Monday, March 22, 2010

Obama

Will people down the road think him a great president?  I don't know.

What I can say is that Andrew Sullivan is right (I linked the most recent thing I could find, but he says it constantly, and rightly so):  Obama's great strength is patience.  He has, as no one I can think of has had in recent times, an ability to just completely ignore the 24 hour news cycle.  Whether it was his pre-Iowa nomination lull, or his summer 2008 doldrums, or his methodical planning for Afghanistan, or, over and over again, his refusal to panic on health care, the pattern is about as clear as any could be.

Of course, we don't know.  We don't know what if anything he gained from taking all the time he thought he needed on Afghanistan.  We don't know whether he might have won Iowa more decisively.  We don't know whether some grand gesture during Crazy Town Hall August could have yielded a quicker bill, or if an immediate reaction to the Massachusetts Senate election might have made things easier.  When you win, no one questions your strategy...but of course one can win with a terrible strategy.  So what we can say for sure is that he has the ability to ignore the daily news cycle; proving that it helps him is really another matter.  That said...

Yes, I do think it's an enormous strength.  Partially because winning each and every news cycle is almost certainly a waste of time.  Partially because everyone else is putting so much effort into it, so the player who doesn't is freeing up an enormous amount of time and energy.  Partially, I suppose, for the same reason that (warning: actually horse racing analogy coming) I'll always bet the only closer against a field of speed horses.

The Republicans, collectively, seem right now to exemplify the opposite approach.  I don't know that they could have won this battle; a whole lot of legislating comes down to the numbers, and I'm not at all as certain as some are that there was a winning strategy available to a party with a minority in the House and only (at the key moment) 40 Senators.  Still, I think there's quite a lot to what David Frum says, and even more.  After all, Frum, as I read him, believes that Republicans could have had a policy victory (or avoided what for them is a policy disaster) had they compromised.  I wonder whether Republicans might have successfully sabotaged the whole thing had they made a more plausible effort to compromise.  If Grassley and Enzi had skipped the town halls and stuck to a mantra of trying to reach an agreement...if petty obstruction (not the basic filibuster, but all the extra votes and late nights and reading the bill aloud and all) hadn't angered people such as Evan Bayh...if Republicans had shown up at the summit with a serious compromise proposal...perhaps they could have managed to push just hard enough that liberal and moderate Democrats couldn't agree with each other.  Instead, as Alex Massie points out, the GOP practically begged the Dems to unify against them, and they got their wish tonight.

The iconic image of the Republicans from the health care reform battle was their choice to spend the very last week before the vote attacking the legitimacy of a process which not only was, in fact, legitimate, but which was only a rumor in the first place.  They did a great job of it!  They came up with a catchy name -- this group of Republicans is just great with catchy names -- and they all spoke, as if with one voice, of the coming outrage.  Just as, of course, they spent the previous month focusing on demonizing another perfectly unobjectionable procedure, or the month before that stirring up anger at a minor provision of the bill that will soon be repealed at no cost to the underlying bill.  Or, how about this one.  Did you notice that almost every Republican who came to the floor to briefly register opposition to the bill used the exact same formula (..."this flawed bill," if I remember correctly).  What terrific, and utterly pointless, message discipline!

I should wander back to Obama, shouldn't I.  Oh yes: he apparently just doesn't care at all about winning the news cycle, or the day, or even the week.  He wants to win elections, and passage of legislation, and, I suspect, the war in Afghanistan.  He seems, as far as I can tell, surrounds himself with people who have the same view.

I'll say one thing: I wouldn't bet against him.

21 comments:

  1. I think they reason they all said "This flawed bill" is because they were only allowed to make very limited types of statements during that part of the session. Several republicans were time penalized for saying anything besides those exact words.

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  2. I think another point is that he used the Republicans single minded focus on winning the news cycle and their talent to repeat cute phrases ad nauseam against them. There is a martial art, Aikido, in which I believe you use your opponents momentum against them -- between the bait and switch on deemed passage, or the fake memo, or the last minute deal with Stupak, he played them masterfully.

    I do believe this country would be better served with an engaged process, rather than the "not give an inch" policy the repubs have been going with. I think that seeing the froth coming out of their mouths yesterday means that they are probably relegating themselves to complete "tea party" irrelevancy. They hear what they think are the desires of the American people, but don't realize they are in an echo chamber...

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  3. "Partially because winning each and every news cycle is almost certainly a waste of time. Partially because everyone else is putting so much effort into it, so the player who doesn't is freeing up an enormous amount of time and energy."

    This is a very insightful comment. The trick to crafting a political style is to become the only one adept at practicing it. Others may have Obama's stamina, but nobody else seems to be able to turn stamina into a strategy, so it's really hard to outmaneuver him.

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  4. I watched Obama's rise from Hyde Park over the last 15 yrs. Two things stand out: his political rivals almost always, and fatally, underestimate the guy's abilities. I sense there's some racism there, and his opponents always try to smear him as a "radical black guy" but Obama has always positioned himself above racial street fighting. The fact is, Obama is not just smart, he's brilliant. Second, the guy constantly fights a war of attrition, staying the course, keeping his cool, but applying constant steady pressure to the abutments of the opposition, and over time almost all of them crumble. I don't think conservatives have yet figured this out about a guy, who now, is their biggest danger to future political relevance. He's grinding them, slowly, into dust.

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  5. We are lucky. We, simply put, don't deserve this man.

