The lame duck session got off to a bad start with the Bush tax cut deal but it has finished off with a bang. Obama has now had some successes to go with his failures. This allows us to see what works and what doesn't. I am going to review how several pieces of legislation went. I am going to leave out a lot and this will leave out some of Obama's signature accomplishments like the auto industry bailout. This is perhaps unfair to President Obama but if you expect to be treated fairly you should avoid politics.
I am going to start with the Stimulus bill. This was passed very early in his administration. Since it passed it is technically a victory. But it also highlights some problems with his negotiation technique. The package consists of roughly one third tax cuts, one third subsidies to state and local governments, and one third new spending, mostly infrastructure projects. Economists have been studying methods for stimulating the economy going back to the '30s. There is a broad consensus. Tax cuts are poor - little or no job creation. New spending is good - good job creation although it tends to be temporary. Subsidies to state/local are somewhere in between. They tend to not create new jobs but they do preserve existing jobs.
So why were the poorly performing tax cut components in the package even though everyone knew they were a poor method of stimulating the economy? In a word, Republicans. The idea was to use this component to buy Republican support. The problem is that it didn't work. The "stim" was passed with no noticable Republican support. Worse than that, the Republicans spent the roughly two years between when the "stim" was passed and the election denigrating it. They were successful in convincing many voters of two things that were wrong, and the Republicans knew that they were wrong. Many voters believe the "stim" created no jobs. It created a lot of jobs. How do we know? Because of press releases issued by Republicans touting "job creating" programs in their districts that were paid for by the "stim". The second lie (there's really no better word to describe the situation) promulgated was the there were no tax cuts in the "stim". This idea can be traced to Republican politicians and the various mouthpieces of the Republican message machine like Fox news.
The Obama administration can not be faulted for their approach to negotiations over the "stim". You don't really know what will happen until you actually do it. The same can not be said about then next major initiative I am going to talk about. That is Health Care Reform. The take away from the "stim" process should have been that Republicans would not negotiate in good faith. "Reasonable" arguments and adopting "Republican" positions (e.g. the tax cut component of the "stim") would not result in Republican support. The administration should have known all this as a result of the "stim" experience. Lessions that should have been learned from the "stim" negotiation are not reflected in the Health Care negotiation.
Now if we set aside for a moment the lessons that should have been learned from the "stim" experience then a case can be made for the strategy they used on Health Care. They did a deal with the big Pharmaceuticals. In exchange for directing a bunch of money their way, "Pharma" was supposed to support the bill. Again the other side of the negotiations did not play fair. While there was not a great deal of public opposition from Pharma they did a lot of damage privately. They funded a lot of "oppo" groups like astroturf web sites, They help fund the Tea Party movement through proxies, and they poured a lot of money into Republican candidates and causes.
The next thing the Obama administration did was to do a deal with insurance companies. They put the "individual mandate" in requiring individuals to purchase health policies from the private insurance companies. They also killed "government option" alternatives like Medicare buy in that would have provided a low cost alternative to private insurance. This was supposed to get the insurance industry to support the bill. It worked exactly like the Pharma deal. Insurance companies were not that publicly vocal against the bill but they used similar underground methods to support opposition. So the two deals the Obama administration did may have helped. But they helped less than they should have.
And like with the "stim" the Obama administration incorporated a lot of Republican ideas in the bill and actively courted Republican politicians to support it. Like with the "stim" this did not work. Republican support was zilch. And the combination of the deals and the courting of Republicans turned out to have a tremendous cost.
Through all this there was one group that the administration conspicuously did NOT cater to. That was House Democrats. The deal with Pharma deep sixed any ability to cut drug costs. The deal with the insurance industry deep sixed any ability to cut insurance overhead costs. Courting Republicans (and Blue Dog Senators) gave both groups a lot of exposure. It fixed in the public's mind that these people were powerful and important people. The side effect was to fix in people's minds that House Democrats were week and unimportant people. This was in spite of the fact that House Democrats were Obama's most consistent and reliable supporters.
