How Much Has Obama Learned?
Sep 12th, 2011 | 10 responses
WASHINGTON — Our political system is not accustomed to the kind of battle that is going on now. President Obama has been slow to adjust to it. The voters are understandably mystified and frustrated by it. In the meantime, the economy sits on the edge between stagnation and something worse.
The president’s speech to Congress and the Republican presidential debate last week should have taught us that we are no longer in the world of civics textbooks in which our political parties split their differences and arrive at imperfect but reasonably satisfactory solutions.
Now, we face a fundamental divide over the most basic questions: Is government good or bad? Can public action make the private economy work better, or are all efforts to alter the market’s course — by Congress, the president, the Federal Reserve — doomed to failure?
When politicians and their supporters believe the other side is pursuing policies that would destroy all they cherish, compromise becomes not a desirable expedient but “almost treasonous,” to use the phrase tossed about by Gov. Rick Perry of Texas.
Under these circumstances, taking enormous risks with the country’s well-being, as House Republicans did in the debt-ceiling rumble, is no longer out of bounds. It’s a form of patriotism. When your adversaries’ ideas are so dastardly, it’s better to court chaos, win the fight, and pick up the pieces later.
And to make matters worse — and more confusing — the two sides are not equally distant from the political center. We are in an age of asymmetric polarization.
Precisely because they believe in both the government and the marketplace, Democrats are always more ready to compromise. Obama’s economic address last Thursday was seen as tough and firm because he finally called Republicans in Congress out. Progressives liked the new fortitude, and also the relatively large sums of money Obama would mobilize to jolt the economy back to vibrancy.
But there was nothing remotely radical (or even particularly liberal) about Obama’s ideas: tax cuts, many of them business-friendly, and new spending for such exotic projects as, well, schools and roads. As the president said, his proposals had all drawn Republican support in the past.
He was, however, talking about a Republican Party that existed before it was taken over by a new sensibility linking radical individualism with a loathing for government that would shock Hamilton, Clay, Lincoln and, for goodness’ sake, Robert Taft.
Thus, the GOP sees the solution to the crisis in the measures its right wing has always favored: gutting regulation, keeping taxes on the affluent low, cutting government programs, and stopping Ben Bernanke and the Fed from doing anything to put the unemployed back to work that might risk the tiniest bit of inflation and thus dilute, even momentarily, the wealth of the already wealthy.
Last week’s Republican debate was instructive in showing how deeply this new orthodoxy has penetrated. Bashing Bernanke and the government was in. Perry joined in the doctrinaire foolishness his rivals displayed in an earlier debate. He echoed them in saying he would reject a budget deal based on $10 in spending cuts for every $1 in tax increases. (A colleague of mine suggested the candidates should have been asked how they felt about ratios of 20-to-1 or 50-to-1.)
Up to this point, Obama has acted as if nothing much had happened inside the Republican Party. He kept talking about bipartisanship and tried not once but twice to make a big deficit deal with John Boehner. Quite predictably, both blew up in his face.
The president seems to have awoken to the danger he faces. In his speech to Congress, he pointedly addressed those who believe “that the only thing we can do to restore prosperity is just dismantle government, refund everybody’s money, and let everyone write their own rules, and tell everyone they’re on their own.” He added: “That’s not who we are. That’s not the story of America.”
But that is precisely who most of the Republican Party now thinks we are.
The president has offered eloquent defenses of the role of government in the past, only to revert to bipartisan fantasies that, in the end, always make him look weaker. The central question — for his jobs plan and his future — is whether this time he sticks with an analysis of the nature of our political fight that sees it as it is, not as he wishes it were.
E.J. Dionne’s email address is ejdionne(at)washpost.com.(c) 2011, Washington Post Writers Group. This column is licensed to run on TMV in full.
10 Responses to “How Much Has Obama Learned?”
-[But that is precisely who most of the Republican Party now thinks we are]-
You can blame Limbaugh, Hannity, G.Gordon Liddy, and numerous other crazy media propagandists that sprang up as the Republican party began loosing popularity two decades ago. Everybody could see that Reagan had no mind of his own. Reagan was just a tool for those shadowy right wing forces that fund by secretive and indirect measure the economic assaults upon our people, the secret wars against other nations whom choose forms of government they dislike, and anything at all that resembles caring for our own people.
The general public has no clue what they believe in. They just follow the pied piper.
“Can public action make the private economy work better, or are all efforts to alter the market’s course — by Congress, the president, the Federal Reserve — doomed to failure?”
Considering that they’re the ones who got us here, and haven’t really changed anything — yep, they’re doomed to failure.
“When politicians and their supporters believe the other side is pursuing policies that would destroy all they cherish, compromise becomes not a desirable expedient but “almost treasonous,” to use the phrase tossed about by Gov. Rick Perry of Texas.”
