in front of them to remind them that they did win
the republicans are never going to come around that's not their job their job is to caues trouble werever they can
On-Target article by Ms. Brown. It has been extremely frustrating to see the media cover John McCain's "alternate" proposal, which, by the way, proves that Obama was exactly right in saying McCain would give us more of the same failed Bush policies. As McCain himself said on election night, "Americans have spoken and spoken decisively." Apparently he doesn't even listen to his own words.
We all need to keep letting the white house, our senators and our congressmen know we support this stimulus. The majority of Americans are behind this package - a lot of people are suffering through no fault of their own and I don't see how anyone can say with a straight face that they think tax cuts will get us out of this mess that was created by Bush and his tax-cutting friends.
I think Obama did the right thing by trying to reach out and I think it revealed the Republicans for the hypocrites they tend to be. But if most of the Republicans are hoping they can still get their way through bluster and obstruction then the Dems better stand together and move on past their attempts to have a do-over of the election.
The article trades strategy for tactical advantage - Obama can win the battle of the stimulus bill and suffer in trying to change the other big things ... energy policy, Social Security, the War on Muslim Terrorists (No such great threat to our nation has existed since the colonial days and the Wiccan Terrorists!), and most importantly clearing the name of the US as not condoning torture with a wink and a nod ('.. Time to move forward") This means pursuing the official policy of torture to where it started, even if that leads to the Oval Office. And we can hope it sets precedent on Executive Privilege - It is time to deflate Nixon's Imperial Presidency, as rejuvenated by Nixon cronies Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld, et al.....
When you launched the Daily Beast, Tina, I was afraid it would eventually become the Huffington Post Jr. Sorry to see that my fears have come true.
I would love to know what is this "mandate" that's being kicked around? From what I recall, 46% of voters voted Republican. I am sure that a significant number of independents voted against Bush - not necessarily for Obama. Regardless of speculation, there was no Democratic landslide victory. As such, no mandate exists.
DO-NOTHING REPUBLICANS
Almost as much as Al Qaeda
And the Taliban
These are the enemies of
The common man.
Thank you.
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