I’m generally supportive of Obama’s preference for pragmatic progressivism, and I don’t mind too much that he’s positioned himself in the center of the Democratic Party. The leader of the party must take into account the needs and desires of all parts of the party. In any case, how do you deal with Blue Dogs who demonstrated nothing if not a collective death-wish as they watered down the popular elements of Obama’s agenda, complained about what was left, voted for it (in the main), and then acted apologetic about the product? That they lost half their members is mostly their fault. If the public disliked the 111th Congress’s performance, it was the Blue Dogs’ responsibility to try to make them like it.
Because Obama is first and foremost a pragmatist, he is temperamentally opposed to losing legislative battles. He doesn’t want bills to die, and with the notable exception of the effort to enact Cap and Trade, he succeeded in passing something on nearly every legislative effort he made (turning around Bush’s security state is another matter). But, sometimes, you can win by losing. Sometimes the most popular thing is to veto a bill. Sometimes you gain politically by making the opposition kill something popular. That’s why I agree with Ezra:
Obama shouldn’t be leaving [job creation] up to [his economic advisers]. If the president wants to go bold on job creation, he needs to go bold on job creation. The votes may not be there now, but perhaps it’s worth mounting a very public effort to get them there. At the State of the Union, say. And if Republicans block the proposals, well, sometimes the best way to show the public where you stand on something is to go down fighting for it.
The president decided to extend Bush’s tax cuts, in part, so that he could get a lot of stimulus into the economy that he couldn’t get in any other way. He made a difficult, but correct, decision. That fit into his pragmatic nature. Better to do whatever he can to create jobs than admit that he can do nothing without breaking a campaign promise and making our economic inequality and long-term budgetary situation worse.
But that was then. Now that the Republicans have much more power, it’s going to be impossible to do anything more on job creation without making unacceptable concessions to the Republicans. At this point, it’s really time to start blaming Republicans for the jobs situation rather than trying to wring meager amounts of help from them. To do that, he needs to level with the American people. Tell us what would be needed to bring down unemployment to acceptable levels and demand that Congress take action. Sure, we all know the Republicans won’t listen, but that’s why they can’t be trusted to govern either in Congress or the White House.
Pragmatism made sense when there was a long laundry list of things to get done and a totally unified opposition and a skittish majority. It makes much less sense now. As much as he hates losing, Obama needs to lose a high profile battle on the economy. But he needs to lose on his terms, not the terms imposed by Boehner and McConnell.
I also think he might need to do the same thing on climate. A little climate reform that gives false comfort is worse than no climate reform at all. He needs to change the narrative about how you create jobs and on whether climate change is occurring at all.
