Here is a segment of an interview that Chris Hughes and Franklin Foer conducted in the Oval Office with the president in mid-January. I think it is interesting:
FF [Franklin Foer]: When you talk about Washington, oftentimes you use it as a way to describe this type of dysfunction. But it’s a very broad brush. It can seem as if you’re apportioning blame not just to one party, but to both parties—
[President Obama]: Well, no, let me be clear. There’s not a—there’s no equivalence there. In fact, that’s one of the biggest problems we’ve got in how folks report about Washington right now, because I think journalists rightly value the appearance of impartiality and objectivity. And so the default position for reporting is to say, “A plague on both their houses.” On almost every issue, it’s, “Well, Democrats and Republicans can’t agree”—as opposed to looking at why is it that they can’t agree. Who exactly is preventing us from agreeing?
And I want to be very clear here that Democrats, we’ve got a lot of warts, and some of the bad habits here in Washington when it comes to lobbyists and money and access really goes to the political system generally. It’s not unique to one party. But when it comes to certain positions on issues, when it comes to trying to do what’s best for the country, when it comes to really trying to make decisions based on fact as opposed to ideology, when it comes to being willing to compromise, the Democrats, not just here in this White House, but I would say in Congress also, have shown themselves consistently to be willing to do tough things even when it’s not convenient, because it’s the right thing to do. And we haven’t seen that same kind of attitude on the other side.
Until Republicans feel that there’s a real price to pay for them just saying no and being obstructionist, you’ll probably see at least a number of them arguing that we should keep on doing it. It worked for them in the 2010 election cycle, and I think there are those who believe that it can work again. I disagree with them, and I think the cost to the country has been enormous.
But if you look at the most recent fiscal deal, I presented to Speaker Boehner a package that would have called for $1.2 trillion in new revenue—less than I actually think we need, but in the spirit of compromise—and over nine hundred billion dollars in spending cuts, some of which are very difficult. And yet, I’m confident we could have gotten Democratic votes for that package, despite the fact that we were going after some Democratic sacred cows. And had we gotten that done, it would have been good for the economy, and I think it would have changed the political environment in this town.
Democrats, as painful as it was, as much as we got attacked by some of our core constituencies, were willing to step up because it was the right thing to do. And the other side could not do that.
The bottom line is that John Boehner cannot deliver his caucus. He tries to criticize the president’s leadership, but it is Boehner who cannot lead. And I don’t think a more sober alternative would do a whole lot better, although they might be able to come to the phone in the evening. The GOP has poisoned its own brain. And they have too much power. It’s that simple. And it is that complicated. Because, how in the hell can anyone but the Republicans fix this?
Don’t tell Jack Tapper:
https://twitter.com/jaketapper/statuses/295567798086807553
Yeah, Boehner can’t lead his caucus, but none of them with any sense want his job. (Cantor’s too smart to want it now. He’s biding his time.)
Yeah, Obama’s right that false-equivalence is a big problem. But it’s too easy to expect it to change. It’s hard for political reporters to actually spend the time to learn the facts about issues. (Ezra and a few others at major outlets do it, but it’s rare.) It’s much easier to just build a Rolodex of “important” people and regurgitate what they say.
What will cause this to change and when? Beats me. The Republicans in the House just won their elections doing what seemed to “work”, so logically they’ll keep trying to do that.
Maybe the best way to speed the change toward a rational politics is to ignore all of the stupid noise. Someone here earlier noted that you were good about not being in Perpetual Reaction To Latest Republican Outrage mode. (That’s one of the things that annoyed me about Olbermann’s MSNBC show after a while.) If the country spent more time talking about positive proposals and facts and evidence, these crazy people and their mouthpieces wouldn’t have a much power, I think. The Internet is supposed to make this much easier – why hasn’t it happened on a national scale?
Why are Reid and Pelosi and their surrogates on TV so rarely? Why doesn’t the NDCC and NSCC have their own outlet to keep their views and proposals in the public’s eye? Why do they depend on rare invitations to MTP or wherever?
Questions, questions….
Things are going to continue this way until they don’t. We need to figure out a way to speed the changes we want to see.
A couple of things that I think would help a great deal are: 1) Nonpartisan redistricting; and 2) Public financing of state and national elections (with probably a restriction on the length of campaigns). How one gets there is left as an exercise for the reader.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
I would be surprised if none of them want the job. I’ve never known a Republican to refrain from being in power under any circumstances.
Which is exactly why Obama should never be willing to sacrifice Democrats’ “sacred cows”. Ever. Because the Republicans have only one hope — that the public’s faith in the Democratic party as their advocate and safeguard will continue to be eroded.
And his statement about the 2010 fiasco begs the question: why did obstructionism work for the Republicans? I believe it’s because of two things that Obama and his administration did: how he decided to handle the bailout and how the administration failed to campaign for the ACA. Fine, it’s done, but if it continues to go unacknowledged, the same mistakes will be repeated. Which brings us back to those sacred cows.
bluemoon’s post here picks up on something that Booman leaves on the ground in his summary. The big problems with Obama’s statements here are twinfold:
I can’t find the link I’m thinking of at the moment, but he’s said on multiple occasions that he wants to work with the Republicans because once they break out of this no-increased-taxes and oppose-everything-Obama-likes mindset, then we as a country can finally start addressing real issues.
