And a bit of good stuff:
1. Andrew Rudalevige takes a closer look at exactly what Barack Obama did on guns this week.
2. Ezra Klein is looking for discharge petitions to make the House work. I don't think that's going to happen.
3. And Carah Ong at the Miller Center has been looking through the oral histories for Inaugural stuff. This one is brilliant:
Well, first thing that happened, they got in deep do-do with Speaker O’Neill and they never recovered the whole four years. Hamilton Jordan also got cross-wise with the Speaker. After a while, [Frank] Moore hired Bill Cable and Dan Tate, who were Hill people. Great guys, perfect, but they should’ve been brought in at the start. He didn’t hire anybody. He was just going to do it himself. He didn’t return a phone call from Tip O’Neill and he didn’t get him all the tickets he wanted for the inaugural and Tip never ever let him off the hook. He couldn’t get in Tip O’Neill’s office; he was barred. Congressional relations barred! So when we got up there we never had any contact with him whatsoever, none. In the two years, I never saw Frank Moore. And I don’t think any of the Republican Senators or staff—I think they’d tell you the same thing. I don’t know where they were. But I think that was part of Carter’s problem, obviously.
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He didn’t return a phone call from Tip O’Neill and he didn’t get him all the tickets he wanted for the inaugural and Tip never ever let him off the hook.
ReplyDeleteI thought you said all that schmoozing stuff doesn't matter.
Within reason, it's not going to matter much. Actively insult the Speaker? Not good. But even then, having a legislative liaison who had no Hill contacts...that's beyond schmoozing.
DeleteIf discharge petitions are unlikely are there any better ways to make the House more amenable to strong minorities? Do you have a Superbill-like proposal in mind?
ReplyDelete