You know, I ask Sunday Questions because I'm really interested in hearing what people think, but (1) I'm pretty sure I know what liberals are thinking about the debt limit/deficit potential deal, and (2) it seems sort of lame to try asking about anything else. I was thinking of just calling it an open thread for liberals on the topic...
Well, instead, I'll just let y'all get into it with this one: how (if at all) do you think things would be different in these negotiations if Hillary Clinton was president?
Sunday, July 31, 2011
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theoretically at least, she would have listened to her husband and threatened the 14th after the initial recalcitrance.
ReplyDeleteyikes. do we have to go all the way back to 'the revenge of hillarycare'?
ReplyDeleteIf Hillary were President the tea party never would have happened.
ReplyDeleteFrom Tom: Dear Anonymous: What's your reasoning? The Tea Party, though it casts its rhetoric in economic terms, is still partly a revival of the old culture wars. Do you think having a liberal woman in the White House would have been more palatable to them than having an African-American? Hasn't it generally been true that any Democrat has always been demonized in recent history by the Right, whether it is Dukakis or Clinton or Obama or Hillary? I wonder if the TP wasn't inevitable. These are people who do not want their taxes going to help those who don't work, or who, in their benighted view, don't work. And the less well-off are the Democrats' natural constituency. I say TP would have arisen, Hillary or not.
ReplyDeleteI don't have a high opinion of Secretary Clinton's political and management skills which is why I supported Obama in the primaries. Still if there's one thing she does understand, it's what vicious assholes Republicans are. Perhaps she would have embraced the 14th amendment option. Even if true though, it wouldn't in the end have mattered. All it would have done is move the hostage negotiation from the debt limit to the 2012 spending bill authorizations (something that's going to happen even if Obama works something out before Tuesday).
ReplyDeleteThe Republicans' open negotiating standpoint was very strong: they didn't want to raise the debt ceiling, raising the debt ceiling was extremely unpopular, and if they didn't raise it, Obama would disproportionally suffer politically.
ReplyDeleteThe only way anyone could gain leverage in these negotiations would be to get Republicans to pay a political price for their intransigence. Obama has succeeded in that task about as well as anyone could. Instead of being 70-30 against raising the debt ceiling, they more like 40-40-20 (the 20s being don't know). And he's succeeded in conveying to the public at large and the pundits that if there's no deal it will be the Republican's fault.
Invoking the 14th wouldn't work in substantive terms. The risk premium attached to legally questionable debt would probably be as bad or worse as the increased interest from a credit rating downgrade. It wouldn't work politically either, as it would give the Republicans license to argue that the Democrats are the extremists, and it would give them a solid case for impeachment too. It would weaken the President and the Democrats heading into the 2012 FY appropriations negotiations.
The fact of the matter is that Republicans are more scared of losing renomination than either reelection or another financial crisis. That, more than the identity and the character of the president, is what has shaped the negotiations in 112th Congress.
Lester Freamon is right. The intransigence of Republicans has been the driving force in national politics since Nov. 5, 2008. There's no reason to believe that the calculated decision by the party to unanimously oppose all things Obama would be any different if the president and her policies were named Clinton instead. (I say this, by the by, acknowledging that Republicans had absolutely no rational incentive to do otherwise--they had nothing to gain politically, it seems to me, by dealing with the a democratic president at all).
ReplyDeleteRepublicans are "vicious assholes." To the blog host, I say: you get the kind of commenters you deserve. If you're trying to attract readers who are fiercely, hatefully partisan to the point of driving away divergent opinions or even moderates, congratulations, you've succeeded admirably.
ReplyDeleteIf, on the other hand, you're trying to attract a more diverse array of thought and encourage serious discussions among people who would otherwise disagree, it might be time to rethink the tone around here.
I've been an Obama supporter since early in the primaries, but my feeling is that we'd probably be slightly better off if Hillary Clinton were president. This has nothing to do with what I do or don't like about Obama's strategy, and everything to do with a general opinion that it just can't get any worse than it is right now.
ReplyDeleteIf you elect a different president, you reshuffle reality from that point forward. Maybe the Tea Party never forms with a different (even an equally hated) president. Maybe it forms, but takes a different tack. Maybe Clinton appoints different advisors, one of whom suggests some alternate strategy that turns out to work better.
My feeling is, we've had something of a worse-case scenario take place in our politics over the last year or so; practically any random change has an 80-90 percent chance of producing better results.
I think at a bare minimum she would have been out selling her vision of the country from day 1 of this crisis back in early July. Hillary is much more of a partisan than Obama, who I think is the right president for a different time when there is more money to spend and a broad consensus of what to spend it on. The shameless lies the GOP have told over the course of this crisis - one after another and virtually unchallenged by the mainstream media - is beyond description. I think the better question to ask would be "If the mainstream media had aggressively challenged the republican talking points at every interview, would we be where we are today?"
ReplyDeleteIrrelevant.
