One of the more pernicious myths current in our contemporary political discourse is the idea that George W. Bush was a strong leader who got whatever he wanted through Congress. The way this argument is usually made is highly misleading. First, we need to make a distinction between the times when Bush and the Republicans had control of Congress and when they did not. When Bush came into office, the GOP controlled the House and the Senate was split 50-50, with Dick Cheney breaking the tie. Ordinarily, new presidents come in with a lot of momentum and pass a lot of bills early on. Bush did not. His sole focus was on passing a tax-cut for the rich. He couldn’t pass it under normal rules because the Democrats had the filibuster. So he did the same thing that Obama did to pass the Affordable Care Act. He used the budget reconciliation process. The Senate deadlocked 50-50 and Cheney broke the tie.
The President did not sign one other significant piece of legislation between his inauguration and the attacks of September 11. He did lose control of the Senate though. Sen. Jim Jeffords (R-VT) switched his allegiance to the Democrats and control of all the Senate committees flipped to their side.
In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks the president was able to ram home the PATRIOT Act, a free trade agreement with Jordan, and win authorization to wage an endless War on Terror. Of course, the 9/11 attacks were a singular event and cannot be compared to anything President Obama has faced.
In 2002, the president was mostly consumed with concocting a false pretense for invading Iraq, but he did manage to pass the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) education bill, the Sarbanes-Oxley bill, and reluctantly create the Department of Homeland Security.
It should be remembered that Teddy Kennedy helped pass NCLB and that Paul Sarbanes was a Democrat. It is significantly easier for a Republican president to increase the federal role in education than to reduce it, and the Sarbanes-Oxley bill was a reaction to the Enron/WorldCom scandal that passed 99-1 in the Senate and 423-3 in the House. It was hardly heavy-lifting, and it was instantly reviled on all the cable business channels.
In 2002, the Republicans retook control of the Senate and from 2003-2006 had complete control of the legislative process. They again used the budget reconciliation process to cut taxes for the rich. They again wound up with a 50-50 tie. And Dick Cheney cast the deciding vote for a second time.
The other major bill of 2003 created the Medicare Part D program, which was so unpopular on the right that Tom DeLay had to keep the vote open for hours while he threatened and bribed just enough of his members to assure its passage. While the bill was an obscene boon to the pharmaceutical industry, expanding Medicare is hardly a priority to the right.
In 2004, the president, despite controlling Congress, did almost nothing. He signed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act and signed free trade agreements with Australia and Morocco.
In 2005, his effort to privatize Social Security fell before the filibuster. Other than that, his big accomplishment was the loathsome Bankruptcy Bill, which was aided and abetted by Democrats like Joe Biden.
In 2006, he accomplished almost nothing. His main accomplishment was covering his tracks and making it hard to try him as a war criminal by signing the Military Commissions Act.
After the 2006 midterms threw control of both houses of Congress to the Democrats, Bush’s legislative record improves, but he was signing Democratic bills.
The truth is that Bush was only able to pass his tax cuts with the absolute minimum number of votes and only by bypassing the filibuster. He expanded the Department of Education and Medicare (admittedly, in shitty ways) which is not a conservative priority. He utilized the fear from 9/11 to give himself an obscene amount of power, which he then abused. But he did not do a whole lot else legislatively to ram home a conservative agenda. Most of the damage he did was through how he ran the Executive Branch and how he acted as commander-in-chief. He was constrained legislatively by the filibuster. The only difference between Bush’s experience with Congress and Obama’s is that when Obama actually controlled Congress, he produced an avalanche of liberal legislation. Bush wasted his time on Terri Schiavo.
One could argue that, um, a financial crisis of an immeasurable magnitude would qualify as a “9/11.” And a collapsing housing bubble that would leave a vacuum of economic demand, which was separate from the financial crisis, could also be comparable.
Nonetheless I largely agree with this critique. You should also note that Republicans are largely at a structural bias, as passing tax cuts and leaving the government in charge by people who hate the government completes a self-fulfilling philosophy of the party.
