Obama's administration, the early days; Or, how the press corps will kill democracy

Please, great lord, don't go on new travels: we courtiers must have someone to whom we can pay court around the clock

Elizabeth Drew is one of the better journalists among the Establishment press. (Not to damn her with faint praise!) And she has a piece in the upcoming New York Review of Books that's worth reading: The Thirty Days of Barack Obama 02/25/09 (03/26/09 issue).

This is a decent analysis of the attitude of the House Republicans at the start of the new Obama administration:

The most important problem that Obama and his aides weren't prepared for was the degree to which the Republicans would oppose him. In part, this was circumstantial: the first major bill to test the President's stated desire for bipartisanship was on the subject that arouses the most partisanship: taxing and spending. The Democrats were bent on using the opportunity of the stimulus bill to expand or create as many domestic programs as they could. Against the evidence of the past eight years, the Republicans remained wedded to tax cuts as the way to stimulate the economy. To some extent, Obama set himself up by calling for bipartisanship—especially on this subject. He was acting on his campaign pledge to "change the ways of Washington," or "end the partisan wrangling," which didn't necessarily mean winning bipartisan support for every bill.

The House Republicans, greatly reduced by the 2006 and 2008 elections, were now as a whole more conservative than they've been in a generation—moderate Republicans having been reduced to a mere dozen or so. There were signs from the outset that the Republicans had no intention of cooperating with Obama. Lacking the leverage to affect policy, or the votes sufficient to defeat Obama's stimulus plan, they could do what they wanted, however short-sighted, without being saddled with responsibility for killing it. Moreover, they concluded from their losses in 2008 that they hadn't been conservative enough; they had come under a great deal of criticism for having presided over too much spending.

But then she proceeds to write a strange story interwoven with her account of recent events.

Democrats in Congress, she tells us, weren't in the mood to be "bipartisan" much more than the Republicans were? Really? Dang, lots of us hippie bloggers thought they were way too ready to accommodate obstructionist Republicans, especially in the Senate.

Drew repeats a Republican talking point here about that mean old Nancy Pelosi, in wording that implies without saying so that the charge was correct:

The House has been particularly polarized for decades: when each party gains the majority, it takes revenge for having been, as they see it, mistreated by the other. Since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was rushing the bill through the House, it was easy for Republican leaders to get their followers worked up against it.

But the part about the Democrats being eager to take revenge on the other side, I guess that must have played out in some other world to which she has access. Shoot, I bet in that world the Dems even made Joe Lieberman beg and plead to be accepted back into the Democratic fold under humiliating conditions! Things played out a little differently in this world, though.

Here's another combination of good analysis ...

This should have signaled to the White House what was to come. The Republicans in Congress do not want Obama to be a successful president, perhaps dooming their party to minority status for quite a while. And Obama sought Republican support for his bill not solely out of an idealistic desire for bipartisanship itself, but for pragmatic reasons as well: he wanted "cover"—as politicians often do in order to claim broad (however defined) support for their initiatives, especially controversial ones. The Republicans understood this, and they had no interest in helping him out.

... followed up with a standard Pod Pundit assumption that because they themselves are devoted to the High Broderist ideal of sweet bipartisanship, the American people must be similarly inclined:

But Obama also knew that his elaborate courtesies to the Republicans—meeting with them, having them over for cocktail parties and the Super Bowl—looked good to voters. In doing these things, he was talking to the greater public.

Actually, in this world, it's more likely that he was talking to the Beltway Village, where David Broder is considered a font of wisdom. And possibly following his own inclinations to build the widest possible coalition and disarm potential adversaries, if possible.

But in PunditWorld, it's because he was playing to the desires of conformist Villagers the American public.

She offers this bit of shaky economic analysis:

Economists have debated for years over the extent to which infrastructure projects stimulate the economy, partly because such projects can take many months to get underway, partly because of government regulations. But the country badly needs to improve bridges, roads, and dams, and eventually there are solid objects to show for this investment. While their stimulative effect may be spread out—as the projects take time to complete—it's also deemed important to prevent an "air pocket" at the end of two years, when people are out of work again.

Actually, states and localities were suspending projects already under way and postponing others that were in an advanced stage of planning. The infrastructure money allows many of those to go forward immediately.

Her general summary of the Recovery Act wasn't too bad by Village standards, though. Again, faint praise, but credit where credit is due.