ReplyDeleteHillary is if anything an even more inept politician than Obama, who badly bungled the two big things she ever tried politically--health care under Bill and the presidential run. The right actually had to take some time and effort to build up Obama-hate, while Hillary hate would have been there from Inauguration day. I think things would actually be even worse.
ReplyDelete"Republicans are "vicious assholes." To the blog host, I say: you get the kind of commenters you deserve. If you're trying to attract readers who are fiercely, hatefully partisan to the point of driving away divergent opinions or even moderates, congratulations, you've succeeded admirably."
ReplyDeleteAnonymous, I don't mean to be rude, but you should really look at the title of the thread. And given that conservative politicians have just successfully used the threat of a economic crisis to force gigantic spending cuts to an already-depressed economy, how do you expect liberals to feel?
I'm not a Hillary fan in general (Mark Penn, yuck), so I will just answer about Obama. I was much happier with the administration since these negotiations stated. Since, it seems he has taken weakness, bad messaging, being out of touch, and incompetence to new levels. This is not just hand wringing or disappointment about Washington in general. It is time for progressives to think about a post Obama future.
ReplyDeleteRegarding Mrs Clinton: as a reader of this blog, I am inclined to deprecate personality as a large factor in political contests, though that may be a vulgar misreading of our host's arguments and themes.
ReplyDeleteThe difference I would point to is Arkansas: Clinton had a decade of experience in that crucible of venal stupidity, plus the remnants of that culture that followed them to Washington, whereas Obama probably never encountered the like until he was inaugurated.
But just because Clinton would likely have been less surprised by the venality and hysteria of the Republicans by no means implies that she would have countered them more effectively. Lest we forget, they saw fit to hire such a one as Dick Morris to advise them, specifically with an eye to restoring the favor they had lost with the rednecks.
No difference at all. None. Zip. Nada.
ReplyDeletePick your Kerensky -- Lenin doesn't care.
"Anonymous, I don't mean to be rude, but you should really look at the title of the thread."
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure why asking liberals a question in any way excuses them calling Republicans' "vicious assholes."
"And given that conservative politicians have just successfully used the threat of a economic crisis to force gigantic spending cuts to an already-depressed economy, how do you expect liberals to feel?"
This is your response? That it's okay because they're REALLY mad right now?
kth,
ReplyDeleteDo you really think Chicago and Illinois are marked by political purity and innocence? How many governors has Arkansas sent to jail?
I like to think that Clinton would have focused on her unique executive roles:
ReplyDelete1) Saying how she would prioritize payments.
2) Nominating a full set of governors for the Federal Reserve Board in 2009, getting more support for expansionary monetary policy.
The first might have speeded up negotiations, and the second might have mitigated their effects. Clinton as president would be better for this than Obama as de facto Senate Majority Leader.
Jim Guy Tucker went to jail. But I'm not talking about the kind of bare-knuckle politics common from New Jersey to Nevada, rather the particular kind of illiterate insanity characteristic of the region around Arkansas (also OK, North Texas, LA, MS). The Impeach Earl Warren factor, is one way to put it.
ReplyDeleteMaybe she would have invoked the 14th amendment, but if she did you can be sure that congress would have started impeachment hearings against her.
ReplyDeleteWhat I'm curious about is how misinformed (or in denial) the vast majority of Republicans I know are about what is causing the deficit. None of them seem to want to raise taxes, cut SS, cut Medicare or defense. Meanwhile the washington establishment seem to only support cutting SS and Medicare as a way to balance the budget. Seems to me if the Democrats could focus on the choices being the Ryan plan or taxes on the rich they could start to get voters worried about what the Republicans are up to.
I think the key with Hillary is the key element that troubles so many liberals (and is a source of ridicule on the other side of the spectrum). Obama is relatively averse at drawing thick lines. Its almost as if the place he wants to be is the compromise worked out in the end with as few fingerprints as possible prior to that. Partly he has to be that way given that part of what determines how they feel -- the other side (and particularly their base) is where he stands (it needs to not be close to there).
ReplyDeleteI think Hillary would be much more likely to carve out a spot and stick to it and fight for it. I don't know how much more effective that would be but it could be a better long-term strategy (i.e. you get hurt here but you run on it in the next election). His approach has more tactical appeal, hers more strategic (assuming I am correct about which is which).
Having been a strong Clinton supporter in the primaries and skeptical of Obama's "post-partisan unity shtick" fairly early on and then actually working for the campaign I'm not sure I can come up with anything close to an objective answer. But I think she would have worked on this sort of stuff as a priority and likely taken advantage more of the Senate majority (assuming she would have had it). Thus, I think the ceiling would have been lifted earlier and there quite possibly could have been a budget passed. But that could be crazy talk.
ReplyDeleteI am struck by how much even liberals take Republican disparagement of their elected officials on board. The relentless battering of Obama by the right has taken a toll on his stature among his supporters just as surely as his tendency to over-compromise has done.
