I could use a lot less armchair psychology from Ezra Klein. If you want to tell us what’s on the president’s mind, at least get someone from the administration to tell you (anonymously) that they’ve heard the president describe his thought process. Having said that, the contours of Klein’s article are probably fairly accurate. The president came to Washington to sign bills into law, not to engage in the same-old food fights. The president’s job is to work with the Congress he has, not the Congress he might wish to have. His job is to do whatever he can to improve the economy, not to waste time trying to convince John Boehner of the merits of Keynesian Economics. So, he probably didn’t want to go into full-on campaign mode. He wanted to improve people’s lives. Contra Klein, I don’t think the president had some epiphany and suddenly realized he’s been going about things all wrong. Rather, I think that the calendar advanced to past Labor Day a year out from election day. It is time to campaign.
Another point that Klein should make, but doesn’t, is that the president has a lot more credibility now when he takes his ideas to the public and says the the Republicans aren’t interested in compromise. You have to try and fail to get a compromise before that argument has any resonance. It’s not so much 11-Dimensional chess as basic common sense. Everyone’s poll numbers suffered during the summer, but no one’s standing was weakened more the Republicans’. That’s not an accident.
Spot on. Timing is everything in politics, and you want to peak on election day.
Is that really true in this case though?
If the President had insisted at every turn, “There are responsible ways to address the deficit and irresponsible ways to address the deficit. The United States has never defaulted on its debt. The debt ceiling has never failed to be raised, by members of both parties of congress. Once the ceiling is raised, I’ll be happy to work with leadership from both parties to reduce our deficits and improve business confidence.” over and over and over again every day that summer, would the public have really seen him as the intransigent one?
I don’t think so. I think the administration got caught with their hand in the cookie jar. They tried to trap the republicans into getting in too deep and force them to raise taxes during their own hostage taking. It didn’t work, obviously, but I don’t think the President was obligated to try politically. It was just a choice that was made that could have easily gone in a different direction instead. So it goes.
Saying “I’m trying to be all bipartisan, but I insist the Republicans do what I want, and not put any of their stuff in the bill” doesn’t convince anyone that you’re actually making an effort.
Obama wanted a clean debt ceiling increase. The Republicans wanted to include deficit reduction elements in the bill. No, demanding that the Republicans do it his way on the bill is not going to set up the Republicans as the intransigent ones – no matter what the merits of each side’s proposals.
The president came to Washington to sign bills into law, not to engage in the same-old food fights.
Which is basically what Rahmbo admitted to Matt Bai(or some other NYT flunky in a Sunday mag profile a while back). Problem is, signing bills in and of themselves isn’t a good thing. As the old saw goes, good policy makes good politics. Take HCR. I know certain provisions have been in effect, but the whole bill doesn’t take effect for another 2 1/2 years. How dumb is that? And people wonder why it still polls so poorly.
So if it was already in effect it wouldn’t be polling so poorly?
One reason a lot of elements of ACA were pushed back to 2014 was to get a more favorable CBO scoring.
I thought it was pushed back mostly to set up the exchanges.
Problem is, signing bills in and of themselves isn’t a good thing.?
This comment sums up pretty effectively the difference between Obama’s online critics and the rest of the left.
Some people think that the government is purely a forum for ideological combat. Actually painting the yellow line down the middle of the road, “in and of itself isn’t a good thing” to these people, if it isn’t done in a way that substantially advances some ideological interest.
Other people think that the government is both a forum for ideological agendas, but also, that it has a day job, and getting that day job done in an effective manner – even if it only makes incremental ideological progress – is a good thing.
James T. Kloppenberg, in “Reading Obama” makes a good case that Obama is an American Pragmatist. I doubt he’s literally a capital P Pragmatist, but he does strike me as perhaps the most pragmatic individual in public life. There are two things I think he believes: one, telling people what you’re doing often doesn’t help you do it; and two, the electorate can’t remember back more than six months. The first makes him very hard to read.
I think he has internalized the old dictum that you can accomplish anything, if you don’t demand the credit. And I think he’s starting to transition into campaign mode.
This, and what Booman said. That’s about the size of it.
“Had he called for a single-payer health-care system, he might have been able to win Republican support for the reform that was actually enacted.” Dana Milbank can not really believe this sh*t?!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obama-launches-a-revolution/2011/09/19/gIQAkqkrfK_story.html?
hpid=z2
More proof that Dana Milbank is a freakin’ idiot. He must not have been paying attention the last couple of years. The GOP has made it plain as day that no matter WHAT Obama or the Dems came up with they were going to oppose it … period. It’s all about making him a one term President.
The problem is that it appears the President only now appears to understand exactly what you said.
Appears is an interesting word. It doesn’t actually tell us what we’re looking at; it only tells us how what we’re looking at “appears” to someone.
Yes, Obama has been “appearing” to try to reach accommodations with Republicans for three years. It “appears” that his efforts to make this “appear” to be the case have worked, on those audience to whom it was means to “appear” to be the case.
Similarly, if I go into a car dealership and offer $1000 for a new Accord, I will walk out with an absolutely fantastic deal on an Accord, because the sales staff won’t just tell me to leave, but will meet me halfway.
I don’t know know why Obama doesn’t get this.
Let’s apply this fine art of mind-reading to Ezra Klein, in an equally unflattering fashion:
Anyway, I really like Ezra Klein, too, but not for this kind of mind reading.
It’s easy to forget that many of the people who are following current political events aren’t that old. How old is Klein, anyway? Maybe in his mid 30s at the most? In other words, they don’t have a very long institutional memory and cannot remember a time when things were done differently in Washington. If they’re too young to remember 1980 and the seminal changes following then they cannot appreciate what Obama – who remembers life BEFORE 1980 – might be trying to do. One thing is certain; Obama is far from the naive hopey-changey guy people like Klein fantasize they see. They mistake his willingness to fade into the woodwork for timidity and his persistent attempts to gain compromise as foolish optimism, when in fact it can be said that he’s a cautious optimist who wants to do everything he can to make things work as he’d hoped, yet always has a fallback position in case it doesn’t. He recognizes the probability that he’s working with ideologues bent on his destruction, yet he feels he must try at least to make them see things differently, if only for their own benefit. That he eventually must resort to his fallback position doesn’t mean he was either wrong or naive for trying to make the first position work.
Ezra is only 27 years old.