Search Results for '"green lantern"'

Green Lantern II: Norm Ornstein Speaks

Some useful history lessons:

Now, after the failure to get the background-check bill through the Senate, other reporters and columnists have picked up on the same theme, and I have grown increasingly frustrated with how the mythology of leadership has been spread in recent weeks. I have yelled at the television set, “Didn’t any of you ever read Richard Neustadt’s classic Presidential Leadership? Haven’t any of you taken Politics 101 and read about the limits of presidential power in a separation-of-powers system?”

But the issue goes beyond that, to a willful ignorance of history. No one schmoozed more or better with legislators in both parties than Clinton. How many Republican votes did it get him on his signature initial priority, an economic plan? Zero in both houses. And it took eight months to get enough Democrats to limp over the finish line. How did things work out on his health care plan? How about his impeachment in the House?

No one knew Congress, or the buttons to push with every key lawmaker, better than LBJ. It worked like a charm in his famous 89th, Great Society Congress, largely because he had overwhelming majorities of his own party in both houses. But after the awful midterms in 1966, when those swollen majorities receded, LBJ’s mastery of Congress didn’t mean squat.

No one defined the agenda or negotiated more brilliantly than Reagan. Did he “work his will”? On almost every major issue, he had to make major compromises with Democrats, including five straight years with significant tax increases. But he was able to do it—as he was able to achieve a breakthrough on tax reform—because he had key Democrats willing to work with him and find those compromises.

And one could cite FDR’s relationship with Southern Democrats as well. Again, the inability of presidents to get Congress to pass legislation legislative majorities don’t want to pass isn’t a strategic failure; it’s the inherent nature of the office.

Raising the Green Lantern Is Your Job

Shorter MoDo: No matter what Obama says, he could totally get House Republicans to do what he wants if he only had the leadership to lead, with leadership. I blame his failure to hire Aaron Sorkin as a speechwriter.

And the depressing thing is that Dowd’s column wasn’t the worst one to be published by the New York Times in the last two days. It might not even be the second-worst.

…Pierce:

Noted sprawler-across-staircases Maureen Dowd has fashioned herself another Chronic Ward of a newspaper column today on her now-regular theme of what a wimpety-wimp-wimp Barry Obama is, and why she never should have let him take her to prom instead of the hunky Andrew Shepherd from The American President who, while admittedly fictional, never would take this guff from actual human beings like John Boehner and Eric Cantor and Louie Gohmert, to which latter we give the benefit of a considerable doubt on this score. From the available evidence (again), and for all the relevance her insights have on what’s actually going on in American politics, Dowd once again seems to be writing from an assisted-living facility on the far side of a world Beyond The Planet Of The Ultra-Vixens. First of all, she, along with Jonathan Karl, seems to be overly concerned with the condition of the president’s “juice,” which she seems to feel is less fortified with essential vitamins and iron than the juice of a president should be. And, somewhere in the Beyond, Freud gives up the business entirely and opens a cigar store.

The BULLY PULPIT Tautology

Chait notes the circular nature of green lantern arguments as media accounts rush to blame the eminently predictable failure of Congress to pass gun control legislation on the White House:

Would the threat of canceling the trip have caused Begich (and six fellow senators) to reconsider, as the story implies?

Obviously, we can’t go back and re-run history and find out. We can, however, find a reasonably close approximation. During Bill Clinton’s first two terms, a Democratic senator from a red state (Richard Shelby of Alabama) defected on key votes. Clinton tried the “ruthless” approach of punishing Shelby by denying him these sorts of discretionary executive branch perks — first limiting his tickets to a ceremony honoring the Alabama football team, then threatening to move some NASA jobs out of his state. The tactic was universally seen to have backfired.

Did it really backfire? Probably not. Shelby voted the way he did because he assessed his own beliefs and interests. But that is the beauty of ignoring structural factors for stories about people: You can always tell a new one. If the president was nice, he should have been mean. If he was mean, he should have been nice. (Unless he prevailed, in which case his shrewd politicking saved the day!)

Presidential hero stories have two archetypes. One is Lyndon Johnson arm-twisting. The Times today hauls out LBJ biographer Robert Dallek to contrast Johnson’s ruthless arm-twisting with Obama’s stand-offishness. Of course, LBJ enjoyed huge majorities in both houses, along with a majority-rule Senate. When Johnson’s majority shrank following the 1966 midterms, his domestic agenda shriveled away, too, despite his presumably undiminished grasp of arm-twisting and legendarily threatening body language.