ReplyDeleteI can't see events having turned out much differently under H. Clinton. Remember, by the time the debt ceiling issue arose, the right would have had almost two years to resurrect all the old anti-Clinton talking points (commodities deals, Vince Foster, Whitewater, Travelgate, Bill's dalliances, etc., etc.) and pound them into the ground until even Clinton's supporters had their doubts about her. The right would have no such uncertainties; they would hate her with the red-hot hatred they now show toward Obama. The Republicans would still have adopted their posture of no compromise and no cooperation. She would have had to spend money to avoid Great Depression 2.0 and we would have a whopping deficit. Everything she did would be viewed through the prism of "can a woman be trusted" the same way Obama's actions are seen through a hardly-veiled prism of "is he one of us?"
No, the fundamental dynamic--one side willing to blow up the country if it would hurt its opponent and the other too responsible to let that happen---would yield roughly the same result we have here. The ballot box in 2012 is the only solution we have to that dynamic.
Hillary would not have been any better. 80% of the reason she didn't win the nomination is that she surrounded herself with the "Big Dawg All Stars" campaign team - guys like Mark Penn who didn't understand rules like "You mean Texas has a primary *and a caucus?"
ReplyDeleteAn parallel-Earth Hillary presidency would have meant those clowns would have won the nomination on Super Tuesday, and been considered geniuses. The Dems still win '08 because of the economy collapsing.
But don't try and tell me it wouldn't have been two and a half years right out of Bill's Triangulation Playbook. Obama may have taken too many Clinton people on, but those are who we have with Executive branch experience. The alternative was picking a bunch of Washington neophytes who may really have deserved comparisons to Carter.
I'm struggling to see any good in what's happening this weekend, but President Hillary wouldn't be doing any better. We might feel better, but we'd have gotten less done, IMHO.
As a conservative, it's incredibly amusing to see just how taken for granted it is among liberal blog commenters and the like that their party's chief virtue is that it's too responsible. This is about as intellectually honest as telling someone during a job interview that your biggest flaw is that you "work too hard."
ReplyDeleteAnything explanation of the partisan divide THAT self-serving ought to set off all sorts of red flags in anyone with even a modicum of reflectiveness. Good God.
I'm not sure--Hillary would have avoided some of Obama's mistakes. She would never assume that if you were reasonable that this would make the other side reasonable. Obama has constantly assumed this, and he's constantly been wrong. (Honestly, I'm kind of surprised I never hear the Right say "if he's this bad at negotiating with us, imagine how he'd negotiate with Iran.")
ReplyDeleteBut I'm sure she would have made some of her own mistakes, and she certainly had her baggage. There's one thing that might have made a huge difference that I haven't seen anyone mention. Even before the Great Recession, I thought Hillary seemed more willing to talk about government intervention in the economy and industrial policy than Obama. Ironically, Clinton might have been willing to wait on health care reform and pursue a larger stimulus or infrastructure investment instead.
Anonymous @ 9:25: reasonable/unreasonable is perhaps a biased frame, especially if (say) you think that the existence of Medicare in its present form is a national emergency.
ReplyDeleteSuffice to say that the Republicans drove a very hard bargain, and the Democrats were very acquiescent and non-confrontational, and the Republicans seem to have (at first report) gotten the better of the deal. That's all anyone is really saying, and it's hard to see what is controversial about the observation.
Some might also say that if both Democrats and Republicans had decided to drive a very hard bargain, and neither side ever acquiesced, then it would have been a massive catastrophe.
ReplyDeleteJust a quick bid for everyone to keep the language more on the civil side than not, and at the same time to be tolerant of occasional lapses...and a reminder that I will zap comments if IMO they go well over the line.
ReplyDelete"That's all anyone is really saying, and it's hard to see what is controversial about the observation."
ReplyDeleteNo it isn't. Here's a quote from this very thread:
"...one side willing to blow up the country if it would hurt its opponent and the other too responsible to let that happen..."
If you don't like the word "responsible", that's fine, but it's simply a matter of fact that one side was willing to risk a scenario that they themselves acknowledged was catastrophic, and the other side was not.
ReplyDeleteOf course, Hillary would have hypnotized Republicans with her pocket watch. Sorry, but when you combine checks and balances with the the absolute necessity of raising the debt ceiling you get a gauranteed win for the side that isn't in charge of the Presidency. This is because the average voter will always blame a collapsing economy on the President.
ReplyDeleteGiven the current proportion of Republican Reps who have proudly announced that their solution to having to deal with dirty dishes in the sink is to burn the whole house down, I don't think it would make one bit of difference whether Obama, Hillary, or any other Dem was in the WH.
ReplyDeleteSadly, I believe Krugman was right when he pointed out prior to the 2010 midterms that if there was a Republican takeover of Congress with the crop of far-out extremist firebrands that were running at the time that it would usher in an era of political chaos.
And here we are. The chaos has begun and shall continue unabated.