Watching Meet the Press, I see Republican strategist Mike Murphy and former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough saying that they are relieved that Obama has chosen to move to the left because they were afraid that he would move to the middle and, in so doing, destroy the Republican Party. It was left, ironically, to Harold Ford, Jr. to defend the president by pointing out that the poll numbers indicate that the nation wants and is ready for a new direction.
Meanwhile, earlier in the roundtable discussion, former Clinton press secretary Dee Dee Myers pointed out that the Clinton administration had made a strategic decision to attack Reaganomics but never to attack Ronald Reagan. And she admitted that the strategy had failed because you can’t attack programs if the face of those programs remains popular.
Somewhere in the melding of these two worldviews there is a lesson to be learned. The Republicans are relieved that Obama is not moving to the Center because it means that they can keep their caucus fairly united in opposition. That’s short-term thinking, but it makes sense. On the other hand, Obama is going after Bushism in a very direct way. He isn’t repeating the mistake of the Clinton team. It’s true that Obama doesn’t face the same problem. Bush is far more unpopular right now than Reagan was when he left office. That means Obama can feel more comfortable making personal criticism, even as he remains more focused on policy. When he attacks Bush he tends to do it obliquely by talking about how we wants to hear opposing views and make sure he breaks out of the White House bubble. His policy criticisms are more withering.
The more interesting question is: what will Obama’s approach do to the Republican Party? It seems to me that the centrist approach (on policy not tone) would have been inadequate for the economic times and would have led to an anemic recovery. It would have been a giant gamble to introduce a budget filled with cuts in government spending both because it wouldn’t stimulate the economy and because it would disappoint Obama’s base of support by going back on many of his campaign promises. That would have been a recipe for much lower poll numbers over time and a failed presidency.
And, from a Republican perspective, the more Obama succeeds in creating new programs for health, education, and energy, and the more he stimulates the economy, and the more he delivers on his campaign promises, the less viable their worldview will be as a national or statewide electoral strategy. In other words, Republicans have to hope Obama will fail because he didn’t make a move to the center where he would be almost assured of failure.