And it’s not just that LBJ had huge majorities to work with before 1967; he also had something arguably even more valuable, liberal Republicans who supported (or weren’t strongly opposed to) his agenda during a time of weak party discipline. As Drum notes, it’s not clear what more Obama could have done to get Snowe’s vote for the PPACA, and there’s nothing that Lyndon Johnson could have done about that either.

Indeed, arguments about Obama’s excessive faith in bipartisanship — which have a great deal of truth in themselves — are often assimilated into green lantern critiques. Specific attempts to explain how Obama could have gotten sufficient Democratic votes for a public option are so embarrassing that most people making them just end up mumbling about FDR or assume the can opener in some other way. But it certainly is true that Obama and the Democratic leadership did spend a lot of time on a doomed effort to get Republican votes, and I suppose that’s something that could have been done differently. The problem is, though, that there’s a reason that the Democratic leadership placed too much hope on getting some Republican votes: if there’s no possibility of any crossover, the leverage that the leadership has over conservative Democrats is vastly reduced. If Snowe and Grassley supported the PPACA, you could tell Lieberman to cram it with walnuts when he pulled the Medicare buy-in double-cross. But when every possible vote for the bill is also necessary, the median Democratic votes call the shots. A lot of LBJ’s successful deal-making was based on everybody’s knowledge that if he couldn’t get what he wanted from A he may well be able to get it from B. With modern norms of strict party discipline, the possibility of cutting deals is greatly reduced.

And, of course, the argument collapses on itself, because (as with the argument that he could have gotten a much bigger surplus) the argument that Obama screwed up relies on an excessive faith in the possibility of bipartisanship. Because passing minor gun control legislation wasn’t a longstanding administration priority, I can’t say to an absolute certainty that Obama and Reid couldn’t have found some way to get every Democratic vote. I don’t really understand what leverage Obama is supposed to have over Heidi Heitkamp, given that he lost her home state by 20 points and won’t be in office the next time she runs, but who knows, maybe he could have found something. But given that 1)this wouldn’t have been enough to get the legislation through the Senate, and 2)even in the extremely unlikely event that you could get more Republican votes in the Senate, there’s no chance the House would pass any gun control legislation worth passing, I have no idea what the point of doing so would be. You don’t pull out all the stops to get legislators to pass symbolic votes.

Of Course You Can Collaborate With Bad People When They’re Offering Something. But What Does This Have to do With Rand Paul?

In response to Erik’s post yesterday noting the horrible foreign policy and civil liberties views of brogressive favorite Rand Paul, IB says:

It’s absolutely worth thinking about, I agree, Erik. But as Aaron B. says elsewhere on this subthread, practical politics requires one to make common cause on particular issues with folks with whom one doesn’t otherwise agree. If one forgets the basis of such coalitions, one can indeed get into trouble. But it’s self-defeating purism not to make strategic alliances with folks who agree with you about individual issues simply because their beliefs on those issues are connected to other positions with which one dramatically disagrees.

See, for instance, the New Deal, which was built by Congressional majorities that not only included white supremacist, Southern Democrats, but reflected in many ways their commitment to white supremacy (as Ira Katznelson emphasizes in his latest book). While this made the New Deal worse than it would have been in a fantasy world in which it didn’t rely on the votes of whote supremacists, it didn’t make the New Deal a bad thing, nor did it make support for the New Deal among Northern, liberal Democrats mere foolishness.

All of this is true as far as it goes. Yes, the New Deal shows that compromises with bad people who hold many odious views is sometimes a grim necessity. (Of course, it’s generally purists who hate Obama rather than the members of this blog who need this history lesson — I don’t recall Erik arguing that even though we had to shape the New Deal according to the dictates of white supremacists cutting deals with Ben Nelson and Evan Bayh to get a health care bill through Congress was completely intolerable, because of course to anti-Obama Green Lanternists FDR was a magic president who caused white supremacists to evaporate with the force of his mighty rhetoric. But moving right along.) The problem is that I have no idea what this has to do with any neoconfederate crank from the Paul family:

1)With the big “but” that no policy could disturb white supremacy, Southern Democrats actually supported progressive economic policy. (As I say in the Katznelson review above, at times they were even to FDR’s left.) Despite the large amount of projection going on, even on the limited issue of military policy and civil liberties, Paul’s views are much worse than Obama’s. It’s just that from some quarters tepid, missing-the-point criticisms of Obama from the far right are welcomed while better (while still not very good) views offered by mainstream Democratic positions are sneered at, because Democrats are total major label sellouts man.