However, where I will continue to blast Obama is:
1.) His lack of creativity and use of other options. He could have went for reconciliation to pass a second stimulus. He didn’t because he thought the first was enough. Or something. Whatever his excuse for not using this lever is not acceptable. No more, “NO ONE COULD HAVE KNOWN THE EXTENT OF THE CRISIS!” Simple math could give you a good ballpark, and his was nowhere near adequate.
2.) His naivete that the Republicans would play nice. I think part of him believed his own hype; that the Republicans would accept that he had somewhat of a mandate. 80 votes for a stimulus? That’s beyond trying to sell bullshit of you being an adult, it’s outright lunacy; you’ll hardly get a bill praising George Washington through with 80 votes. You can say that he can’t recess appoint people now, but he refused to do it when he could for no fucking reason. Especially Fed Chairs.
3.) Housing. Enough said.
1. Or something.
The “something” being “the entire rest of his legislative agenda.” He’d already put that agenda on hold to pass the Recovery Act. Should he have put the rest on hold to try to push through more? And further, could he have actually passed such a bill, knowing that to pass reconciliation it would have to be budget neutral, meaning a giant combination of tax increases and spending cuts in the out years?
2. He never thought the Republicans would play nice. He played nice with them not to win over the Republicans, but to give conservative Democrats like Baucus, Lieberman, and Nelson enough bipartisan cover. When he needed Republican votes – like Brown’s for Dodd-Frank – he bribed them in back-room meetings.
The health care bill would already have passed. Just throw together another reconciliation vote and get it done. In fact, you could have ended the god damn fucking Bush tax cuts for the rich at the same time. There’s your “deficit reduction”. Couple it with stimulus spending. That’s also a huge part of his agenda…it wouldn’t have put it on hold at all.
Well the Republicans provided absolutely zero “bipartisan” cover so it didn’t work out then. Lieberman is retiring, and Nelson is going to lose anyway.
And you didn’t address housing, so I guess that means you agree.
Using reconciliation to pass a second stimulus. Reconciliation can be used only once in any given budget year. So it could not be used again for the remainder of 2010. 2011 rolls around and the House has flipped. So no he could not have used reconciliation to pass another stimulus since no stimulus bill was every going to get out of the House to vote on in thr first place.
Well this is not factual information, jsfox. You can pass two per year. Just because it’s become somewhat of a tradition to only pass one doesn’t mean you can’t do it a second time. One would normally be passed in April, the other would be passed later in the year. So if you’re going to defend Obama on this, find something else.
you are the one with bad information. The spring budget sets levels and allows the introduction of parameters for reconciliation.
The fall vote (which can take place as late as the next spring) actually is the vote for reconciliation.
Congress had the option to pass a second budget resolution, needing only 51 votes, which included a reconciliation directive for new stimulus spending.
I don’t understand what you are talking about. Each year has one budget. There are always supplemental bills for things like floods and hurricanes and wildfires and (lately) wars. But you can’t pass two budgets in one year..
The single most important thing Democrats could do for jobs (circa December 2009)
you forced me to do research. You will pay for this 🙂
Read up on budget reconciliation (pdf) if you want to understand it.
Ezra wrote the piece in Dec. 2009, I believe.
He was assuming that there was an unused budget directive in the Budget Resolution. This is because the Dems had 60 votes to pass the health care bill. But they didn’t have 60 votes to pass a version reconciled to the House version because of Martha Coakley’s epic fail in Massachusetts. So, as it turned out, there was no available unused Budget Directive.
Another option he mentioned became impossible when the Dems decided not to pass any Budget Resolution at all in the 2011 fiscal year.
The last option is dubious. I hesitate to say that Klein was wrong, but at a minimum the Dems would have had to change the Senate rules, which normally requires a 2/3’s vote.
To settle the question involves reading the relevant parts of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 (as amended).
If you can find the text of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985 that would help, but Thomas.gov only goes back to 1989.
EXACTLY!
But I appreciate the research nonetheless.
Do you remember the context of that decision? Just saying.
I couldn’t find any text, but I did find this:
http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metacrs8715/m1/1/high_res_d/85-1130GOV_1986Feb01.pdf
Skipping all the way to the end (Section XIII) it is not clear, but possible that Klein is right. It specifically says that it is possible to introduce a Budget Resolution that would change a Senate rule (while in the House it would be referred to the Rules Committee).
