Is Barack Obama really a terrible negotiator? Yes and no.
NPR’s Ari Shapiro reported a fairly damning piece about President Barack Obama’s growing reputation as a patsy in negotiations with the Republicans.
“Looking right now at the tax cuts — the White House [is] signaling willingness to pre-emptively cave on what is effectively a tax bailout to millionaires,” [MoveOn.org’s Justin] Ruben says. “I think it’s profoundly upsetting to people.”
This is part of a growing theme, especially on the left, but also adopted by a growing number of conservative commentators.
They see even last year’s big legislative accomplishments — healthcare, financial regulation, etc. — as fatally flawed by compromises with the GOP.
They point out that even after compromising on big issues, the president won exactly zero Republican votes in the Senate for his healthcare bill.
And his decision to end a moratorium on deepwater oil drilling won exactly zero GOP votes on a sweeping energy overhaul, a plan that died even though it was built around the Republican idea of cap-and-trade.
I think it’s a legitimate question, but I think the bigger problem for Mr. Obama isn’t the Republicans, it’s the Democrats he’s trying to herd toward solidified positions.
Writing in the Washington Post, Ezra Klein points out that Democratic leaders had the high ground on the tax issue. Most Americans simply don’t want to extend tax cuts for people earning more than $250,000 dollars a year.
It’s unpopular for populist reasons and it’s an idea that will balloon the deficit. As Klein puts it,
Democrats, it seemed, had won this one. They had the popular position, the president’s veto pen and control of the Congress.
But they simply refused to carry the ball over the goal line. Instead, they began negotiating with themselves, talking about millionaires’ brackets and short-term extensions.
This, of course, is nothing new. Franklin Roosevelt’s biggest obstacle policy-wise during the Great Depression wa his own party, who foot-dragged and kvetched all the way to the New Deal.
The simple truth is that most of Obama’s “free concessions” have been designed not to woo Republicans, but to rope in wandering conservative Democrats (and Joe Lieberman).
And playing that game, he pushed through some reasonably chunky legislation.
But that strategy appears to be tapped out. Now some leadership is called for.
Unless the President can find some big issues that his party is willing to rally around and fight for, negotiating with the GOP will be the least of his worries.
Tags: politics
Leaders lead. Roping strays is a job for cowpunchers.
Huh, so it took this long for the Dems to figure out they elected a guy with no experience, who never worked, who makes W. look like a freakin’ genius, who had nothing going for him except skin color? And they’re surprised and disappointed he can get his telepromter to instruct him on what to say to win over the right?
I thought you guys were the smart ones…
Prejudice detector alarms going off loudly>
Well I think that negotiating with the Republicans is the least of the concern. If he fumbles that how will he do against the leaders of Iran, North Korea and Russia? I mean they will eat him for lunch.
They are eating him for lunch actually given what is going on in the world. Does he really have the stomach to do what we may have to do against North Korea?
James, he got elected because of his skin color. That’s not prejudice, that’s fact.
Have the In Box’s ham-handed headlines become an annoying tic?
Yes.
Is Bret a troll?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_%28Internet%29
Yes.
I’m not sure experience has anything to do with his willingness to compromise. Unless you think he shouldn’t compromise. I suppose pushing everything through on a 51% majority would be fine. Oh ya, thats what George did. Obama has tried to reach across the isle and seems to get hammered every time he does it. Not to mention its congress that sends him the bill. They should all grow a set and call the GOP out on their filibuster threats. Make them vote and see where that gets you.
I didn’t vote for Obama because he is black. I voted for him because George and the GOP were destroying this country. Any economic recovery we may have had is now in serious jeopardy. I can hear it all now. “Well we tried to fix things but we knew he’d just veto it so we didn’t do anything”. Bet on it.
“the White House [is] signaling willingness to pre-emptively cave on what is effectively a tax bailout to millionaires”
Brian M.
Did you not see the news yesterday that TARP money was given to Goldman Sachs, GE, and other evil corporations?
These billionaires received Obama bailout money.
All the rest of the hooey about extending the Bush tax cuts and talking about giving the billionaires a tax cut is missing the main point.
That’s where I think you miss the “real” reporting. You stick to the side-issue smoke-and-mirror issues and skip the big stuff.
The Troubled Asset Relief Program, commonly referred to as TARP, is a program of the United States government to purchase assets and equity from financial institutions to strengthen its financial sector which was signed into law by U.S. President George W. Bush on October 3, 2008. It is the largest component of the government’s measures in 2008 to address the subprime mortgage crisis.
Obama bailout money?
Obama campaigned on changing the politics in Washington… he talked about compromise, meeting in the middle, and give and take.
Most Americans bought into that notion and by offering these concessions even without republican support he is, in a lot of ways, simply doing what he said he would do.
