Since 2009, some economists have insisted that the stimulus was too small. White House defenders have responded that a larger stimulus would not have moved through Congress. But the [Larry] Summers memo barely mentioned Congress, noting only that his recommendation of a stimulus above six hundred billion dollars was “an economic judgment that would need to be combined with political judgments about what is feasible.”Passing health-care reform through "reconciliation":
He offered the President four illustrative stimulus plans: $550 billion, $665 billion, $810 billion, and $890 billion. Obama was never offered the option of a stimulus package commensurate with the size of the hole in the economy––known by economists as the “output gap”––which was estimated at two trillion dollars during 2009 and 2010. Summers advised the President that a larger stimulus could actually make things worse. “An excessive recovery package could spook markets or the public and be counterproductive,” he wrote, and added that none of his recommendations “returns the unemployment rate to its normal, pre-recession level. To accomplish a more significant reduction in the output gap would require stimulus of well over $1 trillion based on purely mechanical assumptions—which would likely not accomplish the goal because of the impact it would have on markets.”
There were two ways for the Senate to approach Obama’s health-care plan: the normal process, which required sixty votes to pass the bill, or a shortcut known as “reconciliation,” which required only a simple majority and would bypass a possible filibuster. Baucus and several other key Senate Democrats opposed reconciliation, and Republicans decried its use on such major legislation as a partisan power grab. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, complained that using reconciliation would “make it absolutely clear” that Obama and the Democrats in Congress “intend to carry out all of their plans on a purely partisan basis.” On April 10th [2009], Obama’s aides sent him a memo asking him to decide the issue. The White House could still fashion a bipartisan bill, but it was important to have the fifty-one-vote option as a backup plan, in case they weren’t able to win any Republican support and faced a filibuster. They recommended that he “insist on reconciliation instructions for health care.” Below this language, Obama was offered three options: “Agree,” “Disagree,” “Let’s Discuss.” The President placed a check mark on the line next to “Agree.”The pivot from jobs to the deficit:
Obama’s moderation didn’t sway Republicans, nor did his attention to interest groups or his cuts to beloved liberal programs. Through the rest of 2009, as the anti-government Tea Party movement gathered strength, and conservative voters began to speak of creeping American socialism, Obama’s aides quarrelled over how the President should respond. [Christina] Romer wanted him to press the Keynesian case for his policies—to defend the proposition of increased government spending to fight the recession. [Peter] Orszag argued that he needed more support from Washington’s deficit hawks, and urged him to create a deficit commission, partly because “it can provide fiscal credibility during a period in which it is unlikely we would succeed in enacting legislation.”Summary:
It presented Obama with a common Presidential dilemma: Should he use the White House bully pulpit to change minds or should he accept popular opinion? He chose the latter. In his speeches, he began saying, “Americans are making hard choices in their budgets. We’ve got to tighten our belts in Washington, as well.” Romer fought to get such lines removed from his speeches, arguing that it was “exactly the wrong policy.” She thought the President should emphasize that the government would seek to use taxpayer money wisely, and leave it at that. Instead, he seemed to be accepting the Republican case against stimulus and for austerity. She thought he was losing faith in Keynesianism itself.
... Axelrod and other Obama political advisers saw anti-Keynesian rhetoric as a political necessity. They believed it was better to channel the anti-government winds than to fight them. As much as it enraged Romer and outside economists, the White House was on to something. A President’s ability to change public opinion through rhetoric is extremely limited. George Edwards, after studying the successes of Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and Ronald Reagan, concluded that their communications skills contributed almost nothing to their legislative victories. According to his study, “Presidents cannot reliably persuade the public to support their policies” and “are unlikely to change public opinion.”
Predictions that Obama would usher in a new era of post-partisan consensus politics now seem not just naïve but delusional. At this political juncture, there appears to be only one real model of effective governance in Washington: partisan dominance, in which a President with large majorities in Congress can push through an ambitious agenda. Despite Obama’s hesitance and his appeals to Republicans, this is the model that the President ended up relying upon during his first two years in office. He had hoped to use a model of consensus politics in which factions in the middle form an alliance against the two extremes. But he found few players in the center of the field: most Republicans and Democrats were on their own ten-yard lines. (The Tea Party, meanwhile, was tearing down the goal posts and carrying them away.) This situation is not unprecedented. During much less polarized periods, when it was easier to build centrist coalitions, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson suffered similar fates. “When Johnson lost 48 Democratic House seats in the 1966 election, he found himself, despite his alleged wizardry, in the same condition of stalemate that had thwarted Kennedy and, indeed, every Democratic President since 1938,” Arthur Schlesinger noted in his 1978 biography of Robert Kennedy. “In the end, arithmetic is decisive.”Via Paul Krugman.