But that’s not really the question. The question is what he means when he says the the “Congress is to adopt only one budget resolution.”
How is that language actually presented? We don’t know.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconciliation_(United_States_Congress)
For example, you could argue that in an election year that the Democrats did not want to pass new spending or rescind the Bush tax cuts for being perceived as big spenders. That’s arguable. I think you could have squeezed the votes if you wanted, but it would have been a fight to be sure.
My understanding is that the parameters of the budget passed in the spring establish the scope of any budget reconciliation. What gets negotiated in the fall are the actual appropriations bills, budget be damned. But the scope of a reconciliation vote under the 51 vote rule only applies once and to the scope of the budget parameters. It is possible to define multiple areas of government that could have their appropriations bills or parts of them passed by reconciliation. But likely that would require an Omnibus bill to pass under reconciliation. (And given that student loan provisions were part of the health care vote, it was sort of an Omnibus bill.)
The spring budget is really irrelevant once the appropriations bills are passed. The appropriations bills are what set agency budgets.
Good reminder, Booman. Thanks.
One friendly amendment: If memory serves, Bush’s 2005 effort to privatize Social Security never even got to a committee vote in the House (let alone the Senate). Nancy Pelosi’s “Just Say No” strategy helped make clear what Republicans were up to and privatizing Social Security was so unpopular that congressional Republicans didn’t want to vote on it. (After all, they were going to run for reelection in 2006; Bush wasn’t.)
Bush’s apparent success was because he was doing domestically what Republicans in Congress already wanted to do. And the tax cuts for the rich for folks like Delay and McConnell was to plant the mine that a future Democratic president would step on. Bush did not have to persuade Congress; he only had to sign bills. The Congressional GOP leadership moved the domestic agenda, likely with Cheney being the White House contact.
President Obama has had to persuade Democrats to support essentially conservative Democratic legislation that tries to flank Republicans on the center-right. To have to persuade a Democrat to support a stimulus in a time of recession is a task that few previous Democratic presidents after FDR have faced.
Democratic support for NCLB was premised on increasing funding so as to allow non-performing schools to improve. Republicans want to use it to shutter public schools and force private, parochial, and homeschooling. That of course reduces educational opportunities and ensures a huge underclass. (There’s a buzz word from the Reagan era for you.)
What was irritating to progressives during the Bush era was that any Democrats would vote for legislation designed to come back and bite Democrats. And that Bush’s Supreme Court appointments sailed through the Senate. Most progressives felt (not thought, felt) that Bush did not deserve any Supreme Court appointments because it would further politicize the court as partisan toadies. Seems we were right.
But we are at a point at which the public needs to see that the GOP is on nutcase autopilot and does not respond to the public. Obama needs to make a bold job creation plan a major campaign issue and needs to take the case to the people. Democrats must feel a public opinion environment that pushes them to the left of where they are right now. It wouldn’t hurt if Obama admitted that he had accepted a conventional view that agrees with Republicans and turns out to be wrong. And then say why it is wrong and how his talks with the American people on his tour persuaded him (he actually listens to voters). Should, but most likely he won’t.
There is little legislation that will pass Congress between now and November 2012. Apparently the major outlines of the FY2012 appropriations are in place unless Eric Cantor wants some more cuts. (Have you noticed that Boehner has become either irrelevant or is positioning himself as Obama’s equal by standing above the fray?)
Bush was a “strong leader” for the same reason that Ronald Reagan was a “strong leader” (with the exception of the Reykjavik summit). He did what he was told to do by Congressional Republicans.
But we are at a point at which the public needs to see that the GOP is on nutcase autopilot and does not respond to the public. Obama needs to make a bold job creation plan a major campaign issue and needs to take the case to the people. Democrats must feel a public opinion environment that pushes them to the left of where they are right now. It wouldn’t hurt if Obama admitted that he had accepted a conventional view that agrees with Republicans and turns out to be wrong. And then say why it is wrong and how his talks with the American people on his tour persuaded him (he actually listens to voters).
YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES.
The Lofgren opinion piece that we were discussing yesterday made this point well – the low information voter needs to be made aware that the logjam in Congress isn’t because of partisan bickering but because one party has been taken over by their fringe as is willing to destroy the country in order to get what they want.
I realize this means Obama has to leave his comfort zone. From his earliest years as the community organizer and as the leader of the Harvard Law Review he has played the role of the impartial mediator, and played that role extremely well. He’s very, very good at that. He has historically achieved a lot of results while winning respect of all parties at the table.
But different situations call for different management styles. Think Gregory Peck’s character in Twelve O’Clock High (there is a great reason this movie is a staple of advanced management courses in business schools). HIs natural leadership style is relaxed – what decades later would be called “open door management”. Firm but fair. But he realizes that this bombardment group requires a style completely different in order to turn them around. In one subtle but important scene, as he is about to enter the camp for the first time, he gets out of the front seat of the car, addresses his driver by first name, mentally gets himself into character, then addresses the driver by rank and orders him to open the door to the back seat of the car and drive him into the camp. Peck’s character then manages the camp in extremely harsh fashion, initially turning everyone against him, but ultimately building them into a cohesive unit.
The analogy isn’t perfect, but Obama does need a radically different management style – what he’s doing isn’t working. In all probability he won’t get anything through Congress, but at a minimum he can re-earn the respect of the large majority of the American people while standing up against the radical GOP fringe – and also make it clear to America just who is at fault for the gridlock.
And who knows, perhaps something positive might pass Congress. If Obama is strong enough a few GOP representatives might break with the pack in word if not in deed. And if they are primaried by the tea party and lose they become free to vote their conscience.
Be careful of using movies as analogies. Most are bound to a particular time and place and reflect the salient values of that time.
Of course the tough-as-nails officer is the hero. It celebrates what supposedly won World War II. It was produced during the beginnings if the red scare in Hollywood. It reflects the values that the 1950s would assign to the boss who managed the men in the gray flannel suits.
But you are missing a very important point. It is very tough for a black manager to get tough with white employees who don’t respect him. Especially in a communication environment that will scapegoat the black manager.
Life isn’t the movies. In life, Louis Goehmert is Mr. Smith.
It is up to Biden to do this sort of attack. When will the White House unleash Mr. Gaffe?
Your point is a fair one, but I sense you are too readily dismissing this movie. Have you seen it? If not, at least read the summary on Wikipedia. It isn’t a simplistic message about being tough, it’s about the real human cost of war and about how people adapt. It was greatly praised at the time (1949) for departing from the glorifying war approach to movie making and showing the real hell. Of course, it pales in comparison to more recent movies in that regard, but in terms of the subtle interplay between characters it still stands out.
My point though wasn’t about being tough, per se, it was about a leader having to adopt a style that isn’t natural to him/her, but is required by the situation. Your point about the extra baggage a black leader carries is fair, but that isn’t the end of the story. There are a large number of styles that might be effective in this situation – but Obama’s current mediator style isn’t one of them. He want’s to be seen as an impartial, reach-across-the-aisle, trusted-by-both-sides, statesman but the situation won’t let him do that. He is stuck in a partisan role whether or not he likes it and no matter what actions he takes.
Given that situation he should embrace that he is partisan, although it is not his nature, and choose how he will represent his partisanship. I honestly thought he had that in him during the campaign when he ran against “the dumb policies of George Bush”, but even there he was careful to distinguish between the policies (bad) and the person (good).
This type of understanding and clarity is why you’re one of the go-to commenters on this site, TD. I have no idea what color your skin is, but I will say that you can distinguish between white progressives on this litmus test alone. The ones who understand the fundamental reality of your point should be taken seriously, the ones who don’t are not.
A helpful reminder, and, yes, I had forgotten some or much of this.
However, I didn’t forget one thing that you didn’t include. When Bush wanted to get something passed, he put on a full-court press. On the run-up to the Iraq war, he, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, all the cabinet would be out making the case. Over and over. Until we could recite all those lines in our sleep.
