Obama in Context
Chris Bowers has an interesting post looking at the composition of the Obama cabinet and concluding that the personnel is on average to the right of the average Democratic member of congress. It’s worth understanding, however, that the same methodology would lead to the conclusion that Obama’s cabinet is to the right [CORRECTION: by "to the right" I mean "to the left"] of the veto points in congress. Those points are the median member of the House (a Blue Dog) and in the Senate either a centrist Democrat for things requiring a majority or else someone like Susan Collins to break a filibuster. It’s those characters who determine the scope of what’s possible legislatively. And though I think progressives will have many disappointments in the coming years, many more of those disappointments will come because something good Obama proposes gets watered-down in congress than because congress wants to do something good and somehow gets thwarted by the White House.
I was watching West Wing re-runs over the weekend and it’s an interesting thought experiment in the “what if Bill Clinton had been more left-wing?” hypothetical. It makes a big difference in some areas, including judicial nominees and Israel-Palestine diplomacy, but on core domestic policy issues there was no plausible script to write in which Bartlett being a big lib led the congressional GOP to suddenly surrender on expansive new social spending.
31 Responses to “Obama in Context”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
December 22nd, 2008 at 4:32 pm
I was watching West Wing re-runs over the weekend
Don’t we all?
December 22nd, 2008 at 4:36 pm
Is the second “right” supposed to be “left”?
December 22nd, 2008 at 4:46 pm
The Democratic Party, and the country as a whole, would have benefited from Bill Clinton having been not so much more liberal, perhaps, as more into laying out a clear agenda distinguishing Dems from the GOP – laying out a course for where the Dems would take the country, that the GOP wouldn’t.
But when is critical. He should have done this in his second term, when his political survival was no longer in doubt, but when it was equally clear that he wasn’t going to have much in the way of legislative achievements in his legacy.
Apart from 1998, which was a whole ‘nother thing, Clinton’s second term was frustrating because it seemed like one long rearguard action, holding off the barbarians at the gate, without ever explaining why the barbarians were wrong and what the Dems had to offer besides “hyper-timid incrementalist bullshit.”
December 22nd, 2008 at 4:47 pm
Reruns? C’mon I’m watching the DVD right now.
The biggest obstacle for a progressive agenda is the Senate. Maybe if Harry Reid made the Republicans actually filibuster (read a cook book), we could get some traction. But he won’t. So we’ll need to get sixty on everything
December 22nd, 2008 at 4:54 pm
What njbunk said. I must have missed all the incredibly progressive legislation that these oh-so-liberals members of Congress have promoted and tried to pass when they have held the majority.
December 22nd, 2008 at 4:56 pm
I want to know what JP thinks of the political stances of Obama appointees. Is she going to be guest blogging again soon, Matt?
December 22nd, 2008 at 4:58 pm
A fair point. But I guess the larger issue (or disappointment) is that liberals in power seem fearful of their own ideas. Or that they don’t really believe in them. Bill Clinton was somewhat understandable – he was elected (and re-elected) largely on the strength on his personal charisma in an otherwise hostile environment for liberals. The pendulum has swung considerably and this might be the time to be bold and actually try something different.
December 22nd, 2008 at 5:14 pm
Fictional President Josiah Bartlet (with one “t” please) was the ultimate hyper-incrementalist, to the never-ending dismay of his White House staff. What a contrast to real President George W. Bush, who was often wrong, never in doubt, and seemingly never had a fight on his hands on Capitol Hill.
December 22nd, 2008 at 5:33 pm
The biggest obstacle for a progressive agenda is the Senate.
To be fair to Reid, doesn’t forcing a filibuster require a quorum? If so, the requirement isn’t just a party-line vote plus peeling off a few Republicans; he would have to have a party-line vote with full attendance and a few Republicans. Dehydration wouldn’t be a problem for that Republican with a cookbook; he would just have to wait for two Democrats to leave. Even with a disciplined party, there’s always a few people in the hospital or at meetings back in their states or whatever. At atrios would say, Na. Ga. Ha. Pen.
December 22nd, 2008 at 5:51 pm
“What a contrast to real President George W. Bush, who was often wrong, never in doubt, and seemingly never had a fight on his hands on Capitol Hill.”
And Bill Clinton should have done what Bush effectively did: if no one will start the Reichstag fire for you, you need to do it yourself (or FDR: if the Japs won’t move agressively on starting up the war everybody needs, make sure to leave a attractive gap open for them). Unfortunately for all of us, Clinton was still sentimentally attached to the long-dead and long-failed corpse of a government we had many decades ago. The situation required and now requires a tyrannos, and Clinton should have stepped up to the plate. Surely, some sort of plot could have been cooked up so that we could torture and execute a few useful scapegoats. The Republicans would have loved him for it, they love to punish and be punished.
December 22nd, 2008 at 6:16 pm
@Cyrus
I’m not 100% sure about the rules for returning to the old school Senate rules. I found a Cato article arguing the rules could be changed with a simple majority.
But then again it’s Cato
December 22nd, 2008 at 7:03 pm
Those guys at Open Left are insane. They are so rude to anybody who disagrees with them. I always thought that they were just super liberal guys but then I saw Chris Bowers write that he supported Clinton in the primaries.