Getting stuff like the deficit off the table or out of the top of the news makes other thing possible.
E.g. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/29/transcript-of-president-o_n_442423.html
Yeah, he was optimistic about getting their cooperation in 2010. But he’s right that he needs their cooperation to move things forward. Until he has the votes, he has no choice – that’s the way our system works.
It’s not about cutting social programs because he secretly agrees with them (as some seem to want us to believe), but because he wants government to work again and an agreement that brings some of the opposition along is the price of progress.
The Republicans are idiots for not working with him – by trying to stop everything, they’re cutting their own throats in the long term.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ryan said today on MTP that the sequester will happen because Democrats won’t make the necessary cuts to entitlements to offset cuts to defense. As long as the President insists on more revenue, Republicans will balk at any deal, entitlement cuts or not. The President was hammered relentlessly by Ryan and Romney for “cuts” to medicare so we already know that republicans are less interested in deficit reduction than they are in blaming Democrats for gutting entitlements. Obviously this would have been more potent politically in 2011, and that is the tell right there. Here was a deal that raised taxes and cut entitlements passed by a democratic Senate, and signed by a Democratic President, and they walked away because of new revenues? Obama called their bluff, and they blinked. The sequester is the only thing (though not insubstantial) they got out of the standoff, and they hate it. As long as the President insists on new revenue as part of any bargain “Grand” or not, there will be no deal. And he will continue to do this because it makes them look unreasonable.
The sequester is a bad deal that no one wants on either side, but Republicans hate it more.
Ryan is screaming, Look at me, I’m relevant! The sequester is not going to happen. Obama will get a deal, we’ll scream that entitlements have been gutted, and it’ll gradually turn out not to be so bad. As usual, but easier, now that the Hastert Rule is dead.
I don’t believe that Obama is offering up the cuts because he secretly wants to destroy the safety net. I think he offers proposals of cuts with the mistaken belief that GOP leaders/base voters/the media will accept the cuts as ones that will finish the issue. In order:
Debt fetishists (aka The Pain Caucus) must be ignored, as difficult as that is to do. Growing the economy is the only sure way to reduce the debt, or its rate of growth.
I think we’re pretty close to being on the same page, with slightly different emphasis. Republican rhetoric and tactics can change on a dime when it suits them.
The federal government grew tremendously under W and Reagan. It would have grown under Rmoney, too.
If Rmoney had won, they would have suddenly discovered that it was important to get the economy growing much more rapidly to reduce the deficit. They would have screamed even louder about the threat from Iran and North Korea and the need for a 600 ship Navy and even more spent on missile defense to combat it. Deficits would have been poo-poohed – Tax cuts will pay for themselves. Ad nauseum.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/08/opinion/krugman-reagan-was-a-keynesian.html
W pushed for Medicare Part D because he thought it would ensure a permanent Republican majority.
As Atrios and Krugman and others keep saying to anyone who will listen – Republicans don’t care about deficits. They care about getting and maintaining political power. And they care about driving Democrats nuts. 😉
As long as the Republicans have the House, they’re going to have to be dealt with. That means responding to their tactics; but Obama’s also smart enough to direct policy toward his long-term goals (investment in infrastructure, protecting and expanding the safety net, expanding civil rights, addressing alternative energy needs and climate change, reducing nuclear stockpiles, making international relations more collaborative, etc., etc.).
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
I agree with your general views here. My major concern is with the economy. If the job market for the middle class and poor remains mediocre or worse, it will be much more difficult for Obama to move any part of his agenda. If we have more substantial cuts to government programs, the economy will worsen as a result. If cuts are made to SS/Medi/Medi, they will be immediately despised even before they have had a chance to affect the economy.
Don’t make counterproductive and unpopular policy changes. It’s not complicatred.
There is a false equivalence implied when the president talks about “pain” for “our core constituencies” being good for the economy as if the suffering of old and poor people were right there in the balance across from the suffering of Lockheed Martin and Pfizer and Citicorp. I wish just once he’d say “This is a worse bill than it would have been without this concession to Republicans, but…”
You know, he doesn’t really talk about pain in terms of the effect on the public (his constituents or any other’s). He talks about it being painful for Democrats to vote against Democratic sacred cows. There are two instances of distance there — who really experiences the pain, and what those sacred cows actually are.
I like the rhetorical direction that Obama has been going in recently, but statements like this one are far from satisfying.
Exactly. In that sense it’s a true equivalence, weighing Steve Israel’s pain in voting food stamps cuts against Darryl Issa’s pain in voting for a tax rise. Republicans may well feel they’re suffering more with a deal like that! But a sick person waiting two extra years for Medicare isn’t comparable to a stock trader getting a sweet deal on investment income. Obama sometimes seems to understand this, sometimes not at all.
You’re asking for some of the big bucks and head honchos of the GOP to make a serious play to re-launch progressive Republicanism.
You can call them “moderates,” but what you’re looking for is Republicans fundamentally willing to accept the successes of the progressive movement from TR and Wilson right up to Obama in order to get on with the job of governing.
I think the last major Republican leader to do that was Richard Nixon, who actually called himself a liberal Republican in his memoirs.
For his recent hundredth birthday he was ripped up one side and down the other for his liberalism in all the conservative media.
And they, of course are still the ONLY Republican media.