That’s the bully pulpit, not this ridiculous one-speech-a-month that Obama gives reluctantly. Where is the cabinet on this stuff? OK, occasionally Solis (labor) talks about jobs, but where is the full court press? Where is Biden, who gives not many speeches that make the press? Where is the concerted effort?
It only works if they KISS and have a clear, specific, targeted message.
Bush did all that with Social Security and it went nowhere because Pelosi and Reid simply said no.
OK, correct. NONETHELESS, it was very clear what he was trying to do.
I didn’t say that the bully pulpit means IMMEDIATE convincing. However, Bush did make his case. Sometimes the case was a sale, other times not.
What specifically was Obama’s position on the health care thing? It took him 9 months to make a statement, and by then all the air was out of the balloon. He never made the case for anything in particular, just that he wanted a bill.
He’s the leader of the Democrats, not the leader of the Bipartisans.
He passed a health care bill. Bush did not privatize Social Security.
Ruminate on that for a week or two. You might figure it out.
And how many people know what’s actually in HCR? At any rate, Social Security is very popular. HCR isn’t. It violates the KISS rule.
I’m supposed to treasure it but all I know it as is Obamacare and I’m not really trying to disabuse myself. No one–and I mean No One!–is happy about that legislation, aside from party panjandrums and happytalkers. It Obamacare is so wonderful, why isn’t anyone politicking on its merits? Yeah, it passed. SO WHAT?! If I remember correctly, it passed, then the Republicans won the House in a political coup that hadn’t been witnessed in over 100 years.
Boo, your “Stand Up and Cheer” rhetoric is getting really boring and annoying, especially now that Obama’s approval rating is at an all-time low. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/09/obama-approval-ratings-hit-new-lows/244578/
So keep on clicking those ruby slippers and chanting “There’s no place like home,” all you like, but I have a feeling that a big house is about to fall on that Wicked Witch (Obama).
Your wit becomes drier and more cutting the more thrusts you parry, BooMan. I appreciate it, though.
I forgot one point.
It does not work if they do not do it. When Bush pushed for the destruction of Social Security, it didn’t work. When Obama did not push for a particular health care reform, he got mush. Obama is not pushing for a lot of stuff, and he is not getting a lot of stuff.
The whole point of the “bully pulpit” is that the President has to make the case, set the agenda, define the debate. Obama has never done that. Instead, he sits back and allows the Repukeliscum to define the agenda. Then he reacts to the Repukeliscum agenda.
That’s a recipe for disaster, and disaster is what we are getting.
Can I say this again? Max Baucus, chair of the Senate Finance Committee set the major parameters of the health care bill. Obama signed what Max Baucus was willing to let out of committee because Obama saw what Daniel Patrick Moynihan did to HillaryCare. No amount of bully pulpit will sway an intent Finance Committee chair. If you want to blame someone, blame a Senator who had the VP of Government Relations for Wellpoint on his staff writing the legislation.
And if you want to blame someone for this silly defict-debt nonsense, blame Joe Lieberman, Evan Bayh, Dianne Feinstein, Kent Conrad, and Mark Warner. Even Ben Nelson was not that venal as to hold the December 2009 deal ceiling vote hostage.
Di-Fi makes me ashamed of my State. I have a lot of other reasons, too, of course. Hurl her into an active volcano, I say.
It’s not going to happen, because “The Republicans might win” — in frickin’ California.
Talk about learned helplessness.
There’s always an excuse, isn’t there? It’s amazing how creative you Obama defenders are. No matter what, it’s never Obama’s fault, and he has never any need to actually accomplish anything.
Another point.
Where exactly is this “bully pulpit” that the President can go to and command the attention of the entire country like FDR did using radio?
When Teddy Roosevelt talked about a “bully pulpit”, there actually were lecterns and pulpits the President could speak in and the newspapers would cover it because it was the President speaking.
Even Gerald Ford had that deference from the media if only because of FCC public service requirements for licensing.
Reagan used his “star power” to command the media’s attention. And cleverly designed “outrageous” statements.
Poppy Bush could not get the media to pay attention to anything but the First Gulf War. And Clinton faced the first virulently hostile media environment of any President since Roosevelt. Clinton never could gain the “bully pulpit”; indeed, it was conspicuously denied him just as it is for Obama.
