Is it true? Did Obama’s honeymoon end before it had a chance to begin?
By SusanUnPC on January 28, 2009 at 6:00 AM in American Consumers, Current Affairs, Economic Stimulus, Economy, Obama Administration
So writes Howard Fineman for MSNBC.com, in his article, “The honeymoon that ended before it began.” More from Howard below. But, first, here’s the Fox All Stars’ commentaries on Obama’s stimulus package, and they’re not exactly enthused:
David Gergen dispensed some sage advice on CNN’s AC360, like his idea of an “overseer” of the funding dispersion:
GERGEN: Well, many of these Republicans who are against this are from conservative districts, where there is unhappiness about — with the bill, how much spending there is. … There are deep philosophical differences which, in some cases, are non-negotiable. So, you have got people on both sides. [...]
But I can’t tell you, Anderson, how different this is from what we have seen in recent years, when there has been so much polarization. If you can create an atmosphere in which people actually sit down together, if this is not just a one-off, it’s not a symbolic trip to the Hill, but you actually start sitting down and talking, on foreign policy, there will be areas where they can strike a more bipartisan foreign policy.
That would enormously strengthen American foreign policy overseas. So, there are dividends if they continue to pursue this, even if they don’t get the votes this time out. [...]
And I think the White House response has not been adequate in this area. What Barack Obama very much needs now is a Jack Welch-type figure to come in and to run this stimulus program, especially to oversee the spending side, to be tough-minded, to get a strong manager there.
A lot of very good people in this administration — he does not have a lot of managers. He especially doesn’t have someone to manage this stimulus bill, so we don’t get a mess we had with the TARP bill, to oversee every project, get the pork out of it, and make sure we don’t have a lot of scandals. And he needs a Jack Welch figure. … Read all.
And I trust you’ve read our three important pieces Tuesday on the stimulus package:
- “$200 million for condoms?” by American Girl in Italy (great riff on “pork” in this stimulus package)
- “Hope Takes Time To Heal [The Economy]” by Chris Martin (a truly excellent examination of the long time that most of the projects will require before they’re “shovel ready”)
- Are Condoms Stimulative?” by the typically irreverent Larry Johnson (mocking the Nancy Pelosi crowd all the way)
One thing is becoming clear: While President Obama has starry-eyed visions of “bipartisanship,” the Republicans are showing their Mighty Mouse muscle by giving the President as hard a time as possible before this bill can get passed.
(1) While it surely will pass in the House, we need to ask how many Republicans will vote for the plan.
(2) We also need to contemplate what’s going to happen in the Senate, where the Democrats don’t have enough votes to run through a cloture gauntlet.
(3) We have to factor in the Congressional Democrats, in order to please their anti-stimulus constituencies, may not play ball with their Democratic president.
(4) Then there’s that the Democrats, especially the leadership are in, as Fineman notes, a “my-way-or the-highway mood” which is not conducive to bipartisanship.
And, when Mr. Establishment Journalist Howard Fineman sings some sour notes about PBO’s start, we all must pay heed:
Honeymoon that ended before it began
For Obama, an early start, and promises things will get worse
By Howard Fineman
[...] The president is heading to the U.S. Capitol to meet privately first with House, then Senate, Republicans.
Did he have to make the trip? Not really. At the very least he could have insisted that the GOP members come “downtown.” Does he need GOP votes to pass his economic recovery plan? Probably not many: maybe four or five in the Senate if there is a filibuster.
But is he wise to make the gesture, one that his predecessor would never have dreamed of making?
Absolutely. If Obama wants to achieve a roaring, Canaveral-like lift off for his plan — and for his presidency — he needs to show that we have jettisoned “business as usual.” Bipartisan support is the way to do so.
It won’t be easy. It may not even be possible. I have been struck so far by the LACK of bipartisan goodwill on both sides. It’s only a week into the Obama presidency and things quickly seem to be degenerating into the same old, same old spats and thrusts.
In terms of tone, no one is blameless. Democrats, enjoying their largest majorities in decades, generally are in a my-way-or the-highway mood.
Republicans, in a defensive crouch, are without well-known elected leaders, leaving Rush Limbaugh with his Golden Microphone as the loudest and most famous voice.
Fizz-less Inside the Beltway
Even though the country is behind Obama as he starts — he has the highest approval ratings on record — the sense Inside the Beltway is rather fizz-less. There are a number of reasons. Obama essentially started governing the economy weeks ago, so his “honeymoon’ was over — at least among the political and chattering classes here in Washington — before he was even inaugurated.And though the country is hurting, badly, the president is in the odd position of having to convince voters that the situation is about to get much, much worse. It’s a task F.D.R. didn’t have in 1933, when the unemployment rate was near 25 percent when he was sworn in.
Obama’s plans are themselves part of the problem: they are not sufficiently radical to blow up the familiar, paralyzing partisan axis of argument about the role and size of government in our lives.
It’s not so much a matter of the plan’s size — though some economists do think it’s not big enough — as it is the lack of imagination and shrewd strategy. In haste to spend, he and his aides in too many cases simply looked for programmatic spigots to turn on.
Lack of focus?
Rather than carefully watering each plant with care, Obama seems to be turning a fire hose on an entire desert. Even America doesn’t have enough money for that.
The lack of focus allows critics on the right to pick off one or another line item, stoking outrage among the tax-cut, spending-cut crowd.And it is clear that Obama is going to ask for even more than the $825 billion he is asking for in his recovery plan, and the $350 billion in bank-salvage money that Congress authorized two weeks ago.
In the White House press briefing Monday, press secretary Robert Gibbs hinted that the administration may ask for another bank tranche beyond that.
[...] The House GOP seems pretty unified against the recovery plan; Sen. Mitch McConnell, the GOP Senate leader, is “playing things extremely close to the vest,” as one Senate Democrat told me.
In the end it may not matter that much. In 1993, Bill Clinton passed his first and most important — and successful — tax bill without a single GOP vote in the House. The legislation is generally credited with having helped spur the Long Boom of the 1990s.
But in 1993, times weren’t as tough, and Clinton wasn’t proposing to change the way Washington worked. He just wanted to win, and he did.
Perhaps, just perhaps, it might have been wisest for Mr. Obama to have stayed in the Senate and learned to know more of the senators better, instead of abandoning the Senate and his representation of Illinois for the last two years in order to campaign for the presidency, and to have won a second reelection. Then, with more solid credentials, and a far deeper knowledge of the workings of Congress as well as who’s who in both the House and Senate, he’d have had that master touch of negotiating with individual members, much as Lyndon Johnson did when he managed to pass historic legislation, some of it very difficult to pass, in health care, civil rights, the environment, and much more.
Lyndon could pick up the phone, and talk to any key member in the House or Senate. He knew them, and they knew him. Very well. He had the ability to get the votes he needed. At another critical time in U.S. history, Obama hasn’t Lyndon Johnson’s intimate knowledge of the individuals he needs to contact, nor the extensive experience in the arcane, quirky ways of Congress that only comes from doing the job. Which Obama did not.
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