Paul Rosenberg has a lot of gall trying to explain logical fallacies to the unwashed masses.
President Obama is a walking embodiment of this fallacy. He is so eager to embrace Republican ideas— Bush’s TARP, tax cuts in his stimulus bill, the Heritage Foundation’s individual mandate, ” “cap and trade,” fiscal austerity, making permanent the vast majority of Bush’s tax cuts, etc.—that he embraces objectively bad ideas, divides his own base, and doesn’t even get any political benefit from it. For one thing, he doesn’t give Republicans an opportunity to fight for their own ideas—to demonstrate to their own base that they stand for something that is in dispute. Rather than make them more willing to compromise with him, this increases the pressure on them to fight. We’ve seen this over and over again throughout the Obama presidency, but Obama never seems to learn. His very zeal in seeking compromise only makes it that much harder for Republicans who need to fight him. So it’s really not all that surprising when they turn around and accuse him of being “unwilling to negotiate,” however misleading that may be. Whatever else is involved in keeping Obama stuck where he is, the false balance fallacy is part of the equation.
TARP was not an objectively bad idea. Tax cuts in the stimulus bill were not an objectively bad idea. The individual mandate is not an objectively bad idea. Cap and Trade is not an objectively bad idea. And fiscal austerity and the continuation of Bush’s tax cuts for the middle class may be objectively bad ideas (although, in a recession, the latter probably makes sense), but they were the result of a combination of political reality (keeping campaign promises) and Republican intransigence.
Rosenberg comes closer to hitting on something important when he notes that Obama has forced the Republicans to abandon some of their substantive policy ideas simply by being willing to adopt them himself. This is certainly the case with cap and trade and the individual mandate. But, it should be remembered that cap and trade and the individual mandate were never really sincere Republicans positions. They were positions they adopted to give themselves an excuse for not supporting Democratic proposals for tackling climate change and the millions of people who lack health insurance. By adopting those policies for the Democratic Party, Obama called their bluff. If they had been sincere about offering those ideas, the Republicans would have agreed to turn them into law rather than relabeling them tyrannical socialism.
What Rosenberg sees as some kind of pathological desire to find compromise, I see as a diabolical plan to destroy the Republican Party simply by being reasonable and offering them what they say they want. “You think everyone should be personally responsible enough to get their own health insurance? Okay, let’s do that.”
If you think the president wanted to enter office in the middle of a recession and take over the responsibility for TARP and getting some Republican senators to agree to a stimulus package, and if you think he and Clinton and Edwards embraced the individual mandate because that was their first policy choice, and if you think cap and trade was pursued because it was considered the optimal policy, then maybe you think the president has offered Republicans concessions because he likes those concessions rather than because you have to make concessions to get the votes you need to make laws.
In other words, if you think the rooster’s crow caused the Sun to rise, then you might also think that the president’s policies were caused by his personal preferences rather than the constraints he faces in our political system.
Ahem:
Post hoc ergo PROPTER hoc.
Autocorrect dislikes latin words, I guess.
Thanks.
Spellcheck is the spawn of satin.
Really? It’s soft and luxurious?
“…he notes that Obama has forced the Republicans to abandon some of their substantive policy ideas simply by being willing to adopt them himself.”
Really, Rosenberg? The republicans had no other option but to abandon their policy ideas? They were not legally permitted to continue to push those ideas? They could not say, “Well, it’s about time that the President realized that the best ideas are on the opposite side of the aisle, blah, blah, blah…”
No. They were forced to abandon their own ideas as soon as and because the President supported them.
All righty then.
Indeed, that “reasoning” made me wonder if there are stages of Obama derangement syndrome.
At this point, I’m not sure that there are stages. I think that any rational, level-headed person who does not allow their lizard brain biases to consume every molecule of their being couldn’t help but conclude that the President is nothing more than a run of the mill center-left Democrat, who often will even embrace the policies of his opposition, if they are reasonable and can be used to broker a compromise from time to time on issues which he feels are important to the public at large. Virtually everyone I know who is vehemently and viscerally opposed to the President at this point in his second term does it for no other reason than they cannot imagine that “their country” would re-elect someone like him, someone so “foreign and different”, without there being a massive criminal and conspiratorial repression of all those who hold their worldview.