If there are historians in the future, likely they will attribute this change to Lewis Powell’s 1971 memo.
They still are out making the case. The corporate media is selective in who it puts on. The corporate media, not the White House decides what plays. There is no public service standard anymore. The cabinet has to beg an plead to get on and then only with two conservative rebutters. Maybe you hadn’t noticed. Or the approved Village surrogates are the only ones allowed to present the President’s case.
The President has an easier go of getting his message out when he goes on the road. The local media, especially in small markets, are still overawed by any presidential visit.
The clear, specific, targeted message is a problem only because of Congressional freelancers. Bush did not have to put up with members of the GOP caucus stepping on his message.
It is also easier if the legislation is simple and easily understood. The larger and more important the bill the harder it is to understand. And the more open to “this 2000-page monster” attacks.
Are you telling me that the CoS can’t get on any time he wanted? Of course he can. But no Democrat in his right mind would want Daley on there anyway. The guy is a corporate tool, through and through.
Yes, I am telling you that. Not even the White House Chief of Staff can decide when he gets on. And I remind you once again of my position on the CS. The CS should neither be seen nor heard nor quoted nor make news. The job of the CS is to make sure that the Executive Office of the President (which is more than the White House) runs smoothly and accomplishes the President’s objectives. Rahm Emmanuel failed at that, and Bill Daley is also failing at that. The CS should not be an adviser. There are full time advisers for that. The CS is a glorified gofer.
Without looking it up, name FDR’s chief of staff. Truman’s. Eisenhower’s comes to mind only because of a vicuna coat, but who replaced Sherman Adams. Kennedy’s gets conflated with all his speechwriters. Johnson’s. Nixon’s was either Haldeman, Ehrlichman, or Dean. And then we get to Hamilton Jordan. But who was Reagan’s chief of staff? Poppy Bush’s? The best ones did their job and won’t be remembered for it.
Poppy Bush and Ray-gun? Easy, James Baker and Donald Regan(yeah, the one who pissed off Nancy for some reason). He’s the GOP’s fixer, even now. He’s the one who told Bush Jr. that he had to dump Rummy, remember. You are right that no one should know who they are, but that’s not the way it works any more. And not when you hire an attention whore(Rahmbo) or a corporate stoogs(Daley). And I know Daley was on Fluffyhead’s show a few weeks ago.
Thanks for reminding me about Baker and Donald Regan. The only one I could remember was Howard Baker.
As for Daley, it seems the Chicago machine will be backing the re-election of Obama. Come to think of it, Rahmbo is a key player in that same machine. Minders?
The Right will counter that the number of bills a party passes is not a proper measure of their productivity or effectiveness. More is usually worse as all government is by its very nature bad.
Carry on.
Right. But they should have been repealing laws left and right and they weren’t.
Right, but there is no pleasing or reasoning with them. The same one’s will say they never liked Bush anyway because he wasn’t a deficit hawk. The reason to not consider him a great President is not because he didn’t sign enough bills.
At least that’s what they will say.
Well, this piece is aimed at progressives not wingnuts.
OK, But progressive need yet more evidence that W was about as incompetent president as can be conceived?
And besides, a bunch of progressives could be presented with evidence that W cured AIDS and found the meaning of life and they would still hate him.
Just as the wacko right, who are running the show over there will never admit any flaw in their “principled approach”, especially if it means actual thinking. Any evidence that the principles are wrong or wrongly applied and they will just throw that politician under the bus too.
G. W. Bush as a strong leader? I just Googled “George Bush strong leader” and the top 3 sites were all old – 2004, 2009 and 2008.
Straw man?
One minor edit: the Affordable Care Act wasn’t passed through reconciliation. It passed the Senate with 60 votes on Christmas Eve 2009.
A small list of modifications to the bill passed through reconciliation.
Yes, that is technically correct.
This is a good summary. But if it has a weakness it is that it focuses solely on the legislative agenda and not what Bush did with the power of the executive.
I remember well the summer of 2001 – it was went CNN became the Condit News Network and those of us who opposed Bush were very pleased with how poorly his agenda and managing style were being received by just about everyone.