The problem is that the other side is not interested in this and they are not following his lead or responding to his goodwill. They are playing a different game… the old game, the game most of us said we wanted to change.
It is an interesting question for me. Is Obama showing character by forging ahead with compromise in the face of Republicans who want nothing to do with it? Or is he just being played for a fool?
Either way, the conservative playbook here comes across as dirty and dishonest to me.
From Frank Rich in last Sunday’s NY Times:
Such is the ethos in his own party that Senator Jim Webb, Democrat of Virginia, complained this month that he “couldn’t even get a vote” for his proposal for a one-time windfall profits tax on Wall Street bonuses. Republicans “obviously weren’t going to vote for it,” he told Real Clear Politics, but Democrats also demurred, “saying that any vote like that was going to screw up fund-raising.”
Republicans are the enemy,
Dems mostly in bed with the enemy,
Obama is weak and clueless,
But angry, ignorant voters are their own worst enemy.
What is really sad is Americans used to be able to adapt and change to correct problems. Now we just make it worse.
Well said Dave.
First, Obama is not black and I am not white, I am a sort of a pink/gray German.
Could we please stop this race/color nonsense?
I do wish Obama would stop the compromise stuff. He should realize you can’t please everyone so he might as well just say no to the Republicans on everything and let them say no to him, and get on with some old fashion grid lock.
They see even last year’s big legislative accomplishments — healthcare, financial regulation, etc. — as fatally flawed by compromises with the GOP.
What compromises? Ask any conservative and you will understand that Obama has made NO compromises in the last two years – especially on healthcare.
James, as for prejudicial innuendo concerning race in comments on this blog, I guess you must be new here.
turdsandwich:
“signed into law by U.S. President George W. Bush on October 3, 2008”
Acting at Barack Obama’s behest, President George W. Bush on Monday asked Congress for the final $350 billion in the financial bailout fund, effectively ceding economic reins to the president-elect in an extraordinary display of transition teamwork.
[Jan 12, 2010, Huffington Post] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/12/obama-asks-bush-to-reques_n_157131.html
If Congress goes along, Obama would have a huge cache of bailout money at his disposal _ and much more to come in the approximately $800 billion economic stimulus bill that Democratic congressional leaders promise to finish by mid-February.
Yes, it is Obama’s bailout.
It makes the Bush tax-cut debate look like a game of tiddly-winks, and no-one on the left wants to report any of it.
How do you negotiate with people who have the stated intention to drive you from your job in 2 years and who mean to establish a permanent one-party political system in this country? Mr. Obama’s biggest failing was not his intention to unify, but rather his gross underestimation of his adversaries in that process. It’s not just his elected adversaries. It is FOX, Sarah Palin, Tea Partiers, etc … all entities beyond his influence who are not interested in information or fact, only his personal and political destruction. He continues to think that if he just explains it with enough information, enough times, that these emotionally-driven, propaganda-driven factions, will suddenly wake up and see the light. Perhaps he should have waited a few more years to be president … after he had raised teenagers. T.R’s advice comes to mind: “Speak softly, but carry a big stick”.
OH I see, George caved to Obama for the good of the country even though he knew TARP would be bad for the country. He was worse than I thought then. Why didn’t he just wait a couple of months? Are you saying that TARP was necessary or George was clueless?
Obama’s biggest failure is expecting the GOP to compromise at all. If he hadn’t compromised on healthcare, we would have a public option. If he hadn’t compromised on the stimulus, it would have been bigger as his economists were asking for. Financial regulation hasn’t even passed yet because of his compromising.
John, hypocrisy rears it’s head again. What was the stated position of the Democrat party after the 2000 and 2004 elections? To drive Bush from the Oval Office. Nothing new here.
Every party and politician looks to win the next election – including the Dems while Bush was in office.
However, they usually don’t do that at the expense of everything else that needs to be done while they are currently in office.
That is what the Republicans are doing right now, and that is why it is different from anything we have seen before (at least in my lifetime).
Republicans, via their senate leader Mitch McConnell, have called defeating the sitting President their party’s “number one priority” and that it is their “top political priority over the next two years (to) deny President Obama a second term in office”
I don’t think you will be able to find similar statements from any party leader, Democratic or Republican, in the past.
And they are not just talking the talk, they are walking the walk. By backing this strategy up with uncompromising gridlock and promises to shutdown any and all legislative progress… even on vital issues that they agree with.
Now, either you think that this a healthy, productive, appropriate strategy… or you don’t. But don’t suggest this is nothing different from what we’ve seen in the past, because it is very different.
The bottom line is results not how well you compromised or negotiated.
It won’t be hard to ask ourselves and the country if we are better or worse off than when he took office. If compromise works then use it, if power works than use it, that is the nature of politics. The key is does it work and I don’t see the things this president has tried and is doing as being very effective.