The Government Is the Leader of Public Opinion, Not Its Slaveposted by russilwvong at 9:26 PM on January 23, 2012 [1 favorite]
Those responsible for the conduct of foreign policy will not be able to comply with the foregoing principles of diplomacy if they do not keep this principle constantly in mind. As has been pointed out above in greater detail, the rational requirements of good foreign policy cannot from the outset count upon the support of a public opinion whose preferences are emotional rather than rational. This is bound to be particularly true of a foreign policy whose goal is compromise, and which, therefore, must concede some of the objectives of the other side and give up some of its own. Especially when foreign policy is conducted under conditions of democratic control and is inspired by the crusading zeal of a political religion, statesmen are always tempted to sacrifice the requirements of good foreign policy to the applause of the masses. On the other hand, the stateman who would defend the integrity of these requirements against even the slightest contamination with popular passion would seal his own doom as a political leader and, with it, the doom of his foreign policy, for he would lose the popular support which puts and keeps him in power.
The statesman, then, is allowed neither to surrender to popular passions nor disregard them. He must strike a prudent balance between adapting himself to them and marshaling them to the support of his policies. In one word, he must lead. He must perform that highest feat of statesmanship: trimming his sails to the winds of popular passion while using them to carry the ship of state to the port of good foreign policy, on however roundabout and zigzag a course.
If term limits helped with this kind of thing then California would not be half of the gargantuan clusterfuck that it is in terms of governance. The thing that multi-term offices promotes is collaboration, both within and without one's party. If you think you'll be around in 4 years to see a favor repaid then you're more likely to reach out, but if you're gone in 2 then there's no incentive to cross an ideological barrier.We actually have an example of great "bi-partisan" consensus driven legislation recently: SOPA. It was supported by both republicans and democrats, and both parties worked together to come up with something they both liked and that "solved a problem". On the other hand, when the democrats steam-rolled something through we got Obamacare.
For all the talk about the president not being able to change public opinion, we know that public opinion on many issues is already on the liberal side. Large majorities of the population believe that raising taxes on the rich should be done. But what happened to the Bush tax cuts? Why haven't they expired? That's money that could have been spent effectively, and could have stimulated the economy.Why not accept the obvious answer: The president is focusing on what he wants to focus on, and this is the stuff he cares about?
And Gingrich is coming at Romney from the left, and it's working - with Republicans, even. Why, again, are we supposed to be convinced that Obama's center-right position is a strategically good move? He doesn't have to change public opinion. He just has to take advantage of what's there. He could force the Republicans to the left. The Occupy movement, amazingly, has accomplished that, so we know it is possible.
"And the 1971 agitator’s handbook “Rules for Radicals” — written by Saul Alinsky, the Chicago community organizer who was the subject of Hillary Clinton’s senior thesis, and whose teachings helped shape Barack Obama’s work on Chicago’s South Side — has been among Amazon’s top 100 sellers for the past month, put there in part by people who “also bought” books by Michelle Malkin, Glenn Beck,and South Carolina Republican Sen. Jim DeMint."posted by peacay at 3:28 AM on January 24, 2012 [1 favorite]
* funding a child nutrition plan: His advisers suggested that he could make a point about political reform and offered him a plan to “ask Congress to fund as much of your original request as possible through reductions in agriculture subsidies.” They expected the ploy to fail but argued, “You would be able to say that you had offered a serious plan to fund the full bill, and Congress had fallen short.” Next to this more cynical option, Obama wrote, "Yes."He still wants to close Gitmo
* setting the level of a corporate tax: But Geithner and Summers warned that if Obama was not willing to personally “defend” the plan he should not send it to Congress. In that case, they offered him an even more defanged alternative, one that would be “more responsive to the business community’s concerns” but would certainly “be criticized by some as caving.” Campaign promises were easy, but, as President, Obama could fight only so many legislative battles. Next to the dramatically scaled-back option, Obama wrote, “Worth discussing.” But in the end it was only worth discussing. Obama didn’t completely capitulate to the multinationals, and he adopted his aides’ modestly clipped package.
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What Obama was able to do on the policy side was to win the policy battles on cutting government spending--there have been ZERO cuts to Social Security and only one small cut to Medicare providers--none to beneficiaries. Where have the cuts come from? Staggering cuts to defense. 890 billion over 10 years, all of which the GOP agreed to. He gambled correctly that the GOP didn't have the balls to cut medicare. That forced them to accept steep cuts to defense.
That's what this whole fight over Romney's taxes are about, it isn't that he makes a lot of money, or even uses tax shelters in the Caymans--its that he's the poster boy for exactly what is wrong with the system--the Warren Buffets paying a lower tax rate than their secretaries.
Its no surprise either. A majority of people in the Tea Party favor higher taxes on the rich.
And Gingrich's success comes partially from this--the attacks on Bain Capital worked. Its why Gingrich is getting stronger and Romney weaker.
posted by Ironmouth at 8:46 PM on January 23, 2012 [14 favorites]