Then came 9/11 – as I watched the pictures of the collapsed towers I knew: now Bush has free reign to do almost anything. You see, I was one of the few people then who had read the output of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) which proposed occupations throughout the middle east, starting in Iraq, and which was the blueprint for the Bush foreign policy.
So, while your summary of legislation is accurate (I seem to recall a few other minor pieces of vile legislation passed in the immediate wake of 9/11, but can’t find them now), what it understates is just how severely the Bush administration ran roughshod over our laws, treaties, and constitution through executive orders and general administrative trickery. And the fact that after 9/11, the Democratic Senate generally chose not to challenge those actions – and after the 2002 elections, congress was completely in GOP hands so prevented any hearings (except the pre-neutered 9/11 commission) that might have shed light on the doings of the administration.
We know now, of course, that the ratified UN Convention on Human Rights and the ratified Geneva Conventions were routinely violated by Bush orders. We know now about Cheney’s creative interpretation of the office of the VP as being shielded from both congressional oversight and from the laws constraining the executive. We know that the Habeus clause and at least 4 amendments to the bill of rights (1st, 4th, 5th, and 6th) were routinely violated by Bush.
We also know today that Bush used executive power to break laws routinely – sending EPA funds to TV pundits who promoted Bush policies – failing to enforce environmental laws and business regulations.
Then of course you have the massive number of recess appointments and every other technique that Rove and Cheney could dream up to advance their agenda.
If there is an area where Bush appears strong in comparison to Obama it is in the creative use of the executive powers to advance his agenda. In fact, many of those of us who are so critical of Obama intentionally focus much more on his use of executive powers as opposed to his problems getting stuff through Congress, which we understand is systematically problematic right now. Yes, it is good that his EPA is passing many new, good regulations – but that is what they are directed to do per law, as new scientific data come in (and, admittedly, they have a lot of catching up to do after 8 years of Bush). But why did Obama choose to unilaterally lift the limitations on off-shore drilling – ironically shortly before the disastrous BP spill? Why did he, over the objections of his EPA leads, stop implementation of important new regulations this past week? Why did his state department, at the direction of leadership (either Clinton or Obama – not clear which) override the recommendations of the EPA on the tar sands issue? Why has he on several occasions overridden the recommendations of his Justice department on matters of civil liberties for the accused, and in many, many cases, directed his Justice department to take positions 180 degrees from that which he (the Constitutional scholar) publicly advocated prior to his election?
Why has he expanded the use of drones and bombing in countries that we don’t officially occupy – well over and above what Bush did? Why did he interpret the vaguely-written HAMP law in a manner that made it unhelpful to homeowners but very useful for mortgage companies, effectively rendering it useless? Why has he been so reluctant to use the power of the recess appointment? If he’s not just another DLC democrat (to pick up a discussion from a previous thread), why do so many of his key appointments look like people the DLC would have chosen, including many Republicans for key positions?
Yes, the President is limited greatly by what Congress authorizes and what the courts allow – by design. But the reason the Presidency has become so powerful in the past century or so is that the executive has great leeway in how laws and rulings are interpreted upon enactment, including his/her choice of staff that will lead the enactments. This is where the Bush administration was so effective and where Obama has been such a disappointment to many of those of us who supported him.
If he’s not just another DLC democrat (to pick up a discussion from a previous thread), why do so many of his key appointments look like people the DLC would have chosen, including many Republicans for key positions?
He is DLC, just like Clinton. What’s so hard for people to understand about that. Look who he put in the most important positions. Republicans or fellow DLC’ers.
Booman wrote a very detailed comment about DLC history, in response to a comment I made to the “Your Assigned Reading” thread. His point was that Obama isn’t at all like that.
I appreciated the work that went into the comment but I remain unconvinced. Yes, the DLC did push some vile stuff long before Obama came to power, but I as I’ve noted in this thread, Obama has taken quite a few actions as the executive which fit right in with the DLC view of the world.
Ah, I see now that you saw that and replied to it. Thanks.
