It should have happened much earlier.
In the current political environment in Washington, such an initiative can nearly be considered dead on arrival just because it has the president's name on it.
That's easy to understand why, given that the opposition's No. 1 goal is to make Barack Obama a one-term president. So anything that would make Obama look good -- disregarding the possible benefits to the country -- will not get GOP backing.
Since the T.E.A.-party-flavored Republican House swept into office, every bit of legislation that might have been handled in a more amicable and reasonable way in other administrations has instead been bitter, grueling death matches.
This year, legislation on the federal budget and the debt ceiling chewed up months in a conflict orchestrated by T.E.A. party radicals who bent the government agenda to their will and nearly forced the government to default on its loans.
They continue to play this game, endangering emergency relief funds for regions devastated by recent storms. And if they continue to make the kinds of cuts in government services that they want, they could even threaten our ability to respond to major storms like Hurricane Irene. A smaller government would not have to ability to bring federal resources quickly to bear during natural disasters. Average people could end up suffering more.
No wonder Obama had to wait until now to roll out a jobs program. This was just a moment when the T.E.A. party was not hijacking the agenda.
We will have to wait until November 2012 to find out who the voters will blame for this political quagmire. But the roots of this grim situation can be traced back to the hope and optimism of November 2008.
Obama had been elected on many promises, but I think he was elected so overwhelmingly because of his promise that we would not be Red States and Blue States but a United States of America. We so wanted an end to the divisive politics of the past that we threw our support behind this one man.
But electing one politician -- even if that one politician is president -- does not change the nature of politics. Even if that president truly and earnestly wants to change the way politics works, his election will not change the behavior of other politicians.
By nature, politics is divisive. It is driven by competition and conflict.
By nature, we are human. And we remain human even when elected to office. Some with more human failings than others.
When Obama came into office in January 2009, he was flush with the success of a landslide victory and a Congress that was fully behind the Democratic agenda. He may have taken office with every intention of negotiating and working with the Republicans.
But they didn't want to work with him.
And I think that Obama may have looked around at the potential he had with a Democratic Congress and a landslide victory and felt less of a need to work with the GOP. It was a human failing to allow the electoral success to put aside his ideals of compromise and unity.
To his credit, he pursued most of his campaign promises, chiefly health care reform. It was a piece of legislation that would not have happened with a divided Congress. He seized the opportunity and let go of some of the dream of political cooperation.
The GOP, if they had any interest, let go of the rest. The health care reform legislation was the trigger for the popularity of the T.E.A. party movement.
I support health care reform, but in looking back at this situation with the benefit of hindsight, we can see the bitter political cost that came with it.
It's easy to second guess someone else's strategy. It's like playing chess against a computer. Make a stupid mistake and lose your queen? Hit the undo button.
So, just for fun, let's do that. Let's look at what happened.
When he was a candidate for the Democratic nomination, health care was a major issue for Obama in the spring of 2008. Throughout the primaries, throughout the factory visits and chicken dinners and handshaking and canvassing of voters, health care would come up again and again. Obama promised to make it a priority of his administration.
He got the nomination in part because of that and other promises, along with a broader promise for "hope and change." That was in August 2008.
But that fall, everything changed.
The economy nearly collapsed.
Many of those workers who had told Obama that health care was a priority now were out of a job. Health care was probably still a big priority for these people, but in the meantime unemployment went up to nearly 10 percent.
I believe that the actions taken by the government in early 2009 helped to stabilize the economy and prevented a much deeper recession, even a depression.
The economy stabilized and finally began to grow. But it was a jobless growth.
Obama knew in 2008/09 that unemployment was going to stay high for some time, and that it would cost him politically in 2010.
It did.
What seems apparent to me now is that while health care was the big issue for the Democratic nomination, by late 2008/early 2009, the bigger issue was the economy and jobs.
And let's be frank, with all the blue collar and union support in the party, jobs should be a Democratic priority.
And for a Democratic president looking for common ground with a Republican opposition, jobs would have been the natural choice in early 2009.
More jobs means more money in the economy, stronger businesses, and a fiscally sound government. It's a Dem-GOP win-win.
C'mon, don't you remember "Dave," the movie where Kevin Klein gets to be president? He plowed through all the political nonsense and zeroed in on what he knew to be the most important issue: Getting everyone a job.
Could Obama have pursued an aggressive jobs package in early 2009 while also pursuing health care reform and the bailout packages? Maybe. Maybe not.
Could he have pursued jobs first and then brought in health care reform after some kind of precedent for political compromise had been established? Who knows?
In 2010, the voters sent one message that both sides should have understood: The American people were tired of a weak economy and 10 percent unemployment.
So, what if even right after the T.E.A.-party swept into office, Obama called Boehner and said, "Tell you what, Let's focus on jobs as our priority. That is what everyone needs." Would that have made a difference? I'm not so sure. This all is just theoretical. Like fantasy football and computer chess.
The reality is that for whatever reason, our 2008 hopes for a new way of doing politics was lost. Obama did not find the other side willing to help build his dream. He also learned too late the lessons of political strategy, that -- as Dana Milbank put it recently -- he should not begin "a game of strip poker in his boxer shorts."
For what it's worth, I still consider Obama to be an honorable president. He set out to achieve what he promised to achieve. I am grateful for the good he has done. I think he has had to bear some very unfair attacks from the other side, who have called him not a true American, a secret Muslim, a socialist and a Nazi.
He's really a moderate, and considering where we've come from -- the presidency of George W. Bush -- and where we might end up -- a presidency that serves the whims of T.E.A. party radicals -- I hope and pray that Obama finds his "inner Harry Truman" and survives the 2012 election.
My faith, once again, rests with the middle. It is my hope that the independent and moderate voters have been horrified with the positions spouted by the current crop of GOP candidates and that they realize that the T.E.A. party tactics of obstruction and radicalism are not good for the country.
It depends on whether Obama can find a new message that will resonate with the American people. Not a vague dream of "hope" but a concrete plan for his second term.
No comments:
Post a Comment