Matt Yglesias penned a short post a few days ago about the Obama-Boehner budget deal. It crystallizes the point of view of those who have a more charitable view of the President's actions on this deal, but also on health care reform, the stimulus and more. I'll let Matt speak for himself, then I'll explain why I disagree:
Details on the appropriations deal are still hard to come by, but you don’t need the details to know that substantial short-term cuts in domestic discretionary spending will hurt the poor while harming macroeconomic performance. The problem with not agreeing to the deal, of course, is that a government shutdown would also hurt the poor while harming macroeconomic performance. If you genuinely don’t care about the interests of poor people and stand to benefit electorally from weak economic growth, this gives you a very strong hand to play as a hostage taker. And John Boehner is willing to play that hand.
I hope people remember this year next time large Democratic majorities produce an inadequate stimulus bill, a not-good-enough health reform bill, a somewhat weak financial regulation bill, and fail to deliver on their promises for immigration and the environment. It’s easy in a time like that to get cynical and dismissive about the whole thing. But there’s actually a huge difference between moving forward at a slower-than-ideal pace and scrambling to reduce the pace at which you move backwards. Now we’re moving backwards.
Let's deal with his first graf: The notion that ruthless hostage-takers always have an advantage in a fight, and thus, it's really really hard to beat them (so stop criticizing Obama for giving away so much in these various negotiations). The assumptions underlying that argument are not necessarily true.
1. Obama didn't save all (or most) of the hostages. It wasn't "Raid on Entebbe," it was "Sophie's Choice."
On health care reform, the public option was held captive and killed. As was expanding Medicare to those aged 55 and up. A lot of good things, great things in fact, that the President might have been able to get, had he just fought sooner and harder, were killed because the President blinked in the face of hostage-takers. Same thing with the December Bush tax cut deal. About a trillion hostages were killed by the time the dust settled on that battle, namely the budget (and all the Democratic programs that would "have" to be cut in the future because the GOP, with Obama's help, just ripped the deficit that much wider).
Oh, but the President saved the unemployed hostages, and the military hostages, all of whom would have lost income had the President stood up to the GOP.
One week before Christmas does anyone really think the Republicans were going to steal the pay raises of our troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan? And one week before Christmas, do you really think the Republicans were going to be responsible for taking paychecks from hundreds of thousands of American families in need? That's not hostage-taking, that's a suicide mission. And the very nature of suicide missions is that they only happen once - after they're over the hostage-taker is (politically) dead.
Had Democrats tried to steal the bread out of the mouths of millions of Americans (4m military members alone), right before Christmas no less, the Republicans would have had a field day. Oh the Democrat-bashing ads we would have seen on TV (the Grinch ads would write themselves, not to mention Scrooge). The Republicans would not have seen this as a "gosh what we do?" moment, they'd have seen this as a blood-in-the-water moment. Sometimes our problem isn't that the other guys are ruthless, it's that we aren't ruthless as well.
2. Instead of politically wiping out the hostage-takers, Democrats have empowered them to kill again.
It's pretty simple logic. If you do something, and then get rewarded for it, you'll do it again and again. It's the political equivalent of your dog peeing on the kitchen floor. If you give him a treat because at least he avoided the Persian rug, then you've just guaranteed that Fluffy is going to be peeing on your floor for the rest of his life, and loving it.
There's a certain nod in Matt's post, and Obama's attitude, to the notion that the Republicans have us by the cojones. We're damned if we do, damned if we don't - so at least let's mitigate the damage, or the flip side, get the most we can out of the deal.
Putting aside the fact that I don't believe for a moment that the President got what he could out of the deal, Matt's argument seems to ignore the long-term deal. Perhaps - just perhaps - it looks like a pretty sweet deal saving half the hostages this time. But you've just guaranteed that the hostage crises will be never ending, and you've condemned a lot of people to a future budgetary death when the bad guys kidnap again. If we're already playing the game of "not all the hostages can survive," then it's simply a numbers game - how many can we save? But why stop the analysis in the near-term? Why only look at how many you can save, and how many may die, today, when what we're really talking about is how many will survive, or not, long-term as a result of your actions today?
I would submit that caving to hostage-takers today runs a serious risk of upping the political death toll in the long-run.
