In what I think may be the post of the year Mickey Kaus lists, bullet item by bullet item, what President Obama could have done differently in the first three years of his presidency. Here they are:
- Not subcontracted out the details of the 2009 stimulus to interest-group-addled Congressional Democrats.
- Sold his health care reform as a valuable benefit for voters that would give them security (they’d be covered) and freedom (they could leave their jobs without losing insurance) rather than as an eat-your-peas plan that would not only “bend the cost curve†by denying treatments but somehow actually reduce the deficit–a sales pitch that assured Obamacare would be unpopular and vulnerable long after Dems rammed it through Congress.
- Made the UAW take a pay cut.
- Pivoted! In 2010, after the health care bill passed, Obama was going to “pivot†to jobs but wasn’t able to do that when … yeah, I don’t remember what prevented him from doing it either.
- Not pursued a zombie agenda of “card check†and “comprehensive immigration reformâ€â€“two misguided pieces of legislation that Obama must have known had no chance of passage but that he had to pretend to care about to keep key Democratic constituencies on board.
- Dispelled legitimate fears of “corporatism“–that is, fears that he was creating a more Putin-style economy in which big businesses depend on the government for favors (and are granted semi-permanent status if they go along with the program).
- Stolen some populist Tea Party thunder by going vigorously after Wall Street.
- Not appointed pro-union innovators to NLRB who try to hamstring our biggest remaining industrial exporter by preventing it from opening a non-union factory in South Carolina–and then not had his spokesman say there’s nothing the president can do about it because, hey, the NLRB is “independent.â€
- Faced with Republican demands for leaner government, embraced them!
- Defend the core of Medicare, a popular universal program that works and (according to Orszag) is cutting costs, rather than proposing to shrink Medicare by raising the eligibility age from 65 to 67.
Read the whole thing. I don’t agree that everything in Mickey’s entire list should have been done but I think he’s got the general idea. Other things he could have done:
- Adopt a more conciliatory tone towards Republicans early in his administration (“elections have consequences”). He didn’t meet with key Republican leaders for months after he took office.
- Tone down the anti-business rhetoric.
- Post-poned the foreign policy outreach until later in his presidency (like most presidents).
Just to name three.
#2 was done. It was shouted down by claims of death panels and decrying the cuts made to Medicare.
#5 I read way too much politics. Was card check actually pursued and I just missed it?
#6 I would phrase it differently. Obama could have demonstrated that he had not sold out to business/banking interests by breaking up the big banks.
#8 Obama could have pursued changes to our laws which would allow businesses to move so they can avoid unions. This is what the execs at Boeing said they were doing. Either change the law or sponsor training sessions in which executives are trained to not put things in their emails that will get them in trouble later.
Otherwise, Kaus is pretty good.
Query- What could Obama have possibly done to be conciliatory? Maybe adopt prior GOP plans into his health care reform? Make 1/3 of the stimulus tax cuts? Please explain why you think that Republicans from the safest, most highly jerrymandered districts would have gained anything from dealing with Obama? Explain Bob Bennett.
Steve
steve, card check was supposed to be a priority in the lame duck session, IIRC Democratic candiates and Obama made that a priority during the Congressional campaigns. It may not have been genuine, but the Democrats, after having done little since Obamacare tried to cram a lot into the lame duck, which probably led to the Bush tax cuts being extended. Reid deserves as much blame.
On item 2, I agree with that other neoliberal, Joe Klein, who said that once Obama realized that McConnell would mount a Republican obstruction of healthcare reform, Obama should have quickly passed whatever reforms he could pass,* pivot to jobs, work to restore confidence in government, and run against the Republicans on healthcare.
* I can’t remember what these were, but there were noncontroversial areas of improvement, the downside of which was whether they would make more difficult choices later.
I know you and I differ on this subject. I think that there were only three strategies that made any sense politically. PD, above, has outlined one.
The other two were to pass a bi-partisan healthcare reform bill, whatever its contents or, if you were going to pass a reform bill solely with Democratic votes, to pass single payer.
What was done made no political sense and it only makes policy sense if you assume that it will be continually fine-tuned which goes against the entire history of healthcare reform legislation. Consequently, I think the present bill was a both a political and a policy error.
I think PD’s plan makes sense, retrospectively. The other two never had a chance of working. Only a minority of Dems support single payer. I am not sure it was possible to predict that the GOP would be so obstructionist, though given McConnell’s pronouncement, it should have been clear. I do think Obama over rated his ability to convince others of his views and his ability to reach a consensus.
Steve
I don’t know enough (or care enough) about #8 to have an opinion. On #10, meh, maybe. Other than that, I basically agree.
On your points, I agree with steve above that Obama bent over backward to get along with Republicans. There’s no getting along with people who have set out to ensure you fail regardless of the cost to the country.
As for the FP outreach are you talking about the Cairo speech?