Barack Obama's 2011 State of the Union Address was a solid, steady performance. He clearly values this brand for himself as the Most Reasonable Man in Washington - a balanced, centrist leader who takes ideas from every side and will work with anyone. It's an image that clearly has some advantages for him; the early reports I've seen from overnight polling and post-SOTU dial tests are very positive. On a short-term basis, the speech is a solid plus for the President. There also was a lot I liked about the speech from the perspective of someone focused on the long-term health of the progressive cause. But there are some big worries I have over the longer term, both for the President and the country.
Here are the things I liked best about the speech:
The President's full-throated, completely unapologetic defense of the health care bill was great to see. His focus on being willing to look at improvements - but not back down one iota on the things in the bill that will help people - was pitch perfect, far better than most of the pretty lame messaging on the bill over the last year.
Even knowing he wouldn't be embracing benefit cuts in the speech, I was still nervous about what he would say about Social Security, fearing that a vague line about being happy to work with Republicans to "fix" or "strengthen" Social Security over the long term would leave the door wide open for a deal later on benefit cuts. But his actual line about strengthening Social Security for future generations "without putting at risk current retirees, the most vulnerable, or people with disabilities; without slashing benefits for future generations; and without subjecting Americans' guaranteed retirement income to the whims of the stock market" was pretty darn definitive. I would have loved for him to go one step further and threaten a veto if Republicans passed such a bill, but this is a good start.
I love the idea of paying for investments in research and the jobs of the future by eliminating subsidies to oil companies. And the framing of it was just right: since oil companies are "doing just fine on their own... so instead of subsidizing yesterday's energy, let's invest in tomorrow's." That is entrepreneurial populism at its best.
The celebration of the Don't Ask Don't Tell repeal and the call for the DREAM Act and comprehensive immigration reform were great moments in the speech.
I know this isn't a stereotypically progressive position, but I am a big fan of the President's push to reorganize government agencies. I felt the same way about the Clinton/Gore Reinventing Government push in the '90s. I have always believed that as defenders of the role of government, it is up to progressives when they are running the government to make sure it operates efficiently and effectively, and that it serves the American people with a minimum of hassle and confusion and a maximum of genuinely useful service. Every time some small business person has to deal with excessive paperwork, and every time a consumer looking for help or information from a government agency runs into a wall of confusing bureaucracy, it lessens support for government - and that is a bad thing.
As I wrote after the President's Tucson speech, I very much appreciate his embrace of the metaphor of America as a family. I think it is a metaphor with deep roots in American progressivism, from Tom Paine to Martin Luther King, Jr: that sense that we are all bound together, that we share a common fate and sink or swim together, that we should look out for each other and help each other in times of trouble. That is a profoundly progressive idea, and I hope the President at some point makes a point of expanding on the idea and talking about it more.
While it was nuanced, and balanced by very centrist, pro-free enterprise kinds of language, I also very much appreciated Obama's defense throughout the speech of a strong role for government. His historical explanation of how government has helped innovation and long-term economic growth, his clear embrace of the critical importance of some government regulation, and his strong defense of Social Security were all moments in the speech that gave Americans a clear argument as to why government is not the problem, but part of the solution to our long-term national health and prosperity.
So there was a lot to appreciate about the speech. Certainly there also were some anti-progressive, irritating moments, too: screwing consumers on medical malpractice, screwing government workers with a wage freeze, screwing us all with the five-year freeze on domestic discretionary spending (which is actually at least a 7 percent cut if you factor inflation in). But more broadly, the speech leaves me concerned for Obama's - and the Democratic party's - political health over the next two years in a couple of different ways.
The first relates to Obama's description of, and attitude about, the economy. My fear is that the President and his economic team have convinced themselves that the economy is all coming up roses. I am not so sanguine, and I don't think the American middle class generally is either. The fact that corporate profits, the stock market, and our GDP are all going up has the President in a happy mood, because he believes it when folks like Geithner and Summers assure him that, as the White House team has been saying for the past two years, "jobs are a lagging indicator."
Look, I fully understand why the White House wants to trumpet any scrap of good news they can find about the economy. They have an urgent political need to try and convince people their economic plan is working. And if the economic team is right, and all these corporate profits and higher stock prices start to trickle down, and lots of new workers finally start to get hired, middle-class voters will be a lot happier with the President by the time November 2012 rolls around. My fear is that the damage to the economic fundamentals has been far more severe than the conventional wisdom macroeconomists at the White House realize, and that unemployment problems won't be going away very fast at all. My fear over the long term is that people are going to remember Obama bragging about increased corporate profits and stock prices even as they see unemployment stay high, wages still not rising, and housing prices continuing to be in the toilet - the same way voters in 2010 remembered his claim that bailing out bankers would lead to new investment and new jobs. That is a nightmare scenario for a President that the middle class still isn't sure is on their side.