Among the general voting public, virtually the only ones left are those who swallow the paranoid conspiracy theories about the President. And they are supported and propped up by the monied interests who see a potential way of profiting from this crazy, almost pathological, bent toward delusion.
While I agree with a lot of what you say see, note that Heritage’s individual mandate was implemented at the state level by a Republican governor, and worked quite well and is very popular in that state. So I’m not so keen to argue they didn’t really believe in it.
Of course, this only makes it more difficult to explain why the Republicans so radically changed their tune on the individual mandate. At least, it makes it more difficult to come up with an explanation other than the real one – you know, the one that our elite media, so far, has been unwilling to mention.
Which is, of course, that our President is a dark-skinned man with a funny name….
What Romney did in Massachusetts is what a Republican governor would do (pre-ObamaCare) in an overwhelmingly Democratic state with an overwhelmingly Democratic legislature. It is not, and never was, reflective of where the GOP stands nationally on health policy.
Also, it was done in 2006—before Democrats retook the House, before the Great Recession started, before the 2008 financial collapse.
Romney had long had national ambitions (he first ran for Senate in 1994); and proving 1) he had a major policy accomplishment (based on Heritage Foundation ideas, no less); and 2) could govern effectively as a Republican in a blue state seemed like a good way to enter the 2008 primary campaign.
Hasn’t it already been established that Paul Rosenberg is the worst political commentator on the left? I’d even throw Matt Stoller in there, but at least he’s not an idiot.
Coincidentally, or maybe not, they both found a home at Open Left. Fuck them both.
He’s the most long-winded, anyway.
I don’t know this guy’s usual work, but here’s what I picture when I read this: http://youtu.be/gNr_NE3tl6g
Stupid
TVPresident! Be morefunnyliberal!Most of those ideas aren’t objectively bad, but they are relatively bad and got crap republican votes anyway so nothing was gained. The point on some of those was to negotiate with terrified Dems.
However I still need to see evidence that Obama does not actually want to hurt SS and Medicare. We’ve seen him embrace objectively bad ideas pushed by people like Arne Duncan and buddy Michelle Rhee so it’s not like he couldn’t do that again.
…I still need to see evidence that Obama does not actually want to hurt SS and Medicare.
Iirc he actively campaigned during the ‘008 primary that SocSec was in danger and badly in need of immediate reform, and raised a fair bit of alarm and irritation because it was essentially doing the GOP’s work for them–much like Dick Durbin is doing now with his talk about SocSec “going broke” in 20 years.
Say what you will about Obama crushing the GOP with their own policy points, but he’s been consistent on this entitlement reform thing from the beginning. I wouldn’t say he actually wants to hurt SocSec and Medicare, but he seems to genuinely believe that some sort of austerity measures–at least in regard to SocSec–are called for in the relatively short term. And he’ll make those cuts if they’ll get concessions from the GOP. And then the GOP will turn right around and attack Dems as the anti-SocSec/Medicare party.
You really should try to consider where the GOP has landed as a result of their (predictable) inability to make a deal on entitlement reform with the president.
They are now in a position where they have protected their base by refusing to make any cuts in Social Security and Medicare or to agree to any tax hikes at all (except under the pressure of even bigger tax hikes during the fiscal cliff). Yet, their only alternative so far has been to create a sequester that infuriates the defense industry, farmers, and the Chamber of Commerce. Rather than compromise, they shut the government down and lost badly. In the near future, they will face the same choice: agree to tax hikes and entitlement cuts or shut the government down again. This time, the latter alternative is “officially” off the table, if you believe McConnell and Boehner.
Meanwhile, the chained CPI offer the president made would be a surreptitious way of raising marginal income tax rates on the middle class, which seemingly cannot be achieved in any other way. As for Social Security, it would squeeze tens of billions of savings out of the program, but mainly by means-testing in a surreptitious way. The way the proposal was designed, the most vulnerable wouldn’t feel a pinch and the most elderly would actually get an increase in benefits.
The Republicans have become more and more reliant on the elderly for votes with each passing year of the Obama administration, to the point that they are now the GOP’s core constituency. And that constituency is increasingly unhappy with the GOP’s branding as the anti-entitlement party.
All of this damage to the GOP has been accomplished without actually laying a finger on entitlements, but it that actually happens, and the GOP turns into a major defender of entitlements going forward, then we will have won the battle for a more secure retirement for our seniors.