I don’t understand why it’s so hard for people to understand. Just because he told the DLC to take him off their site doesn’t mean anything. In fact, they just hid any mention of him in places only Teh Google could find. So they never completely took down all mentions. And look who he associated himself with. Not only people like Rahmbo, Daley and HolyJoe but people like Austan Goolsbee and Cass Sunstein. And as I will repeat, he could have replaced Bernanke with someone like Stiglitz. And yes, Stiglitz is qualified. Look up his work history. When was the last time a Democrat headed the Federal Reserve?
The most important positions require Senate confirmation. That is not a purely executive decision.
The appointments to look to are those that do not require Senate confirmation. But no one has done a list of those.
In addition, there need to be a number of people in the administration who know the cast of characters in the senior civil service and military brass. And have good relationships with them. This was what got Jimmy Carter off to a bad start. He came in as too much of an outsider and was never forgiven for it.
So who in the Democratic Party knows the current cast of characters? Clintonistas. Surface appearances often are incorrect.
The fact is that the events more than the agenda of the President move the government and the President who does well learns to respond well and with grace to adversity. For many people, one speech at Ground Zero created a halo around George Bush at the moment of his biggest failure in action.
The DLC is dead. They call themselves New Democrats (like British “New Labor”). And they are the swing votes in the House. The few Blue Dogs now are so scared they are functionally consistent Republicans.
Obama’s philosophy seems to be grounded in “make the system work” — which is why the GOP is so obstructive. By making the system work, it seems that Obama wants to position himself as the representative of all the people and do what they want done instead of some ideological prescription of what needs to be done. Doing what the people want done is democratic. Even if the people have been astro-turfed out the wazoo.
Obama most certainly is not like Clinton, but he faces some of the same political environment that Clinton faced.
At this point all we can hope for to turn the country around in the right direction is for the public to realize what the wrong direction is. No politician can tell them; the public has to experience satori.
The Blue Dogs always voted with the GOP. Look at their record. They are DINO’s. People like Max Baucus and Ben Nelson have admitted they are only Democrats because of career expediency. Meaning, they could move faster up the political food chain by being Democrats, since the state parties in both places were weak at the time, and at least in Nebraska is still weak.
The Blue Dogs were only partially linked to the DLC. Most of them were more Republican than the DLC folks.
It worked well for Baucus. Most powerful Senator in his ability to stop a President of his own party.
As for weak party and moving up, that was true of the Southern Democrats who became Republicans in the 1970s. It works in both parties. And they shoved the Republican establishment out of the party.
But you must understand that the whole purpose of the political parties is to reduce the costs that candidates face to win elections. (Try being an independent candidate in the current media environment.) Period. Platforms and agendas are a means to an end. Not the end itself.
As GreenCaboose mentions, much of Bush’s rep as a “strong leader” came from his military hawkishness and Executive Branch leadership. But I have another issue with this.
While the paid talking heads (Limbaugh et al) defended Bush at every turn, the Republican grass roots grew increasingly disenchanted with him, primarily because of the legislative record you cite: the expansions of federal power in NCLB and the Medicare bill, the huge expansion of the budget in the Medicare bill and DHS, the additional running up of the deficit with the tax cuts, and (for the libertarians, who were the genesis of the tea party movement before it was hijacked by the evangelical base with Koch/Rove funding) the expansion of govt powers through things like the PATRIOT ACT. The Tea Party initially positioned itself as opposed to the Bush legacy (as well, of course, as anything Democratic) precisely because of the record you cite.
So if you want to compare Bush’s record to Obama’s, the natural extension of the analogy would be that the dissatisfaction with Obama on the left is going to do a great job of moving the Democrats leftward in coming years. And I don’t think that’s where you were headed. Nor should you be.
Some will say “Well, we are going to be eating a shit sandwich. Obama has a small shit sandwich, whereas all those republicans are going to be cramming a much large offal delight down our throats”. This, to some, is a good thing.
I’m on the other side. I believe that there are some ways of going which do not involve the consumption of larger or smaller shit sandwiches. And regardless of the arguments you marshall, I will continue to state that Obama should find a way, as he is the President, of feeding us something other than a smaller shit sandwich.