Which brings me to my second worry: All this talk about American competitiveness in general is all well and good, but if middle-class folks don't feel the benefits of it any time soon, Obama has a big problem on his hands. There was a lot of talk in that speech about America doing better, America being more innovative and competitive, American business doing well. But it wasn't often in that speech that you got the sense that the President cared about the fate of the typical American working family; the family which might have a member unemployed or in a bad part-time job, the family worried about the fact that their mortgage is underwater because of home prices collapsing, the family whose income hasn't increased much in years as their gas, utilities, groceries, health care, and kids' tuition have all skyrocketed. If Obama has those folks at the front of his mind every day - if Obama is fighting his heart out for them every single day - you wouldn't have known it from his speech. And when people are going to vote, especially in economically stressful times, one of the main things on their mind is always: Which of these candidates is more on my side? Who understands my life and my concerns more? When push comes to shove, who will fight for me and my family more?
Especially if I am at least partly right about my first worry, and those middle-class swing voters are still under a ton of economic stress in November of next year, the who-is-on-their-side issue will weigh heavier than ever. I know such things are a little out of fashion to talk about right now, with corporate CEOs and Washington centrists being the President's main advisers. But unless the economy comes roaring back - and by that I mean jobs, not just corporate profits and stock prices - this question of who the President really cares about is going to weigh very heavily in the next election.
It was a pretty good speech overall, but it left some big questions hanging. If the jobs picture starts to really pick up, and the Republicans are too obvious about how much they are in bed with corporate lobbyists, this speech will set the stage for the upcoming election cycle very well. If not, the President may have set himself up for a tough road ahead.
With his powerful speech in Tucson, his legislative wins in the lame-duck session, and a modest increase in his poll numbers, President Obama certainly is politically stronger than he was in the immediate aftermath of the 2010 election. The conventional wisdom in D.C. already has begun to shift, and with Republicans toning down their rhetoric because of the Gabrielle Giffords tragedy, the next couple of months may be a period of relative calm for the President. But there is danger ahead if the he gets too comfortable.
The biggest danger is if the White House allows itself to be sucked into that ever tempting D.C. conventional wisdom. Having the David Bs (Broder and Brooks) of the world love you feels really good when you read The Washington Post and The New York Times every morning, but if unemployment doesn't start going down, housing prices don't start going back up, and seniors have no more confidence in Obama's willingness to fight for them than they have so far, the political climate in November 2012 isn't going to be any better for the President and his fellow Democrats than it was in November 2010. Cutting a deal to resolve the debt ceiling issue that hurts the middle class will make Broder and Brooks applaud, but it will do nothing to help Obama's re-election results. On the other hand, this moment of relative political calm could give Obama some leverage going into the next few months. The kind of brinksmanship the Republicans want to pursue on the debt ceiling will not look good for them if Obama continues to look more statesmanlike. The real question now is how Obama decides to position himself in terms of the big moments ahead. The White House needs to stay focused like a laser beam on the working and middle-class Americans who have taken the biggest hits economically over the last five years. These folks, who rejected Bush's policies in the 2006 elections, took a gamble on this new guy, Barack Obama, and his promise to change America in 2008, and then either didn't vote or went back to the Republicans in 2010.
The first big question is how the President will frame the choices ahead in his State of the Union. He has a chance to change the political dialogue from an obsession with retrenchment and deficit cuts to a focus on how life will get better for the middle class. There is nothing wrong with showing how he is going to take on the special interests by cutting the parts of the budget they love the best -- padded no-bid government contracts, corporate subsidies, and off-shore tax loopholes -- but Obama has to reorient the Washington discussion back to a focus on policies that will improve life for working families and retirees. The questions Washington should be debating are: how do we create more jobs; how do we get wages to start rising again; how do we lessen escalating inflation for daily necessities like gasoline, utilities, groceries, college tuition, and health care; how do we make sure seniors and those close to retirement have enough retirement income to live above the level of grinding poverty; and how do we stabilize the housing market, slow down the tidal wave of foreclosures, and get home prices to actually start rising again. Those are the issues Washington should be obsessing about instead of theoretical discussions about the size of government. Obama's State of the Union should be first and foremost about those issues.