But its even worse than that. House Democrats raised some issues. They were firmly swatted down. "We can't do that. It would jeopardize our ability to get a deal with Republicans, Blue Dogs, etc."). In spite of this abuse House Democrats stuck with the President. They passed every single piece of legislation the President asked for. And they passed it in the form the White House wanted it in. This was in spite of the fact that the White House version frequently contained things House Democrats didn't like. Seen in this context it is absolutely predictable that House Democrats would get hammered in the election.
We now move on to the Bush Tax Cuts. The White House did a bad deal with the Republicans. I have discussed this elsewhere (see http://sigma5.blogspot.com/2010/12/president-lets-make-deal.html). The White House argues "it was the best deal we could get". And they may have been right. But a large part of the reason it was the best deal the White House could get was previous White House actions.
Finally, we get to move on to some deals that worked out. Since the Tax Cut deal the following deals have been approved: repeal of "don't ask don't tell", New START, 9/11 responders, and food safety. These were all clear wins. What was different?
My answer is that the White House did not make three key mistakes: (1) They did not undermine their allies; (2) They did not make premature concessions (and often these premature concessions did not garner reliable support), and (3) they were willing to walk away from the deal.
The White House undermined their allies on the "stim" and particularly on Health Care. One thing the White House was trying to do with their Health Care strategy was to learn from previous failures. The Clinton White House tried to do Health Care and failed. One of the "lessons" was "Don't put up a specific proposal. This just gives the opposition something to shoot at." So the Obama administration did not put up a specific proposal. They finally started to get specific late in the process.
The problem with this is that it represented a double whammy to supporters. The administration had done deals that removed many key provisions that supporters like me liked. But we also couldn't defend what was left effectively because there was no specific proposal. So we couldn't support stuff we liked that was gone because it was gone from the proposal. And we couldn't support the other stuff because it was not clear what other stuff would actually make it into the final proposal. This left nothing specific to support. Apparently we were supposed to support the "trust me" proposal even though we already knew that some of the best stuff would be missing and we had no clear idea what would be cut at the last minute. This is why there were no giant demonstrations in support of the Health Care proposal.
Compare this to the New START treaty in particular. This was always a specific proposal. You knew what you were signing up for when you signed on to support the proposal. This allowed the White House to go out and round up support. There was no talk that those Republican Secretaries of State were a bunch of whiners. It was also a proposal that was very popular with the Democratic base. The White House deserves credit for rounding up all that Republican support and for sticking with the program. They also didn't make the mistake of undermining their allies, although I don't know if I would give go so far as to them "credit" for their failure to screw up.
New START is also a great example of not making premature concessions. The White House made no significant concessions. The final treaty was the same as the original treaty. Nothing was changed. They did n't change the missle counts, for instance even though there was a specific request to do this froma Republican. Now they did throw a lot of "weapons modernization" money into the pot. But this was more of a bribe than a concession.
And the same is true for "don't ask don't tell". They could have watered it down early. "It won't apply to the Marines". "We will have a five year, no ten year phase in." Stuff like that. Now the White House did concede and do a study. And they did wait until after the election and then wait further until the study came out. And it was possible that the study would have turned out to be bad news. But if the SecDef and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs can't make a study come out the way they want between them, they should be fired. The fact that they had both the SecDef and the Joint Chiefs chairman also means that they again did not undermine their allies. In fact they supported their allies.
The "9/11 responders" bill is interesting. As far as I can tell this was not a big priority for the White House. The water on this was mostly carried by the New York delegation. But the White House deserves credit for at least not screwing it up. They again avoided undermining their allies. They again made no premature concessions. And, for whatever reason, they manifestly were unwilling to make a deal at any costs. There were substantial concessions made on this bill. The term was cut from 10 years to 5. The amount of money was cut by $2 Billion. But these concessions were made at the last minute. And they resulted in additional support. I think these were really face saving concessions. The Republicans were faced with a PR disaster. The concessions gave Republicans a face saving way to reverse their positions.