2)More importantly, Southern Democrats in the first stages of the New Deal were willing to provide the necessary votes to pass legislation. Obviously, if Rand Paul was offering some kind of concrete measure limiting arbitrary executive authority, then Democrats should be willing to make common cause with him and his motives don’t matter. But the thing is that he’s not offering any concrete policy changes, and because of point 1) he’s vanishingly unlikely to: despite what’s being projected onto him he doesn’t actually have progressive views on civil liberties, and he’s just fine with DRONES! as long as DRONE! attacks on white Americans on American soil continue not to exist. He’s offering words, and as long as he’s just offering words the fact that he’s a neoconfederate crank does actually matter. Praising Rand Paul isn’t like working with Southern Democrats during the first stage of the New Deal; it’s more like praising Southern Democrats while they were working to pass Taft-Hartley because one said that we shouldn’t nuke suburban Birmingham.

Raise the Green Lantern, Fact Chuck Edition

Shorter Glenn Kessler: Republicans aren’t lying when they say that President Obama doesn’t have a plan. Because if he was really behind a plan, he could shove it right down Congress’s throat. By having the leadership to lead, with leadership. Like that time Bill Clinton gave a speech and then something happened after that.

…we should also always remember that grand bargains are a con even if presidents could magically make them happen.

“Tell Congress To Take Its Appropriations Power And Shove It”

Over the last year Bob Woodward has refined a perfect synthesis of green lanternism (“the president could convince his partisan opponents in Congress to do anything if only he were enough of a leader to lead, thorough leadership”) and tightly related centrist wankery (“the national interest is precisely identical to a pain caucus ‘grand bargain.’”)   I would have to say, though, that today’s assertion that Obama should just go ahead and violate the law like Saints Reagan and Clinton surely would have takes things one more farcical step further.

…BREAKING!  David Ignatius explains, in specific detail, how the green lantern could be raised!

Obama tries everything to gain control — except a clear, firm presidential statement that speaks to everyone onboard, those who voted for him and those who didn’t — that could get the country where it needs to go.

If only Obama were a leader with leadership capabilities, he would show leadership by issuing a firm, hard presidential statement that would immediately get everyone to agree with him, especially congressional Republicans.   Westen was right!

It’s Like, How Much More Broderite Could This Be? And the Answer Is None. None More Broderite.

Is Ron Fournier real? A vicious parody of a self-consciously “centrist” beltway pundit? It’s impossible to tell. We can start with the Green Lanternism:

But the president won’t get off easy. While Obama has reached further rhetorically toward compromise than Republicans have on sequestration and long-term debt, the president eventually needs to lead a stubborn Congress to actual compromise and accomplishment.

His aides and allies will ask, “Exactly what can he do to get the GOP to deal?” That is a question best put to the president, a skilled and well-meaning leader elected to answer the toughest questions.

OK, pretty terrible, but as the blogosphere has taught us a belief in the potential omnipotence of presidential daddies is widespread throughout the political spectrum. In itself, this is probably less embarrassing than your typical Drew Westen column. Although the concession that he can’t actually identify any concrete steps Obama could take to get House Republicans to vote for something they don’t want to vote for is a nice touch.

But wait! What if we compound green laternism with pure distilled vacuity:

Which side’s approach to averting the sequester, and solving the deficit, (do I) actually agree with? I honestly don’t have a strong opinion. Like most independent voters, I just want it fixed. I want my leaders to lead.

Rarely does one see Broderite bipartisanship as an end in itself put this clearly. What policies does he want Congress to pass? What direction should Obama be leading? It doesn’t matter! Just pass something! No matter what’s in it, it will…fix. Fix something.

The punchline, of course, is that Fournier doesn’t actually care if social spending is slashed or if the economy contracts; apparently he’ll land on his feet no matter what.

Keep Raisin’ That Green Lantern!

In a further refinement of the power attributed to the BULLY PULPIT, we are informed by Ben smith that the president’s ability to send emails to his supporters is not merely a powerful tool, it is his most powerful tool.   Surely, John Boehner is quaking in his boots about the prospect that a weapon of this power might be unleashed.    And if Bill Clinton’s masterful job getting major health care legislation passed proves anything, it’s that going public is far, far better than meaningless “congressional negotiations.”