The second big question going forward is how the President will choose to position himself in negotiations with House Republicans on the debt ceiling. Is he going to, in his own words, allow more hostage takings? Is he going to again let our country's middle class and our fragile economy be held prisoner by allowing the Republicans to set the terms of the debate? The President needs to be far more aggressive this time around than he chose to be in the tax-cut negotiations. He needs to be clear that he is not going to haggle over the government's good standing on the debt issue, that he expects and demands that Republicans do the right thing in regards to the debt ceiling, and that he won't allow Social Security or other programs seniors and the middle class depend on to be compromised.
The Republicans actually understand how catastrophic reneging on our country's debt obligations would be. Eric Cantor already has acknowledged that the debt ceiling must be raised. Republicans can only force the President to give ground on Social Security, Medicare, and other key issues if he allows it by showing weakness as a negotiator. If Obama does give in on the huge issues affecting middle-class workers and retirees, he will have no one to blame but himself if those workers and retirees desert him again at election time. But if -- like Bill Clinton in 1995 -- he shows himself to be a strong negotiator on the issues key swing voters care about, he will put the Republicans in an electoral hole they will have a very tough time climbing out of.
The SOTU and the debt ceiling fight offer the President big opportunities to reframe the national political debate into one about which party will fight hardest for the American middle class. That should be the complete focus for Obama in the coming months. If it is, he can enter the spring and summer in commanding position for his re-election campaign.
In 2008, TPM editor Josh Marshall speculated that DLC majordomo pollster Doug Schoen must be 'tokin the herb' for the advice he gave candidate Hillary Clinton, which as Marshall described it, was:
...to "portray Obama as an effete liberal, with San Francisco values, who is out of touch with ordinary Americans, who can't reach bipartisan compromises and is an extreme liberal. Or to put it another way, she must run against him as a Republican."
Today, Schoen has written an editorial in the Washington Post imploring now president Obama not to run for reelection in 2012. His 'me-too' coauthor is Patrick Caddell, another DLC pollster and occasional Fox News dickhead.
For Schoen, the upshot of this move is that Obama will be able to ignore senior citizens and unions (listed together with evil lobbyists in Schoen's writing) and welcome business leaders and Republicans (grouped together with desirable independents) into his policy-making. He will be able to "stand above it all and forge consensus."
Given the stridency with which Republicans approach 'consensus', we know that what this really means is that he'll be boxed in to governing as a Republican.
The GOP, which is unswerving in its deployment of a malicious partisan national campaign strategy is, as Schoen tells it, going to suddenly change everything they're doing if Obama withdraws, "draining the poison from our culture of polarization and ending the resentment and division that have eroded our national identity and common purpose."
For more howling bullshit, here's how he remembers himself in 2008 from the WaPo editorial:
Indeed, we were among those millions of Democrats, Republicans and independents who were genuinely moved by his [Obama's] rhetoric and purpose.
Yeah right Doug.
I suppose we may be able to take it as a good sign for Obama's second term that a DINO figure like Doug Schoen is lobbying with whatever shred of 'inside the tent' crediblity he has left for a summary judgment to get rid of Obama before the electorate has a chance to express itself. Maybe it's a sign of fear.
Coming off the disturbing news on Afghanistan, the relationship between the President and his progressive base is in a very tenuous place. Not to be overly dramatic, but I think we're at a crucial moment. The deal on health care is about to get done: will progressives come out of it feeling like we got the first major progressive policy since the 1960s passed, or feeling like they got sold down the river? Congress is beginning to move on a jobs package, but the White House is giving signals to put on the breaks: will legislation go through that does something real about more jobs, or will the Congressional Black, Hispanic, and Progressive Caucuses come away feel ignored again? Banking reform is starting to move, with a classic mix of good and disappointing policies as part of the package: will the progressive ideas like the Fed accountability, language to make it easier to break up the big banks, and Elizabeth Warren's Financial Products Safety Commission be so traded away and watered down in the final legislation to leave a terrible taste in progressives' mouths? Obama has promised to move early next year on immigration reform: will he lead with a clarion call around the importance of getting it done, or will the legislation be delayed again and again until time runs out? Obama has promised to do what needs to be done on dealing with the urgent problem of climate change: will progressives come out of the battle excited that we have finally moved forward, or in despair that nothing got done?
