Everything about Obama’s messaging — the image of vigorous unilateral action, the laser focus on jobs, the small but popular policy initiatives attached to it — serve the goal of patching up the president’s standing and framing the Washington story in the most favorable terms possible. The State of the Union address is not an effort to fundamentally reorient the administration’s strategy. It’s a campaign to mend the political damage from the botched Obamacare launch. ...JonathanChait,DailyIntel
That sounds off-key to me. The “botch” — a software mess-up on the part of government contractors — was parlayed into a “disaster” by the media and by the opposition. Now we’re in a period when enrollment is moving up swiftly. People will tend to forget most of the insurance “botch” as lower-price, readily available, and reliable insurance kicks in. What we will remember — because it’s been so common over the years — are the constant botches in all kinds of software design, not excluding the “security” programs that somehow give our credit card information to the wrong people. Even the NSA overreach is associated less with Obama than with its origins in Wall Street, corporate culture, in the Patriot Act and, well, in that other administration.
We’ve experienced a kind of drowning in right-wing anger and intransigence dating from the midterms of 2010. That will not be forgotten. Even the events of far away as 1994 have continued to dog the footsteps of Newt Gingrich when he has attempted to recover political power. I think the villains of 2010 will have the same kind of fate though their individual names have been all but forgotten now. State of the Union addresses are ephemeral. A fairer healthcare deal for every American isn’t.
And, as Chait points out, giant steps have been achieved.
… Much of the drama of 2013 was consumed with Obama and his Democratic allies successfully beating back this ambitious Republican effort to reshape the power dynamic between the branches of government.
Here’s Chris Cillizza predicting last summer that Senate Democrats would never limit the filibuster; here are various pundits predicting Obama would have to pay a debt-ceiling ransom.) But if Obama had not beaten back the assault on the presidency, he would now be in no position to carry out the work his administration is undertaking.
For instance, having managed to install a chairman of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the administration has finalized key rules in the Dodd-Frank law. Those regulations have received little attention, but the end result is that even many liberal skeptics now say the law is far tougher on Wall Street than they originally believed. And having filled the vacancies on the crucial D.C. Circuit Court, the administration is much better positioned to defend itself from the inevitable legal attacks on its regulations on the environment and elsewhere. …Chait,DailyIntel
These achievements are bound to have a longer, healthier life than all the sour-breath Republican yelling during the entire eight years of Obama’s presidency. The stench lingers on and will for quite some time.
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David Remnick’s New Yorker update on the President is mellow and informative. Remnick talks at length with Obama for the long profile of a president now in his second term. And he talks with historians of the presidency and of Lyndon Johnson, with whom Obama is sometimes compared. Robert Dallek is one of those historians; Robert Caro is another.
Dallek said, “Johnson could sit with Everett Dirksen, the Republican leader, kneecap to kneecap, drinking bourbon and branch water, and Dirksen would mention that there was a fine young man in his state who would be a fine judge, and the deal would be cut. Nowadays, the media would know in an instant and rightly yell ‘Corruption!’ ”
Caro finds the L.B.J.-B.H.O. comparison ludicrous. “Johnson was unique,” he said. “We have never had anyone like him, as a legislative genius. I’m working on his Presidency now. Wait till you see what he does to get Medicare, the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act through. But is Obama a poor practitioner of power? I have a different opinion. No matter what the problems with the rollout of Obamacare, it’s a major advance in the history of social justice to provide access to health care for thirty-one million people.” …Remnick,NewYorker
We see the blood, fat and gristle on the floor of the abattoir. The next generation enjoys the sausage without a backward look.