Maybe you’re not considering that maintaining the status quo is the surest way to destroy those programs?
“And to make matters worse — and more confusing — the two sides are not equally distant from the political center. We are in an age of asymmetric polarization.”
Not really. They’re both for corporate welfare and, with the exception of some of the freshmen, growing government overreach until the entire system collapses. There is some slight disagreement over where and how fast it should grow, but that’s really not much to get excited over.
“Progressives liked the new fortitude, and also the relatively large sums of money Obama would mobilize to jolt the economy back to vibrancy.”
It’s the smallest stimulus proposed since 2008. Well over 10 times that amount has been spent in an attempt to “jolt” the economy, and it still looks … unjolted.
“But there was nothing remotely radical (or even particularly liberal) about Obama’s ideas: tax cuts, many of them business-friendly, and new spending for such exotic projects as, well, schools and roads. As the president said, his proposals had all drawn Republican support in the past.”
So now Republicans have good ideas? Doing the same thing over and over expecting different results is a now good thing.
“and stopping Ben Bernanke and the Fed from doing anything to put the unemployed back to work”
The Fed gives money to banks. Unless the unemployed that you’re talking about are bankers, this doesn’t even make sense.
“In his speech to Congress, he pointedly addressed those who believe “that the only thing we can do to restore prosperity is just dismantle government, refund everybody’s money, and let everyone write their own rules, and tell everyone they’re on their own.” He added: “That’s not who we are. That’s not the story of America.””
No, it’s currently a land where we continually grow the government, take everyone’s money, let lobbyists and large corporations write their own (and our) rules, and tell everyone what they can own (now new and improved: they can tell us what we MUST own).
“The president has offered eloquent defenses of the role of government in the past, only to revert to bipartisan fantasies that, in the end, always make him look weaker.”
Maybe because the times have changed, and progressives haven’t.
Now, we face a fundamental divide over the most basic questions: Is government good or bad? Can public action make the private economy work better, or are all efforts to alter the market’s course — by Congress, the president, the Federal Reserve — doomed to failure?
Dionne sets up false choices here as most people would feel government can be either good or bad depending what it’s doing. The second sentence is also a false choice, since some public actions will benefit the economy and others will fail, further some actions will help in the short run and hurt in the long run.
This kind of absolutism is too common in punditry lately.
DaGoat, the notion that govt is bad is a meme developed long ago by republicans and they’ve pushed it hard since. In otherwords, they own it. Of course it’s a ridiculous and phony philosophy in itself, but that doesn’t mean a great many R’s didn’t buy into it. Btw, Reagan can be credited with beginning that nonsense.
@JSpencer
DaGoat, the notion that govt is bad is a meme developed long ago by republicans and they’ve pushed it hard since.
That is the way many liberals think the GOP feels about government, but like Dionne’s article it’s way too simplistic and absolute. There is a huge difference between supporting small government and free markets, and saying “government is bad”. I doubt you could find a GOP candidate saying such a thing.
I would add that when it comes to certain topics the GOP is as big government as anyone else. One of the reasons I left the GOP was what I saw as a huge government intrusion by the GOP in the Terri Schiavo situation.
Mr Dionne has been hostile the idea of “centrism”
http://themoderatevoice.com/117886/yes-to-moderation-no-to-centrism/
Now he treats it as a virtue, though defines at as “being Democratic” (like he did with “moderation” before). IMO, this is all an attempt to try and gain support for being moderate/centrist without actually having to move to the center. But at least he no longer argued against the very idea?
edited to remove disparaging remarks about the author…
This piece appears to suggest a definition of “moderate” is someone who thinks trying something that didn’t work the first time is a good bipartisan compromise………. from colleagues in the same office……….
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, October 9, 2009
Eight months after enacting a massive economic stimulus package,, the unemployment rate reached 9.8 percent in September and is widely forecast to keep rising in the coming months.
……….I”ll much more happily accept being labeled an uncompromising partisan at the front end than have history prove me a gullible fool at the back end……..haven’t we just reminisced again this week about the lack of proof for WMD’s…….show me the proof for permanent jobs being created (weapons grade plutonium) instead of state government payrollers being paid to show up for a couple of more months before they’re laid off (yellow cake). Stimulus did not solve any unemployment problem……it merely tried to confuse the issue…….sort of like Colin Powell, huh?
Great stuff! But I’ll have to comment later right now I’m just too tired to think straight, if this is still going on.
NOTHING.
DJ
good article. i sometimes wonder if people remember when compromise was part of the political equation.
the ignorance exhibited for the current deficit meme also shows the problem. SS is funded for 20 years, yet it keeps being brought up as something to cut. The funding in place just is ignored.