As the health care debate becomes more fiery and partisan and President Barack Obama is seen grappling with trying to please, convince and kowtow to members of his own political party, some now wonder whether Obama has lost his political clout and some talk wistfully about how much better Obama might fare if he was a little more like the arm-twisting President Lyndon Baines Johnson.
What would LBJ do?
Realistic, or not? Like many things that some wish for that are based on perceptions (false or authentic) derived from the 1960s, Dick Polman — in our political Quote of the Day — says it’s not feasible, ain’t gonna happen and that such hopes don’t take into account the different political players and the hugely different political times.
Back in the day, few thought well of LBJ. He got waist deep in the big muddy of Vietnam, and his sonorous TV demeanor made Ed Sullivan look like Elvis Presley. On the other hand, when it came time to get Medicare passed in ’65, he had a great inside game. He sweet-talked some of the congressmen, and smacked the rest of them upside the head – the carrot, the stick, whatever it took.
That was LBJ at his best.
Polman notes that now some Democrats and even topnotch historian and LBJ-Lincoln scholar Doris Kearns Goodwin are watching how Obama has set broader policy goals and encouraged Congress to thrash out the details. They are calling for Obama to take charge and become another LBJ:
These people are dreaming.
Johnson was a creature of Capitol Hill who had logged 23 years as a lawmaker, including a productive stint as Senate majority leader. He knew his colleagues well, he knew when to flatter or frighten. Many owed him favors; as president, he often called in his markers. Most important, Democratic lawmakers feared him. The current crop of Democrats do not fear Obama. He worked among them in the Senate for only four years and never gained any leverage, LBJ-style.
Lacking LBJ’s inside moves, Obama has gone with his outside game. His grassroots political arm, Organizing for America, has run TV ads targeting red-state Democratic senators – such as Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana – urging them to support sweeping health-care reform. These Democrats aren’t exactly quaking in their boots. Conrad says, “It’s fine with me.” Landrieu says, “It really doesn’t matter to me literally one way or the other.”
Maybe LBJ could have knocked their heads together, and ordered them not to worry about deepening the deficit. But I wonder about that. In Obama’s defense, LBJ never had to deal with the kind of fiscal headaches that persist today. When Johnson was twisting arms for his Great Society agenda, the economy was booming, General Motors and other corporate behemoths were alive and well, and banks were banks. His budget issues weren’t nearly as dire as those currently afflicting Obama.
Johnson also had far stronger prevailing winds at his back; he had won a landslide election in the aftermath of the JFK assassination, and he enjoyed two-thirds majorities in both congressional chambers. And while playing his inside game – most commonly known as “the Johnson treatment,” he had a weapon that Obama dare not employ.
Pork.
LBJ dangled the availability of pork in front of Congressmen more than barbecue cook-off entrants dangle their wares to demanding judges at Texas county fairs. As Polman notes, pork today is truly a “dirty word.” That crucial tool that LBJ used is not at a President’s disposal today.
People seem to want Obama to act like LBJ, but Obama would be fried in the press if he tried anything like that. Pork is a symptom of the old Washington that Obama has vowed to change – which is fine, but let’s not forget that the tribal rituals of old Washington helped make Johnson the manipulative wheeler-dealer that he was.
With respect to health-care reform, perhaps the current congressional sausage-making would be more coherent, and perhaps the public would be more reassured, if Obama was drawing lines in the sand. Perhaps he’s being too passive and relying too much on his outside game. But even LBJ at his best would have a tough time corralling the conservative Democrats, the grassroots liberals, the doctors, the hospitals, the insurers, the lobbyists, the bloggers, the Tweeters, all the paraphernalia of contemporary politics.The bottom line, often overlooked, is that health-care reform is now further in the pipeline than ever before. Obama may lack LBJ’s inside game, but he deserves some credit for that. And he knows that his window of opportunity won’t stay open for long…
Another major change, as Polman mentions in passing, is the 24 hour instantaneous news cycle, with (remaining) newspapers, broadcast, cable, talk radio, weblogs, web news sites — where a comment, a development, a gaffe, an upset politician can set off a pile on of media. An issue or story can start to take on a life of its own, with shifting perceptions, which can infuence clout. Dangling or withholding pork sandwiches doesn’t work as well as it did in the mid to late 20th century and its increasingly harder for what is said behind the scenes to remain confidential and out of the 24 hour instantaneous news cycle.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.