Obama may disappoint me sometimes but I have no doubt that he is more liberal than Clinton. Plus, it is stupid to look at Cabinet picks as you would a senator, they are there to do one job. It only matters what their take is on their assigned position. Daschle is strong on health care but I wouldn’t want him for anything else and that is how most of Obama’s picks are.
December 22nd, 2008 at 8:02 pm
It makes a big difference in some areas, including judicial nominees and Israel-Palestine diplomacy, but on core domestic policy issues there was no plausible script to write in which Bartlett being a big lib led the congressional GOP to suddenly surrender on expansive new social spending.
Well, they might have written a season in which a massive global financial and economic meltdown, somewhat unforeseen by the centrist economists of the day (of whom Bartlet himself was one), and increasingly seen by the public, and Bartlet, as involving massive corruption, fiduciary recklessness and institutional breakdown throughout the nation’s financial boardrooms, and among its moneyed elites, brings the country to the cusp of a second great depression.
They could have written a variety of compelling and entertaining scripts in which Bartlet is challenged by the weight of the times to re-appraise his centrist, neoliberal preconceptions, and to summon all his creative intelligence and powers of leadership to remake himself as the second FDR.
Drawing on the inspiration of Mrs. Landingham, whose father we learn through flashbacks committed suicide when he was ruined financially and reduced to unemployment and begging by the collapse of 1929, and whose mother was employed by the WPA until going to work as a riveter during WWII, and turning decisively away from the conservative, Calvinist precepts of his rigid father, Bartlett purges his cabinet and brings in a new breed of energetic left-leaning progressives. He then uses the power of the presidential bully pulpit and activist citizen mobilization to fight off a recalcitrant Congress, still packed with with many centrists and conservatives, and push through his new bold and activist agenda.
Of course, audiences may have found this scenario too unrealistic back in the day when West Wing was in production.
December 22nd, 2008 at 8:57 pm
Having two senators become prez and veep, other senators as cabinet members, and the House enforcer as CoS makes me think that the one thing you can’t doubt about the incoming administration is that it knows what stops bills from getting to the president’s desk.
Given all that, the first test is whether congressional GOP’s succeed in their first attempt to make the prez and Dems look like dicks.
December 22nd, 2008 at 11:33 pm
Daschle is strong on health care but I wouldn’t want him for anything else and that is how most of Obama’s picks are.
So you would have a Republican at Defense? Why not put that person at Vet Affairs? How about all the neoliberals on the economic team? Why is the most progressive economist of the group Joe Biden’s chief economic advisor?
These are legit questions. Please answer.
December 23rd, 2008 at 3:18 pm
I’ve been rewatching West Wing too. It must be something in the air. Nervousness about whether the first post-Bartlet Dem administration will translate the fantasy into reality, or how close they will come, perhaps.
One thing to keep in mind is that at least until the midterms of the fictional second term, Congress was controlled by the Republicans. (Just as it was during Clinton’s second term.) That prevented the Bartlet administration from getting a lot done in terms of policy; the farther left the policy, the less likely it would be to get passed. A lot of what they did on the show wound up being via executive order or nibbling around the edges to sneak some small things through the Republican filters, trying to make the best of a bad situation. It was a show about the President and his staff, not Congress; major legislation was only dealt with in abstract, general terms (and even then it was usually due to Republicans causing problems or Dems getting off the reservation).
Clinton did start out with a very liberal agenda; but he got his nose bloodied with gays in the military and national health care, and reflexively moved to the center in response. And after 1994, the world changed and he was basically put in a box. It wouldn’t have mattered if he had brazened it out and remained liberal; Dole would have done better in 1996 against an intransigently “liberal” Clinton (though I still think he’d have won reelection), but that’s about all. It was a time where phenomenal economic growth and “I’ve got mine”-ism led to Republican ascendency in government. Frankly I’m surprised that Clinton stayed as left-of-center as he did.
Would I have a Republican at Defense? Sure. But not Gates. And Veterans Affairs is about government-funded social services, a hard sell to most Republicans even with the patriotic sweetener of it being veterans. I don’t like a lot of the names I’ve been hearing as advisers, and I don’t trust Obama’s supposed progressive instincts to overrule his pragmatism about “working across the aisles to get things done.” But we are committed now, so all we can do is sweat it out.
March 1st, 2009 at 5:06 pm
is there a forum on the site?
March 2nd, 2009 at 4:35 am
levitraVery interesting site. Hope it will always be alive!
March 12th, 2009 at 10:52 pm
It is the coolest site,keep so!
March 14th, 2009 at 5:00 am
If you have to do it, you might as well do it right
xanax
March 22nd, 2009 at 5:56 am
tramadol
Very interesting site. Hope it will always be alive!
April 2nd, 2009 at 4:58 am
Great site. Good info
buy cheap viagra
April 3rd, 2009 at 4:01 am
If you have to do it, you might as well do it right
cheap brand pfizer viagra
April 9th, 2009 at 4:55 am
I bookmarked this site, Thank you for good job! viagra