{"id":3341,"date":"2010-12-03T01:32:21","date_gmt":"2010-12-03T06:32:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=3341"},"modified":"2010-12-02T15:31:08","modified_gmt":"2010-12-02T20:31:08","slug":"is-barack-obama-really-a-terrible-negotiator-yes-and-no","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2010\/12\/03\/is-barack-obama-really-a-terrible-negotiator-yes-and-no\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Barack Obama really a terrible negotiator? Yes and no."},"content":{"rendered":"

NPR’s Ari Shapiro reported a fairly damning piece<\/a> about President Barack Obama’s growing reputation as a patsy in negotiations with the Republicans.<\/p>\n

“Looking right now at the tax cuts \u2014 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.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is part of a growing theme, especially on the left, but also adopted by a growing number of conservative commentators.<\/p>\n

They see even last year’s big legislative accomplishments — healthcare, financial regulation, etc. — as fatally flawed by compromises with the GOP.<\/p>\n

They point out that even after compromising on big issues, the president won exactly zero Republican votes in the Senate for his healthcare bill.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Writing in the Washington Post, Ezra Klein points out that Democratic leaders had the high ground on the tax issue.\u00a0 Most Americans simply don’t want to extend tax cuts for people earning more than $250,000 dollars a year.<\/p>\n

It’s unpopular for populist reasons and it’s an idea that will balloon the deficit.\u00a0 As Klein puts it<\/a>,<\/p>\n

Democrats, it seemed, had won this one. They had the popular position, the president’s veto pen and control of the Congress.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This, of course, is nothing new.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

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).<\/p>\n

And playing that game, he pushed through some reasonably chunky legislation.<\/p>\n

But that strategy appears to be tapped out.\u00a0 Now some leadership is called for.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NPR’s Ari Shapiro reported a fairly damning piece about President Barack Obama’s growing reputation as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[20],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3341"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3341\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}