Republicans can turn on a dime. And have no historic memory for what they said yesterday.
If Dems lay a finger on SS, their goose is cooked. And I don’t care if the fine print is all exculpatory.
I cannot understand why any Dem would go for chained CPI which hurts a lot more than SS recipients. Do the poor and lower class have “kick ME” signs on their backs?
Every proposal that has included a chained CPI component has also included a number of other components that expressly protect the poorest from the impact of that change were it made in isolation.
And what about the less than poorest? Or the level above that? It still hurts them, actively reducing quality of life until you get the highest levels. And even if you were to restrict it, the whole point is that it is a totally neutral program. That’s why it enjoys the support it enjoys.
“if you think the rooster’s crow caused the Sun to rise, then you might also think that the president’s policies were caused by his personal preferences rather than the constraints he faces in our political system.”
Amen! These words should be repeated over and over across the blogosphere. It is the fundamental point so many lefties never think of. They have a compelte lack of perespective. They’re too busy with their critical thinking with baseline “absolute perfection”.
That’s why this is my favorite blog.
Oh, I think there are a couple areas where Obama is pretty much in agreement with Republican mainstream. Education and the security state. And I’d say he was one of the least environmentally concerned Dem presidents we have had in my lifetime. His “do everything” policy in energy will have a long lasting effect. Be surprised if west Texas has any water left that is fit for humans/animals after this free-for-all fracking.
C’mon, Clinton would have had that Keystone pipeline up and running by now, Koch Brothers and all.
Then he should have lobbied Mrs. Clinton, who had approval at her discretion.
TARP was not an objectively bad idea. Tax cuts in the stimulus bill were not an objectively bad idea. The individual mandate is not an objectively bad idea. Cap and Trade is not an objectively bad idea. And fiscal austerity and the continuation of Bush’s tax cuts for the middle class may be objectively bad ideas (although, in a recession, the latter probably makes sense), but they were the result of a combination of political reality (keeping campaign promises) and Republican intransigence.
Let’s take these in order.
So one can argue that Obama and his advisers should not have included tax cuts in their first draft stimulus bill and let the GOP take credit for inserting them in exchange for GOP votes. Normally I’m completely on board with this argument. But in this case the 5% tax cut on incomes below $250k was a centerpiece of Obama’s 2008 campaign so in this case it had to be there.
stimulus value was poor compared to almost anything else we could have done with the money. Rove and his buddies passed the Bush tax cuts using reconciliation (and 9 years later accused the Democrats of being in league with Satan for using reconciliation to pass the final Obamacare bill) and that requires that they had a 10 year sunset provision to meet reconciliation rules. This gave the Democrats the option of getting rid of the cuts to prevent those tax levels being seen as “status quo” – but they negotiated that way.
Then you mention political reality – and that’s a fair point. Very possibly a different negotiation approach would have yielded the exact same results. I think what the author is trying to say, however, is that these are results that Obama actually agreed with and liked. Personally, I’m not sure about that. As I’ve aged I’ve lost faith in human’s ability to discern the motives of others without a ton of very personal evidence. But I do think that based on his behavior throughout his public life that Obama is basically a Washington centrist.
Obama would not be president otherwise. He had to make the establishment types perfectly comfortable to qualify for the job. No drama is a requirement not necessarily a preference.
I think we’ll only know Obama’s true position preferences once he’s a lame duck or even later (post presidency). But personally I expect them to be what he’s achieved, or pretty damn close, and most of his regrets to be about not achieving the ‘grand bargain.’
Sometimes, ala Clinton, what you see is what you get.
Some pretty exciting new polling coming out.
Who was it who came up with that metaphor about the public rejecting the GOP like a cat barfing up a pill? Carville? Well, now it’s like a passing a kidney stone – incredibly painful and irritating and the body can’t get it out fast enough.
All the other things aside: There is a pervasive zombie idea about “individual mandate”, the pre-DeMint Heritage Foundation, the governorship of Willard Mitt Romney, and the Affordable Care Act that needs to have a stake pounded through its heart or whatever it is you do with zombies.
When you are accusing Obama of adopting Republican ideas, please stop citing this one, people. It is certainly not as good a program as a Medicare-for-all or other socialized program would have been, but it has nothing to do with Heritage or Romney.