Much to the legitimate consternation of the right, CBS News’ chief Washington correspondent John Dickerson recently wrote a column in Slate calling on the president to use his inaugural speech to go for the throat of the Republican Party. Here’s the key paragraph:
The challenge for President Obama’s speech is the challenge of his second term: how to be great when the environment stinks. Enhancing the president’s legacy requires something more than simply the clever application of predictable stratagems. Washington’s partisan rancor, the size of the problems facing government, and the limited amount of time before Obama is a lame duck all point to a single conclusion: The president who came into office speaking in lofty terms about bipartisanship and cooperation can only cement his legacy if he destroys the GOP. If he wants to transform American politics, he must go for the throat.
I’ll let CBS News figure out how they want to deal with that matzoh ball, but Dickerson’s point deserves consideration. I don’t really think the inaugural speech is the proper time to engage in strong partisanship. An inaugural speech ought to be aimed in large part at uniting the country and pushing for some broad consensus on the proper direction for the country. But, as an overall second term strategy, I can find no fault in Dickerson’s analysis.
We’ve read a lot about President Obama’s desire to be a great, transformative president. I don’t think you can do that unless you upend the political landscape in some way, leaving an electorate much different in its allegiances than you found it. You can say that about Lincoln and FDR and LBJ and Reagan. I’m not sure that you can say it about Wilson or Eisenhower.
Obama’s coalition for his second election was basically a smaller version of his first coalition. While demographics worked to modestly bolster his numbers, the right was successful in eroding his support among white working class voters, making the difference between Obama’s two victories little more than a matter of a slight enthusiasm gap.
The president’s challenge, now, is to splinter the Republican Party into two or more warring factions. If the Democrats are going to retain the power they have in Congress, they will have to make inroads in states that Romney won and they will have to pick up seats in the House that do not look winnable on paper. That means that it will take more than a good turnout operation or even a winning message. Millions of people will have to change their minds about their political allegiances.
That is why Obama’s strategy will change from fighting for the best deals he can get and making sure not to pick any fights he can’t win, to fighting for deals he probably cannot win and picking fights that divide the GOP caucus. If the Republicans shut down the government and refuse to pass any reasonable gun control laws and continue to block any comprehensive immigration reform, they will alienate many of their own voters.
If the House Republicans are forced to pass bills with mostly Democratic support, the base will turn against the Establishment and their unity of message will be destroyed while their oppositional energies will be sapped.
Everything works in tandem. A government shutdown angers the business community and energizes the Democratic base. Deals cut without majority-Republican support divide, distract, and demoralize the GOP’s base. Obstinance on immigration worsens the Republicans’ Latino problem and angers the business community. Extremism on guns, creates serious erosion to the Republicans’ support in the suburban districts we need to win back the House.
By staking out positions and pushing for broadly popular reforms that the Republicans’ oppose, the president wins either way. Either the Republicans split and support his policies or they split and make their electoral problems much worse.
One of the keys to success, though, is to get the Republicans to fight among themselves so that they can’t continue to successfully polarize the country around an us vs. them mentality. It is about marginalizing the Republican Party and eating into their base of support. Don’t discount the power of economic populism to help the party do this job. Yet, that populist message might be step two. Obama can provide the wedges that splinter the GOP, and then the next presidential candidate can exploit that with an populist message that goes right to the white working class’s interests.
With the right chess moves, the 2016 electorate could be completely transformed, and that would be a sure sign that Obama had succeeded in his goal of being a transformative president.