Even his biggest legislative accomplishment has not worked. Health care in the US is not better today than it was when the bill was passed. Will it be better for the majority of Americans in 2 years?
19 months with unemployment nearing or over 20% in real numbers. That’s not all The kings fault, but making promises that wouldn’t happen if we defrauded the taxpaying public was a dumb move. That will be his legacy no matter what else happens. Another Jimmy Carter.
I don’t see it quite as you do Dave. The Repubs are trying desperately to regain some vague semblance of a backbone after the decade of trying to be Democrat Lite. I don;t see them being any more difficult than the Dems were to Bush for the majority of his 8 years. Probably just a matter of perspective.
No need to blame perspective when we have facts. We have the congressional voting records to look at.
How many Democrats voted for major Bush initiatives after (or even before) compromises were made?
How many Democrats voted for the original Bush Tax Cuts? How about the Iraq war? How about the Patriot Act?
(interestingly enough, and completely as an aside, the three examples I just used are all examples of legislation that added significantly to the national debt… which is suddenly the new republican fetish)
These votes and many many like them are all a matter of fact. We can look them up. We can actually see how many Democrats in the Bush years voted for Republican lead legislation – and we can compare that to what is going on now.
I encourage you to do so. This is a matter of record and fact, not perspective.
Boy, I’m sure glad to have dave around to talk some sense. Refreshing!
Is a bill more effective if those in the minority party vote for it?
It seems to me Democrats are desperatly looking for someone to blame other then themselves. Its not easy being in charge, its always easier to be the protest party.
I agree with Brian
“The simple truth is that most of Obama’s “free concessions” have been designed not to woo Republicans, but to rope in wandering conservative Democrats (and Joe Lieberman).”
He needs to learn how to lead his own party and to lead in general.
Obama’s Debt plan reduction vote:
Of the seven no four were Democrats. Of 11 Yes; 5 Republicans, 5 Democrats and one Independent.
The problem is the Democrats.
Obama doesn’t seem to understand that if the votes aren’t there sometimes it is best to stand on principle and lose. Your friends see you as a hero who lost and your enemies respect your ability to fight. He’s an incrementalist. Nobody respects an incrementalist.
Look at Ronald Reagan. He was wrong most of the time but people respected his fake cowboyness.
khl:
“Look at Ronald Reagan. He was wrong most of the time but people respected his fake cowboyness.”
Look at Ronald Reagan. He was right most of the time and people respected his sincerity.
It’s all a matter of perspective.
So all the Democrats voted for war, spending etc. were being entirely altruistic saints and never participated in the fight against Bush, never said a word about him that wasn’t nice?
Nope, no perspective/bias involved in that view.
If the Republicans insist on keeping the tax cut for the rich, I say get rid of the tax cuts for everyone and start to fix the overdraft federal budget.
JDM
Reagan was sincere but the whole cowboy thing was completely fake. That was the interesting thing about Reagan, he really believed his own act.
It certainly is a matter of perspective whether you believe he was right or wrong most of the time. Do you believe that Man has an affect on Global Climate Change? If not you probably think Reagan was right most of the time.
My issue with the “tax cut for the rich” is that $250K covers an awful lot of small business people. True, it leaves money in the hands of the limousine liberals too, the Oprahs, the stockbrokers, actors, corporate CEOs, the heads of all those colleges and big schools and non-profits and all the rich right wingers too. But is it worth punishing the small business people that “make” $250K? What will it do to the people they employ or do business with? What will the next move be? An FDR type law telling them they can’t fire or lay off employees they can no longer afford to employ? It’s a bit more complex than the simple act of punishing the “rich” for their success and redistributing that wealth.
No need to blame perspective when we have facts. Sorry Dave but you are wrong. The facts are that Democrats filibustered everything the Bush era Republican Senate proposed. That is a “fact” because I say it is. These days you only need repeat such a “fact” enough times for it to become commonly accepted.
Knuckle,
I would think Clinton would be Obama’s model not Reagan, and Clinton was an incrementalist. It takes more skill to be an incrementalist and maybe that simply is not there in this President.
I’m trying to think of an instance when Ronald Reagan was “right.” There must be at least one although none come to mind
khl:
Do you believe that Man has an affect on Global Climate Change?
Of course not. Al Gore doesn’t believe it, either, based on his lifestyle.
The earth will cool down on its own long before anyone buys a Chevy Volt without a government bribe.
Brett, I didn’t say anywhere in my post that this had not happened before to other presidents and administrations. I was merely pointing out that President Obama has failed to understand what is happening. His penchant for trying to negotiate with people sworn to his undoing is a triumph of faith over experience. He keeps showing up to a gunfight with a knife. I would like to add that you’re a little quick with the ‘hypocrisy’ shot, there, Bud. Next time read for comprehension, please.