How these issues play out will go a long way toward determining whether base voter turnout in 2010 and 2012 is as low as it was in 1994, how good the volunteer field operations that powered so much of the Obama campaign's success last year are in 2010/2012, how much online fundraising success the Democratic party has, and even whether there will be a serious primary challenge to Obama that emerges in 2011. This is not the first time I have written this, nor will it probably be the last, but I hope both the White House and the progressive movement understand the dangers here. As someone who has at times been quite critical of this administration's stands on banking, jobs, and Afghanistan policy, of some of their tactics/compromises on health care, and of their general positioning toward and treatment of the progressive community, I say again: open civil war between progressives and Obama is a disaster for both sides. It will mean nothing good gets done policywise in the next 3 years, and it means dangerously extreme Republicans will gain power in Congress in 2010 and be running the country after the 2012 elections. Progressives who believe that we can separate ourselves from Obama, give the country a true alternative vision showing Americans what real progressivism is, and have sweeping success sometime in the future as a result are fooling themselves: I have lived through that theory in the Jimmy Carter years (civil war between the left and Carter, a primary challenge, followed by 12 years of conservative Republican presidents running against that liberal Carter), and it didn't work out so well. At the same time, the Democratic strategists in the White House who think its all gravy to "stand up to the left" because it makes Obama look moderate are living in a destructive fantasyland, too- the last 4 presidents who didn't have a good relationship with their base were George HW Bush, Jimmy Carter, Jerry Ford, and LBJ. What those four very different presidents had in common was that they didn't get re-elected. And good luck passing legislation if the Progressive Caucus, Black Caucus, and Hispanic Caucus are all in a constant state of anger, or if the blogs and other progressive forces are whipping the members from liberal districts against the president's policies.
What is needed from the White House right now is constructive engagement, serious dialogue with progressive leaders on both the substance of important issues and the political strategy around getting things done. It is on them to reach out in a real and consistent way, to work with us in finding policy solutions that we can live with; and it is on us progressives to engage constructively back, to recognize the complicated politics of getting progressive things done in this Congress and to help them figure out the strategy for getting good policy.
This is a stickup. Paulson is trying to stampede the Congressional herd into giving him powers and money that he knows they would never give if they had time to think it through carefully. It worked with the Patriot Act. It worked with the AUMF. He's betting it'll work again. Create a crisis (or lie one into existence) then demand dictatorial powers and unlimited spending authority to deal with it.
In effect, that quibble is like you walking into your local bank and saying "I need you to loan me a million bucks. Here are the conditions I must insist are met before I let you lend me the money. First..."
Say what?
He's given his tell, that he's a liar, a thief and a scam artist.
Time for Congress to call his bluff, and to see that the financial crisis is dealt with on their terms, with strict oversight by people they can trust, not by a scam artist and liar like Paulson.
Of course, Congress didn't call his bluff and Congress did fall for it. But let's remember our history. The House voted against. Nancy Pelosi indicated that she would not pass TARP unless Republicans voted for it in the same proportion as Democrats. They weren't going to do that, so TARP was dead.
Then Barack Obama stepped in and started twisting arms. TARP is Obama's baby. If you like it, or don't like it, remember, without Barack Obama it would have died.
This is the fundamental problem right now with Democrats. They passed a lousy stimulus, they made TARP Democratic policy by passing it with majority Democratic votes and they are on their way to passing a lousy healthcare bill which won't even kick in till 2013.
Bad policy leads to bad outcomes. Bad outcomes get blamed on the incumbents (as they should). TARP, the Stimulus, healthcare and the economy become less and less the Republican's problem every month that passed. Even if they screwed it up, Democrats control the House, Congress and the Presidency. It's up to them to fix George Bush's mess, and if they don't they will be judged as failures, and that judgment will be accurate and deserved.
And the outcomes are going to be bad. The stimulus bill was both badly put together (too many tax cuts, not properly targeted) and too small. The healthcare bill should be single payor, because single payor is proven to work and the witch's brew that Congress has put together isn't proven to work and they can't afford to fail. And TARP was, and is, a piece of crap, but the differences between Bush/Paulson financial policy and Obama/Geithner are so thin as to be largely cosmetic.
Policy has consequences. The "compromise" position between "doing it right" and "doing it wrong" may work sometimes, but it doesn't work when a nation is in crisis and has spent 30 years digging itself into a hole.
By the time Obama comes up for reelection, Americans won't have better healthcare and they will have less jobs than before the recession and the stimulus.
That's what he'll be judged on, and all because he signed on for Paulson/Bush financial policies, and compromised his key domestic and economic policies to the point where they wouldn't work.
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