And the "9/11 responder" bill is significant for another reason, the media attitude. One of the reasons that Republicans are able to behave so badly is that their misbehavior is not consistently reported. A scan of mainstream media for filibuster stories will come up short. I'm sure you will find them. But you will not find them as part of a consistent theme and attached to the idea that this tactic by the Republicans constitutes bad government. The result is that the general public does not believe there is a large gap between the parties on the "good government" front. I think most people would say "sure it's bad government but both sides do it" with the implication being that the amount of wickedness is roughly evenly divided.
I want to specifically call attention to Jon Stewart on this. I think that this is a case where he made a real and critical difference. Jon is in the "mock politicians" business. He picks on Republicans more often than Democrats because they are more often deserving. But his "Restore Sanity" rally indicates where he would prefer all of us to be. The "Restore Sanity" rally was aggressively nonpartisan in its tone. But that's not how he approached "9/11 responders". He did a piece that was typical of his work. He mocked Republicans for being "all things 9/11" until the responders bill came up. He also mocked the media coverage of the bill. It was a great piece but it was within his normal range. But then he went beyond his normal range. He did a whole show on the bill. The first segment was one of his typical pieces. Again Republicans did not come off well. But then he continued. His middle segment featured four responders, all with serious medical conditions. This segment was not at all comedic. His final segment was an interview with Mike Huckabee. Mike has been on the show several times. He can be quite funny. But Stewart went after him on the "9/11 responders" bill. He got Huckabee to admit that in principle the bill was a good idea. He also tried to get Huckabee to say bad things about his fellow Republicans for holding the bill up. Huckabee is now an experiences verbal tap dancer and avoided doing that. But the general thrust of the interview was that there really was no good reason for opposing the bill.
After this the New York media took up the cause. A clip from the Stewart 9/11 responder material was even shown on Charlie Rose. I don't think Rose has ever shown a Stewart clip on his show before. The media shined a bright light on Republican misbehavior on this bill. That is something they generally never do. And it was critical to the bill's eventual passage.
Frankly the food safety bill flew under my radar. I think it was not on the White House "high priority" list. So it snuck through more on benign neglect than anything else. Certainly there were a number of congressional Democrats who were deeply invested in the bill. But since it was not an administration priority it was easy for them to walk away and there was no reason for them to make premature concessions. And since they were not interested they did not bother to undermine their allies on this. This allowed the bill's supporters to manage a campaign that was ultimately successful.
Obama is now on vacation in Hawaii. I would like to believe he will learn from his failures and his successes. We will soon find out. The budget is a mess for the usual reasons. Theoretically this mess needs to be dealt with in February. But politicians on all sides of these deals are adept at kicking the can down the road. Something that will be harder to delay a decision on is increasing the debt limit. That should require resolution within the next six months. So what's my advice?
The first thing is to let the Republicans go first. I believe that the Clinton strategy of putting a whole health plan on the table was not the big mistake. The way I saw it at the time was that the Republicans used a "death by a thousand cuts" strategy. They said "we don't like this component". They would not propose an alternative. So the debate became between a specific proposal which might be the best but had some flaws and some theoretical perfect but unknown alternative. Unfortunately, then and now, the media falls for this ploy every time. They don't hammer the opposition for failing to make a specific proposal. So the Republicans objected to this component and that component and built up the impression over time that the whole bill was a really bad thing.
It turns out we now know that that eventually the Republicans made a counter proposal to the Clinton bill, one that looks a lot like the current Obama bill. But whatever they did was so low key that I missed it at the time. Anyhow, money bills are supposed to originate in the House. It's right there in the Constitution. So Boehner and the Republicans are theoretically on the hook to go first. This will let the White House and their Democratic allies do "death by a thousand cuts", if the White House is smart enough to figure this out.
Beyond that the White House must support its allies rather than undermine them. This involves embracing their positions publicly even if the plan is to trade them away later. (And it's a good idea to let supporters know in advance before you do the trade). Then they need to stop making premature concessions. There is no reason to make a concession if it does not result in additional support for your position. Finally, they must always be willing to walk away from the deal if it is bad enough. This may mean having the government shut down. This is a case where Obama's current reputation as a wuss actually works to his advantage. If the deal falls apart it's got to be the Republicans' fault 'cause Obama's a wuss. Any deal that is so bad that even the wuss walks away from it must be really awful.
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