Mervel you prove my point, who really respects Clinton? Some people like him, some hate him. Respect? Not so much.
Clinton was Captain Kirk; a little too loosey-goosey and you knew he’d lose a few minor characters along the way but he cared about it, he’d get you through the crisis and he’d get a babe at the end. Obama is Mr. Spock; left to himself he would do the job perfectly but he couldn’t understand others and how to manipulate them. He’s smart and trustworthy but easily duped by untrustworthy people.
Hmmmm, yes I agree Clinton is Captain Kirk. I am not sure about Obama though. I think he can manipulate people when he wants to, but maybe not? Maybe he spent too much time in those expensive private schools?
Clinton does not have as much respect as he would have because he was an adulterer who treated his wife pretty bad and it didn’t help that his affairs were cheap situations often with young or vulnerable women. So yes that would hurt the respect meter. But the guy was real he grew up poor and lived the American dream no one can take that away from him.
But politically and from a leadership perspective he would be perfect right now, he is what we need right now in my opinion. We need someone to solve problems not advocate and take up “issues”.
“And his decision to end a moratorium on deepwater oil drilling won exactly zero GOP votes on a sweeping energy overhaul, a plan that died even though it was built around the Republican idea of cap-and-trade.”
That’s not true, John McHugh voted for cap-and-trade. Last time I checked, McHugh was a republican.
John, the hypocrisy comment wasn’t directed at you so much as at the general tone of, “…the Dems never did that…”. My apologies if I offended you personally.
Mervel, exactly what problems did Captain Kirk, I mean Clinton, solve? North Korea? The middle east? Iraq and Iran? Our economy? Illegal immigration? Welfare? I will readily admit he was smart enough to stay out of the way of the tech bubble, but he also stuck that bubble with a needle when he allowed his minions to pursue anti-trust charges against Microsoft which took the wind out of investor confidence. He did very little really, and if he wasn’t such a complete slime ball and fake personally I could have some respect for him.
Dave, back to the Dems during Bush, the difference I see is that Bush compromised from day 1. Teddy Kennedy pretty much wrote the “No Child Left Behind” bill (probably in a drunken stupor which explains a lot). Bush, for all his faults, DID make a concerted attempt to heal the wounds left after the Reagan/Bush/Clinton years. IMO that was one of his biggest failures, he had the chance to do the right things and he blew it.
Obama hasn’t made those overtures. I haven’t seen or heard any compromise solutions offered. The Repubs have often been locked out entirely, just like the other day when then acting Speaker refused to recognize a Republican Congressman who wanted to discuss a bill. She simply wouldn’t recognize him. Al Franken did the same thing in the Senate. How is that working towards compromise?
I have deduced that time runs in the same direction in Bret World as it does in the Universe I inhabit; otherwise it seems pretty much everything else appears in reverse.
?siht daer uoy nac ,treB
How about this for compromise? Repubs want to extend all the Bush Tax Cuts. I want to let all of the BTC’s expire. Compromise: extend tax cuts to everyone making under $250,000/year Adjusted Gross Income.
Oh wait that would mean that Newt would have to pay an extra $247 thousand, Palin $638k, O’Reilly $914k, Hannity $1 million, Beck $1.5 million, and Rush $2.69 million. These people create jobs!
And how many people will you put out of work by stopping the tax cuts and what makes you think it’ll solve our economic problems?
Actually, the TARP program as passed by George Bush, and supported by candidate Obama, is pittance compared with the 3.3 TRILLION the Federal Reserve passed along to Banks, both domestic and foreign, and numerous International Conglomerates during the financial crisis.
As finally we were able to learn about this week due to the efforts of people like Bernie Sanders, Ron Paul, Barney Frank and others who pushed for some transparency at the Fed. If we’re going to discuss tax cuts/increases, and which side is fighting for who in this game of redistribution of wealth (which taxes play a role in), we really should understand who’s really holding the true power. Sure this is important legislation before Congress, but let’s not be distracted from what was incredibly revealing in this never before behind the scenes look at the Fed’s operations. I hope Brian has a follow up post on the role of the Federal Reserve and the never before required audit that soon is due for public consumption.
Now back to Obama……Sorry for the above rant and it being slightly off topic.
Brett … I can express myself fine. Your impugning my tone is precisely what I took issue with. You are putting words in my mouth. I reiterate, my comment was directed at Obama, not getting it, but I did not make the slightest reference to past presidents, administrations or party politics. I will gladly take questions on my “tone”, but again, I reiterate, you are out of order in saying that I said something that I did not say.
Bret, I’m not stopping any tax cuts, they had an expiration date when enacted (by Bush) let them die. You are so inconsistent! You complain about the deficit but you aren’t willing to allow for a revenue stream which George Bush signed into law.
If you don’t like it blame Bush.