Okay, this surprised me:
President Obama set a new record last year for getting Congress to vote his way, clinching 96.7 percent of the votes on which he had clearly staked a position.
That was a bit less than 4 percentage points higher than the previous record, set by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965, according to an annual study by Congressional Quarterly.
You would never know this, however, because the biggest item on his agenda has not yet passed and the Senate version lacks the high-profile public option. Meanwhile, the Senate has not taken up the climate legislation, and several appointments remain in limbo. If this study included committee votes, the success rate would go down considerably. But, still, how many times have we read comments about how Obama should be more like LBJ? At least on this narrow metric, it looks like the comparison isn’t unfavorable after all.
Let’s see how much press this gets. My bet…not much. The juicier stuff is Halperin’s stupid book.
I think this is just indicative of a problem people have of looking at the big headlines, but not getting into the actual weeds of what is going on…
WTF are you talking about? Is EFCA going to get passed? Cap and trade? Financial reform? That is the big picture!! It’s like comparing Andy Reid and Marv Levy. Living in the Philly area(like Boo), I hear how great “Big Red” is, and that he’s been to 5 NFC Championship games(and 4 in a row) like it’s some great accomplishment. And yet, Marv went to 4 straight Super Bowls!! Granted the Bills get smoked in 3 and lost one on an errant FG, but 4 consecutive Big Game appearances smokes 1 Big Game appearance out of 5.
It’ sort of a phony measure that doesn’t mean a whole lot. Both presidents staked out positions knowing what their Congress would pass and what it wouldn’t.
It would be interesting to compare the 1964 platform to results and the 2008 platform to results thus far. That would be a clearer comparison. Even knowing that in both cases the platforms were not terribly serious documents.
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The 111th Congress can’t be compared to the times of LBJ in the 60’s. LBJ had tremendous leverage in Congress due to his long and distinctive legislative career. Which years to compare, LBJ’s ‘novice’ year 1963/1964 or his first term after election November 1964? Can LBJ Help Obama Pass Health Care? Comparison of Congress, see this study – Polarized America: Party Polarization 1879-2009.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Didn’t LBJ also have control of Senate purse strings? That would seem to have just as big, if not bigger, implications what with individuals being able to raise so much money on their own now (as well as independent Democratic bodies in charge of Senate/House/etc funds).
LBJ definitely controlled purse-strings when he was Majority Leader. As VP and President, I don’t think he did, except indirectly, perhaps.
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Johnson, Rayburn and President Dwight D. Eisenhower worked smoothly together in passing Eisenhower’s domestic and foreign agenda. As Majority Leader, Johnson was responsible for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first civil rights legislation passed by the Senate since Reconstruction.
Historians Caro and Dallek consider Lyndon Johnson the most effective Senate majority leader in history. He was unusually proficient at gathering information. One biographer suggests he was “the greatest intelligence gatherer Washington has ever known”, discovering exactly where every Senator stood, his philosophy and prejudices, his strengths and weaknesses, and what it took to break him. Robert Baker claimed that Johnson would occasionally send senators on NATO trips in order to avoid their dissenting votes. Central to Johnson’s control was “The Treatment“.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Has Obama “clearly staked a position” on as many votes as his predecessors? Or has he only done so on votes he thought were a sure thing? If health care is an indication, Obama isn’t big on clearly staking positions.
Even after Jackie was rounding the bases, he was getting spit on and cursed at. He kept his head high, and just kept doing what he did. In time, opinion changed and the guy was voted in to the Baseball Hall of Fame on his first ballot with a vote of 77.5%.
The liberal left will continue to pound on Pres. Obama, saying he hasn’t done enough. The right-wingers will keep calling him a Nazi Commu-Socialist. The moderates will flip flop all over the place, lying and whining every inch of the way…
…then 8 years will have gone by, the dust will settle, and we’ll look back to realize Pres. Obama turned out to be one of the most accomplished and transformative Presidents in nation’s history.
We’ll see. Will health care be reformed beyond the mess of a Senate bill that’s likely to pass? What about financial reform? Will he put the banksters in their place? I’m not giving up. I’m just not gonna declare Obama’s eight years a success before they are up.
Oh I’m certainly not saying it’s a “given” that this situation will happen. But that’s basically what’s happen so far during his presidency – and he’s a 1/4 way through his first term. I see nothing that would indicate to me that the situation will change in the next few years if the make-up of the Congress doesn’t change drastically. I’m not declaring it a success, I’m just making a guess at what I see the outcome being. It surely won’t mean I’ll work any less, actually the opposite…to make it happen I’ll work even harder.
Will the Congress revisit HCR if the Senate Bill passes? Of course they will. They revisited it several times since Medicare passed, though no one has been able to get it done. However, keep in mind that both Medicare and Medicaid have both grown in size and scope since they were created. It’s not a great leap to believe the same will happen with this reform. It would have been MUCH better with even a paired down public option to grow, sure, but there’s still a lot there that we can expand in the years to come.
Financial reform, I have no idea about. I’m not very confident that we can get the most required major overhauls through the House and Senate – much like HCR – because of corporate Dems. The BEST chance we have at doing this is to pick up a couple seats in the Senate and maybe net trade a couple blue dogs for progressives when the House election is said and done. But yeah, I’m not putting the bar very high…as Durbin said, banks own the place. Anyone who’s been there over a decade or two will likely have wall-street hooks deep in them, no matter the party.
I’m not giving up either, though. I say, we work hard, and the senario I laid out above will be our reward. It will be frustrating, and discouraging, and disappointing at times, but when all is said and done I think we’ll be able to look back and be proud of all that gets accomplished. I already do about this first year. Year two, here we come!
I concur BBQ Chicken. All the haters will just continue to hate, no matter what Obama does. Wasn’t that long ago they were hating on LBJ and now they love him. Just watch them go round and round in circles while President Obama handles his business.
“Progressive” chess: No I don’t want to move the bishop. It looks mean. The knight is pro-war. We were told the pawn would jump sideways. I’m not going to settle for a defensive move. I’d rather lose this game and play the next one properly.
I’d like the man to start talking more directly about how the GOP is obstructing everything they can. Along the same line that LBJ used going after the Klan.
No doubt.
MSM is totally ignoring this. If HCR gets done, it will have been an amazing year. And Obama didn’t just attempt easy things.
The problem is that there was so much to be done that some of “our” issues are left undone.