But Drew disappointingly repeated one of the dumber pieces of neglect of which her fellow journalists were guilty. She describes how the bill was cut from $825 billion to $787 billion. Watch what comes after:

Specter insisted that the final bill go no higher than $789 billion (later adjusted to $787 billion), even as he demanded $6.5 million more for cancer research (Specter has cancer). Thus, most unusually, the final amount was less than that voted for in either the Senate or the House (who normally compromise their differences in a final bill). Obama got about as much money for the stimulus bill as the political traffic would bear. [my emphasis]

Our press corps was apparently so bored with all these budget numbers - or so lacking in ability to understand them - that most of them didn't seem to find it odd that the House had a higher amount when they first passed the bill, the Senate passed a lower amount, and the final compromise bill that was negotiated was even smaller. Drew at least managed to notice in passing that this was at least a bit out of the ordinary: the two Houses "normally compromise their differences in a final bill", she writes. But she didn't feel moved to actually explain that quite unusual circumstance to us in this important case.

Now this is an interesting series of judgments and assumptions:

A highly troubling result of the fight over the stimulus bill is that it could make getting another one - which might well be needed - through Congress extremely difficult. To show fiscal prudence, while the stimulus bill was being considered, Obama announced he'd hold a "fiscal responsibility summit" and would take on the problem of entitlements. (Later, he proposed to cut the budget deficit in half in four years, in part by winding down the war in Iraq and in part by allowing Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy to expire in 2011. None of this will be easy.) His address on February 24 mixed a stern reckoning of the failures of responsibility that had led the country to "difficult and uncertain times" with a call "to act boldly and wisely." His agenda included a program of caps on carbon pollution and more investment in alternative sources of energy; health care reform (but not universal coverage); a call for at least one year of higher education for everyone; and rewards for teacher performance (highly controversial in his own party).

In his joint address to Congress on February 24, Obama said:

This budget builds on these reforms. It includes an historic commitment to comprehensive health care reform – a down-payment on the principle that we must have quality, affordable health care for every American.

And he mentioned health care several other times during that speech. Not once did he specify it wouldn't be a universal health care plan. He did make that case during the campaign. But not in that speech, and I've seen at least one report suggesting he may go for universal coverage, after all.

But by Drew's Beltway Village reckoning, the fact that Obama got an historic recovery bill passed by Congress, a very expensive one, passed in record time, with substantial majorities in both Houses, and opinion polls showed high approval of him and his recovery bill: this will make it harder for him to pass further stimulus measures!

And, like the other Villagers, she's convinced there's a "growing populist sentiment gripping the country, with many complaining that people who made bad deals shouldn't be bailed out", without bothering to adduce any actual evidence for it. But for the press elite, Rick Santelli mouthing off on CNBC is evidence enough of a populist revolt against Obama and in favor of the plutocrats. Or something like that.

This is a real Heatherish observation:

But one of the conclusions that he and his aides reached after the early, bumpy days was that he should go out on the road more. This is a typical reaction on the part of a president's aides: show him relating to "the people," get outside "the Beltway chatter." Presidents need to maintain popular support in order to get things done, and they draw sustenance from the cheering crowds; it's much more enjoyable than governing.

The idea that actually going out and interacting with groups of the public not screened to be Potemkin events - like most of Bush's were - is actually a part of governing seems not to have occurred to her. He must be doing it because it's more fun.

And she even concludes by scolding Obama for not staying in the Beltway Village nearly enough!

The recent increased amount of presidential travel—to Indiana, Florida, Arizona, and Colorado—may have been another indication that Obama was not particularly happy in the White House, and that 2012 election politics were already on his and his aides' minds. John Dickerson, of Slate, said on Washington Week in Review on February 13 that the President's aides had concluded that it hadn't been helpful for Obama to be seen participating in the give-and-take of Washington, that "that's not what he was elected to do." Yes it is. [my emphasis]

Establishment journalists and pundits luu-uuv talking about the horse race. They're ready to handicap the 2012 Presidential race already.

And this isn't FOX News. It's the New York [Cheney]ing Review of Books! Which is one of my favorite magazines and runs some excellent articles. But here's Elizabeth Drew, tutting and sniffing that Obama isn't staying around the palace attending to his courtiers nearly enough.

This is the kind of drivel we get from even the best of the best of our Establishment press. We can only hope a new and more responsible generations of real journalists take over the business before democracy dies from lack of basic news being provided to the voters.

Tags: elizabeth drew, christian right, mainstream media, mainstream press

Is Obama's dream coalition feasible?