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  6. I think the President's ensuring that Stupak was on board also showed great political intelligence (and a kind of patience/forbrearence). Having Stupak give both that very visible pre-vote press conference and then rebutting the recommit vote with the earnest assurance that the bill was pro-life was a pretty big plus for the Democrats. It showed the breadth of their coalition, the underlying ethos which tied it together, and made it hard to argue that this was all a legislative coup pulled off by latte-sipping elites. The whole thing couldn't have worked out better.

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  7. I am struck today by how, despite some anger on both sides of the abortion coin, both pro-lifers and pro-choicers are now actively in coalition within the Democratic party.

    25 years ago, pro-choice Republicans stayed with their party because it met so many of their other ideological goals. I think we're going to see much more creative tension, in a healthy way, in the Democratic party now on abortion issues. The GOP is totally stultified in this arena.

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  8. By failing to negotiate, the Republicans have a political, not policy disaster on their hands. There are a number of moderate bits in that bill with a conservative-esque pedigree. Had the Republicans been in the negotiations, they could have claimed ownership of those bits (regardless of the actual facts).

    Instead, by being so adamantly opposed, those moderate bits now belong to the Democrats. When they proved to be effective, useful, and sensibly moderate, the Republicans will not have done anything to deliver.

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  9. Woolie,

    Yes, they were limited in words -- but (at least while I was watching) it was always "this flawed" bill. Not this terrible bill, or this awful bill, or this government takeover, or this mistake. Democrats varied their language quite a bit, but Republicans, again at least almost all of those I saw (and I watched quite a bit, but certainly not all of it) sure seemed to me to be following a script.

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  10. is it too harsh to note that the GOP's drive to squash its enemies severely weakened our sense of American unity that followed the tragedy of 9/11.

    and although different, the GOP once again seems to have again poisoned our political environment and wiped out the goodwill and unity that followed President Obama's historical election.

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  11. beth m- Not "too harsh" at all.

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  12. You wrote: "Frum, as I read him, believes that Republicans could have had a policy victory (or avoided what for them is a policy disaster) had they compromised. I wonder whether Republicans might have successfully sabotaged the whole thing had they made a more plausible effort to compromise."

    This is ludicrous. if the Republicans had any say in this bill or if they "compromised" as Frum suggested, the implication being that Republican ideas were part of the reform package, there would have been a wailing and lamentations and threats of primaries from the extremist Left.

    I find it amusing how liberals are now championing this vote as a some sort of victory for the progressive agenda when most of them were railing against it over the past 12 months.

    I seem to remember over the summer that while Baucus was busy "compromising" with the Senate Republicans, the liberals were in a froth.

    If Republicans had any part of this, it would be the PROGRESSIVES who would have sabotaged the reform.

    It's fair to point out the political failures and the arrogance of the Right, but that holds true for the Left as well. Let's not pretend it doesn't exist.

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  13. Dan said... There are a number of moderate bits in that bill with a conservative-esque pedigree. Had the Republicans been in the negotiations, they could have claimed ownership of those bits (regardless of the actual facts).

    Actually, I read that there are close to 100 bits they could rightly claim that were eventually included in the bill. The Republican problem now is that their total condemnation of it means they can't claim any credit in making improvements without looking like even bigger yahoos. This was their big chance to prove that they were fit to legislate (to help them get past a hideous decade long record of not being able to govern) and they failed miserably.

    Of course, it's a problem of their own making, so I don't really feel sorry for them.

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  14. Olliander said... This is ludicrous. if the Republicans had any say in this bill or if they "compromised" as Frum suggested, the implication being that Republican ideas were part of the reform package, there would have been a wailing and lamentations and threats of primaries from the extremist Left.

    Perhaps that's true, but 50 Dems plus 10 Repubs is just as filibuster-proof as 60 Dems.

    Plus, I don't think you could find 10 Dems who would have upheld a filibuster threat along the 30 rightiest of right-wing Repubs.

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  15. Your critique of the Republicans is spot on. To put it simply, they've become so reliant on media consultants, media figures, and day-to-day statistics that they've forgotten how to be politicians. There are draw-backs to iron party discipline; hopefully Mr. Cao in Louisiana will realize that before it costs him his seat and the U.S. a promising voice of sanity.

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  16. Olliander: You do realize how contradictory it is to write a response arguing that Republicans had nothing to do with it that includes the sentence, "I seem to remember over the summer that while Baucus was busy "compromising" with the Senate Republicans, the liberals were in a froth," don't you? Need I also point out that, by voting as a block for the bill, the Congressional Progressives supported, not sabotaged, this compromise bill? I think Frum's point is that if they'd been willing to promise support, the Republicans might have been able to make some of their ideas which were included in the bill even stronger.

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  17. Mattinhoboken said...

    We are lucky. We, simply put, don't deserve this man.

    Baloney- our cash-leveraged meritocracy system is made to throw folks like this up every now and again. There's 5-10 "proto-Obamas" getting spun up as we speak. The hope is that a few of them will get to where they'll do the most good. Speaking reverence of that nature is one of the most lampoonable attributes of some of the left. I'm *very* happy that we've got him as President, but he's human.

    -JG

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  18. This is dumb. How is it that you can laud a president for being patient when he signs a bill in 36 hours after making a campaign promise to have bills available for public reading for five days?

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  19. Anon 5:10:

    Nice call!

    No college football playoff yet, either.

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  20. There's still torture in Guantnanamo http://www.harpers.org/archive/2010/01/hbc-90006368

    (and probably in Afghanistan, too)

    We still have troops in Iraq...

    Well, I can't kvetch. I didn't vote for him, so these were not promises made to me. (And I didn't vote for McCain, either).

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