Two More Obama/Lincoln Points

A couple follow-ups to my post about Lincoln and Obama are in order, given the comments.   First, Corey Robin makes a good point:

Scott, you refer to “people who think that Barack Obama is precisely comparable to Abraham Lincoln and the PPACA precisely comparable to the 13th Amendment.” And you say, “Granted, I don’t believe these people exist (and this includes, I’m guessing, Speilberg and Kushner.)” Kushner has in fact made exactly those comparisons. Twice. Here on the Colbert Report (start 2:00): http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/421268/november-14-2012/tony-kushner-pt–2
And here on the Chris Hayes show: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46979738/#49947351

I agree that Kushner brought up the comparison in the general sense.   What I meant by “precise equivalent” is that I don’t read Kushner as saying that Obama has had the same historical impact as Lincoln or that the PPACA has the same impact on American history as emancipation.   I read Kushner and Speilberg as merely saying that Lincoln, like Obama, was a moderate and a pragmatist.  On this point, Kushner and Speilberg are clearly correct and Kilpatrick is clearly wrong.   It’s also perfectly accurate to point out that even the Civil War amendments represented compromises in which Republican moderates generally got more than radical Republicans.   As described ,to the extent that I object to Kushner/Speilberg my objections would be the same as Robin’s — they seem to downplay the extent to which the unique conditions that allowed moderate pragmatism to have radical effects  was created by the actions of the slaves themselves.   But Kilpatrick specifically rejects this critique.

Now, precisely because 1861 was such an unusual context I don’t think Kushner’s comparison of Lincoln and Obama is very useful.  Because changes that involve killing hundreds of thousands of people don’t provide a meaningful template for progressive change in ordinary political times, I don’t think a positive comparison is much more instructive than a negative comparison.   Compare Obama to Clinton, Carter, LBJ, FDR — fine, but Lincoln isn’t going to be particularly helpful.   But while the comparison is problematic I don’t think Kushner is saying that the PPACA is just as radical as emancipation.

In addition, a commenter has asked me to elaborate on my argument that “I’m not sure when the litmus test for being a Real Leftist became having a view of American political institutions that makes the complacent pluralists of the 50s look like Gramsci.”   What I’m referring to is the increasingly familiar argument that Democratic “spinelessness” is the primary variable explaining why the development of the American welfare state lags behind other liberal democracies.   On this view, there are no real institutional barriers to progressive change that the unfettered will of Democratic presidents couldn’t solve if they just wanted to, and because of this we can infer that they don’t want to.  Kilpatrick’s sneering about how Obama “dives for cover whenever Ben Nelson sneezes” is a classic illustration: the implication is that having to deal with conservative Senate Democrats is a choice Obama is making, and if he were a Real Man of Manly Will he could just raise the green lantern and make them do his bidding.

The main problems with this line of reasoning are that 1)it’s wrong and 2)whatever it is, it’s not any kind of left analysis.   Left analysis doesn’t ignore structural barriers.   The brute fact about American politics is that legislative enactments require passing an unusual number of veto points, and the malapportionment of the Senate means that having people like Ben Nelson and Evan Bayh as the pivot votes, amazingly enough, counts as an unusually favorable context.   For this reason, progressive reform, in the relatively rare cases where it’s even possible, requires buying off entrenched interests.  The Lincoln administration was a half-exception to these rules of American politics because of the context of the Civil War, not because Lincoln was a radical or a man of extraordinary will.   And even so, the Civil War amendments were all compromised, and partly as a result of this even the emancipation of slaves by forces did not prevent the confederate states from forestalling democracy for another century.    The idea that Obama could be Lincoln, or more than Lincoln, if he just wanted to is an unproductive fantasy that also rests on an inherently reactionary, bad-civics-textbook conception of American government.

A matter of discretion

I have a piece in Salon on the Obama administration’s pending decision regarding what to do about the fact that Colorado and Washington have legalized marijuana.

In my view the importance of the fact that two states — one of them much more mauve than blue — decided to begin to implement something resembling a rational drug policy, has been somewhat lost in all the tumult regarding everything else that happened Tuesday.

This is a key moment in the fight not only against the preposterous war on (some people who use some) drugs, but against a central element of the entire prison-industrial complex — an issue that got essentially no attention during the presidential campaign.

It’s also the opposite of a plea for the president to unleash his Green Lantern powers or to employ the BULLY PULPIT. What he has to do is nothing. That doesn’t seem like too much to ask.