The "Hive" at Brook Farm (don't ask: let's just say they were 125 years or so ahead of the legendary hippies of "culture war" nightmares)

I'm assuming that Barack Obama will be the Democratic nominee. It's pretty hard to see how Hillary Clinton can overcome his lead and momentum at this point. Having said that, I'm not one to wring my hands over the idea that the "super-delegates" might vote in some different proportion than the elected delegates. That was the idea of having super-delegates, that the experienced pols would have some say along with the primary and caucus voters. Good or bad, that's the idea of the super-delegates.

I certainly will support Obama with enthusiasm over 100-Years-War McCain - though neither Obama's or Clinton's program on getting out of the Iraq War is adequate. But Obama's post-partisan hopes give me more of a chill than a thrill when I think of how determined and relentlessly partisan today's authoritarian Republican Party is. Elizabeth Drew's piece in the current New York Review of Books, Molehill Politics 03/18/08 (04/17/08 edition) reminded me of this.

Drew is not exactly nice to Clinton. For instance, she writes:

It's been long said among politicians that "the Clintons will do anything to win." Unfortunately, they are increasingly proving the point.

But is this a substantive criticism or standard press Clinton Rules? Here's her supporting evidence:

As the primaries in Texas and Ohio approached, the Clinton campaign, which has a tendency to announce its next steps, said that it would use a "kitchen sink" strategy against Obama - and so it did: with the famous and apparently effective "red phone" ad questioning his fitness to be commander in chief; and in frequent and heavy-handed conference calls to reporters (an innovation), in which Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson makes charges against Obama, raises questions about him, or moves "goal posts" designating what Obama has to do to win. (Obama "has to win Pennsylvania," which few think is likely.) This propaganda makes its way onto cable and other news outlets. But where does, or should, a "kitchen sink" strategy belong in a presidency? (my emphasis)

You know, I just can't quite picture the "red phone" ad as being on the level with, say, the Watergate burglary or Nixon's "Plumbers" (to take a couple of examples from more innocent days), or of the Scalia Five appointing Junior as President in 2000 or the Ashcroft-Gonzalez Justice Department pursuing crassly partisan prosecutions like that against former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman (to take examples from our own Dick Cheney era).

Gosh, a Clinton spokesperson is trying to change the perceived goalposts for the opposing candidate? Bring out the smelling salts, I believe I'm going to faint!

I'll give Drew what amounts to a compliment in the sad state of our national "press corps" these days, she didn't twist some obscure comment of Bill Clinton's to be "playing the race card". The main point I'm trying to make with this is that she's criticizing Clinton for such tactics, and looking favorably on what she sees as Obama's alternative vision:

Hillary Clinton is employing conventional politics, while Obama is trying to create a new kind of politics. Similarly, as they respond to the country's desire for change, they have very different concepts of what "change" means: briefly, for Obama it means changing the very zeitgeist of Washington, creating a new way to get things done by building coalitions that transcend longstanding political divisions. For Clinton it means passing bills - though sometimes she has suggested that it means electing a woman president. ("I embody change," she said in a debate in New Hampshire.) (my emphasis)

Hey, I'd love to change the "zeitgeist" in Washington, too. Personally, I have a soft spot in my heart for the zeitgeist of the Fourier-inspired communes in the early nineteenth century. If the spirit of the age in Washington became Fourierism instead of Cheneyism, I don't doubt it would be a vast improvement. (But then so would Nixonism!) Yeah, Brook Farm on the Potomac. Sounds good to me. Gets my inner hippie all excited and stuff. She continues, first quoting Obama:

Everybody has got a ten-point plan on everything. You go to Senator Clinton's Web site, my Web site, they look identical.... The problem is not the lack of proposals. The question is, who can bring Democrats, independents, and Republicans into a working majority to bring about change. That's what we're doing in this campaign. This is what a working majority looks like. That's how we're going to move the country forward. That's what I offer that she can't do.

Obama has a big idea: he believes that in order to change Washington and to get some of those ten-point programs through, and to reduce the power of the lobbies and "special interests," he must first build a large coalition - Democrats, independents, Republicans, whoever - to support him in his effort to change things. He has figured out that he cannot make the kinds of changes he's talking about if he has to fight for 51–49 majorities in Congress. Therefore, he's trying to build a broader coalition, and enlist the people who have come out to see him and are getting involved in politics for the first time because of him. If he can hold that force together, members of Congress, including the "old bulls," according to a campaign aide, "will look back home and see that there is a mandate for change." Thus, Obama talks about working "from the bottom up" to bring about change. When he says he will take on the special interests and the lobbies, to him it's not as far-fetched as most jaded Washingtonians think: he intends to do that with the army he's building. (my emphasis)

Charles Fourier (1772-1837), a far more sympathetic zeitgeister than Dick Cheney, despite his grumpy expression in this picture

I really don't mean to be cynical about this. Hey, I'm a Jacksonian Democrat, I really believe in change being demanded "from the bottom up". Pretty much every reform or major policy change to benefit working people has come about that way, as far as I can see. Without that, we have two parties of Big Capital arguing over the best way to bail out billionaires who, say, staked a lot of cash on Bear Stearns. Just to take a random example. And I think we could very well be experiencing a national "democratic moment", to use a Jerry Brown term.

