Jon Favreau the speechwriter (not Jon Favreau the actor/writer/director) has a column today in The Daily Beast about presidential leadership. In itself, the column isn’t all that interesting to me. I have written the same things for the same reasons. However, I did enjoy his point about how the media behaves in the face of a dreadful Congress. Why didn’t Congress pass anything in response to the Newtown Massacre? Why do so many in the media point to lack of presidential leadership instead of searching for better answers?
Today, a minority of senators can kill bipartisan legislation that is supported by a majority of their colleagues. And they frequently do. In the House, the speaker alone can kill bipartisan legislation that is supported by a majority of his colleagues. And he frequently does. Following some of this country’s worst mass shootings, a Republican senator and a Democratic senator with A ratings from the National Rifle Association authored a gun safety bill requiring criminal background checks that was supported by 90 percent of the American people. If I were a reporter, I’d be more interested in what was wrong with the Congress that refused to pass that bill than the man at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue who relentlessly campaigned for it at more than a dozen events around the country.
But that’s just me. This Congress has so profoundly disappointed the American people that I suppose the real news would be if they ever did anything that even remotely reflected popular will. At this point, getting angry with Congress for failing to legislate seems as useful as yelling at a puppy for peeing on the floor: neither of them knows any better.
At the beginning of the 89th Congress that served from January 1965 to January 1967 during the peak of President Lyndon Johnson’s power, the Democrats controlled 68 Senate seats and 295 House seats. By comparison, at the beginning of the current Congress, the Democrats (and 2 independents) controlled 55 Senate seats and 200 House seats. It takes 218 seats to control the House. It’s true that the current Democratic Party is more unified than the one LBJ presided over, but the same is true of the Republicans. With LBJ’s 1965-66 margins, Obama could do anything he wanted. With Obama’s 2013-14 margins, LBJ couldn’t do squat. That’s especially true because we now have a de facto 60-vote supermajority requirement in the Senate. To see what I mean, take a look at this chart. Compare the 89th Congress to more recent ones.
Remember, too, that 1965 and 1966 were still part of the Civil Rights Era when this country was divided more than it had been in a century. Yet, Johnson was able to govern without the opposition taking constant recourse to the filibuster. With 68 Democrats in the Senate, he could overcome a filibuster if his party remained unified, but what were the chances of that when the Senate included the following Democrats:
J. Lister Hill (D-AL), John Sparkman (D-AL), John L. McClellan (D-AR), J. William Fulbright (D-AR), Spessard Holland (D-FL), George Smathers (D-FL), Richard Russell, Jr. (D-GA),
Herman Talmadge (D-GA), Allen J. Ellender (D-LA), Russell B. Long (D-LA), James Eastland (D-MS), John C. Stennis (D-MS), Ernest Hollings (D-SC), Albert Gore, Sr. (D-TN), Harry F. Byrd, Jr. (D-VA), William B. Spong, Jr. (D-VA), Jennings Randolph (D-WV), Robert Byrd (D-WV)
Even in 1965-66, LBJ’s agenda would have suffered if he had had to deal the current Senate rules and practices.
Of all the things that are broken in our political system, the president cannot be counted as one of them. He’s the one thing we’ve got going for us. His administration isn’t perfect but it is performing as it should. His agenda is broadly popular and reflective of the will of the people who elected him.
You want to know what is wrong in Washington? Look elsewhere. Look at the gerrymander. Look at the state of campaign finance reform. Look at what right-wing media has done to the brains of millions of Americans. Look at Mitch McConnell’s strategy of no, and John Boehner’s inability to strike a deal that his own caucus will back. Look at any number of things. Presidential leadership is not the issue.