Look at the CR deal on Friday. Not only did the President agree to cut spending, which will impact specific programs we care about, and not only has the President just guaranteed less future growth in the economy and more future unemployment (those sound like dead hostages to me), but by embracing the GOP's message points, about how great it is to cut the deficit, and how the deficit must be cut now, the President has just guaranteed a lot more damage to the economy, and to programs we care about, in the future.
As Joe and I have written time and again, the President's actions have consequences. He isn't caving on these negotiations in a vacuum. He's setting a precedent for the future, and sadly, as these ongoing negotiations show, we were right.
3. It is specifically because political lifetimes are finite that politicians must do all they can now.
Matt's second paragraph is a point we often hear from Obama defenders, but also from Democratic party defenders, with regards to any issue on which the party falls short of its promises: But the other guy is worse.
While I understand the premise, I'm not sure I get the point. Yes, Republicans are, more often than not, worse than Democrats on most issues we care about. And yes, the Republican House is far worse than President Obama.
And?
Does that mean we shouldn't expect the President to keep his promises, or at least fight for them (early and often)? If politicians aren't held response for broken promises, then like Fluffy peeing on the floor, they'll just keep breaking 'em until a politician's promises mean nothing. And while you can certainly try to get out the vote, and the money, by telling voters that the Ds are still better than the Rs, I think the D's job is a lot harder when voters think you lied to them after one too many broken promises.
And, if our goal to is to do good, then why not do all the good we can before our political life is over? There's an assumption in Matt's second graf that we shouldn't expect the President to try for more, simply because the Republicans are less. Why is that? Perhaps he's implying that we hurt the President's re-election chances when we chastise him for falling short of his promises on the stimulus, HCR, or the current budget debates.
A few responses.
1) If I happily voted for you and now am forced to hold my nose come the re-elect, whose fault is it, the voter or the candidate?
2) If you promised more than you could deliver, again, whose fault is it that the voters are now disappointed?
And even on that point, the media often gets it wrong. They think "liberals" are naive about politics, and that's why they're disappointed with the President: because liberals just don't get how the game is played, that you can't always get what you want.
I get how the game is played. I've been playing the game for 20+ years now. And I've seen great things accomplished when the players have the guts, and the smarts, to win. My formative experience in politics was working for five years for Republican Senator Ted Stevens as a legislative attorney, and volunteering (often 40+ hours a week) for Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy on gay rights issues. What both men had in common, Stevens and Kennedy, is they both were a bit of an ass, and knew how to use it to their advantage.
I had the opportunity to interact with both (Stevens, a lot, Kennedy less so, but I did do some foreign travel (on arms control issues) with the man), and both men thought big and took no hostages. And while Stevens was
possibly the bigger bulldog of the two, Kennedy had the bigger vision. It was not usual for me to be sitting with my staffer friend in Kennedy's office, watching him suddenly come up with the idea of a $5bn amendment on some issue of concern to the Senator. Then I'd watch that amendment magically become law. It was an inspiring thing to watch, not just the end result, but the way Kennedy and his staff went about insuring their victory. Kennedy's staff (circa 1990s) in action was a political orchestra de force. The phone calls, the ghost-written op eds for the politically, corporate and culturally famous, the corralling of CEOs, billionaires and political opponents, and the painstaking detail that went into planning every PR event was something to behold. My favorite Kennedy staff maneuver was "spousal lobbying," i.e., getting Senators' wives to work their husbands on a particular issue. It was all a beautiful dance, and it worked.
Because I witnessed Stevens and Kennedy in action, because I watched two very strong men get their way through brute force and brute smarts, I admit to being a bit underwhelmed by the President's almost laissez-faire attitude towards his own promises, and towards legislating. In my Washington, nice guys do finish last. I learned that you could often, or at least much of the time, get a heck of a lot more than people thought possible, by using your head and committing to be an incessant pain in the ass.
Political lives come with an expiration date. It was only a matter of time before the Democrats lost control of the Congress, and lose control of the White House. But, to me, that isn't an argument for giving President Obama a pass on the stimulus, health care reform, and the budget. It's a damn good reason to ask why he didn't do more when he had the chance.
Yes, life is finite. But does anyone on their death bed really wish they had done less?
You often hear from the White House and their defenders excuses such as: If we only had 60 votes; if we only had the
right 60 votes; if we only had control of the House; and my personal favorite, "he's not God, you know" (as if). When it comes down to it, this debate is really between those who think the President is weak, and those who think Barack Obama has incredible untapped strength.
Which one do you think encapsulates the politics of hope?
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