But my question is this. If Cheney and Bush can lose the Presidential election and still take power, if they can get more-or-less everything they want for years including a war of aggression in Iraq with a thin or smaller margin in Congress, why can't the Democrats get some of our programs through? When the Dems got a majority in both Houses of Congress in the 2006 elections, it suddenly became conventional wisdom among the punditocracy that you couldn't pass anything in the Senate unless you had 60 votes. They didn't think that when the Dems were in the minority. The Republicans were willing to flush the filibuster tradition in the Senate down the toilet to get their reactionary judges approved. In fact, when Clinton was in office they blocked all kinds of judicial appointments so that they had lots of judicial openings when the Scalia Five put Cheney and Bush in office.

That new zeitgeist isn't going to be worth much if it doesn't also result in what Drew seems to think is a trivial matter, "passing bills". Sure, it much more dull for our bored press corps than partying with the Maverick at his "rustic cabin". But "passing bills" to provide universal health care or provide better protection for union organizing sounds pretty doggone good to me.

And Republicans aren't going to change until the Democrats learn how to fight them effectively. When President Obama shows that he can ram important programs through Congress repeatedly despite the scorched-earth opposition tactics of the Cheneyized Republican Party, then we'll have some of them talking "constructive bipartisanship" or some such thing.

The Democrats' biggest problem during the travesty of democracy known as the Cheney-Bush administration has not been that they weren't too willing to be bipartisan. On the contrary, they were willing to be bipartisan by lying down and letting the Republicans roll right over them, again and again.

William Polk, one of the best-informed opponents of the Iraq War, reminds us of this often-paralyzing reluctance of the People's Party (that's the Dems, by the way) to fight these crooked, authoritarian, sleaze-slinging Republicans in Notes for lectures before the Economic Club of Phoenix, Arizona and the Committee for the Republic in Washington D.C. 03/01/08:

On a personal note: I have recently been asked by both Democratic and Republic [sic] members of Congress to help prepare legislation aimed at getting us out of Iraq safely, quickly and at minimum cost. So I have spent a good deal of time with our representatives. The first thing one hears from them is their fear of being thought "not to support our troops." That has become a sort of mantra. It partly explains, I think, why the Congress is not playing the role in foreign affairs it is Constitutionally obligated to play. With few exceptions in either party, Congressmen do not even ask questions of key witnesses. For example, no one questioned General Petraeus on his counterinsurgency strategy for Iraq. It appears that they don’t want to hear the answers, only to be reassured that, hopefully, those in charge know them. This explains why no one asked Petraeus serious questions – such as where his strategy has ever worked or whether it is really new. The importance of this failure was long ago identified for us by that great Conservative, Edmund Burke, when he commented on the British inability to think clearly about the American evolution. "No passion," he said, "so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear." (my emphasis underlined)

Now Obama doesn't strike me as a fearful man. But I can't help but worry that for some Dems, the illusion of making it to Brook Farm without having to fight the Republicans is a big part of his appeal. If we're going to get to the Promised Land, or even capture of few parcels of it, it's not going to be by our party leaders being too afraid to fight the Republicans. And, sad to say, that's what too many of them have been the last several years.

It obviously horrifies the delicate sensibilities of Elizabeth Drew that Vile Hillary would be so ruthless as to run a television ad suggesting that she would be the better Commander-in-Chief during military emergencies. Why, that's "doing anything to win".

But if Obama isn't willing to take on the great Maverick in the fall election over his foreign and military policies, Mr. 100-Years-War will be in the White House in January of 2009. And the US military will be fighting in Iran not long after that.

Having seen him in the primaries facing a genuinely tough opponent in Hillary Clinton, I see that Obama has a lot of fight in him. And I hope he keeps it front-and-center in the "the general", as the pundits now refer to the general election.

Because you can be very sure the McCain-Lieberman administration won't look much like Brook Farm. And the only Hive we'll see is the swarm of corporate fat-cats and war profiteers swarming around to get their cut of the tax dollars.

Tags: barack obama, elizabeth drew, hillary clinton, mccain