The obstructionists best friends
by digby
Eric Boehlert makes a good point in this piece about how gridlock has worked for the Republicans: the assumption among the press and other political observers that it’s President Obama’s fault. He begins with a retrospective of how this strategy emerged early in the Obama presidency and how it was covered. Then he writes:
On paper, the GOP’s desperate maneuver in 2009 looked risky: Just gum up the works of Congress and stand in the way of every proposal from the new president who was just swept into office with a public mandate for change? Wouldn’t commentators clobber the GOP for blind partisanship and hollow obstruction?
Looking back though, there was very little risk involved. There was no element of chance because within days of Obama being sworn into office, the Beltway press sent out clarion call: If Republicans don’t cooperate with the new, wildly popular president, it’s the president’s fault.
And that press judgment hasn’t budged since 2009.
If you think I’m exaggerating about this phenomenon taking root within days of Obama’s first term, just go back to the White House’s January 23, 2009 press conference. That’s when NBC’s Chuck Todd asked the new president if he would veto his own party’s stimulus bill if not enough Republicans voted in support of it.
Todd’s weird query highlighted the unheard-of double standard constructed almost overnight by the press with regard to the pressing issue of bipartisanship: If there was little or no bipartisan support for Obama’s stimulus package, then it was Obama’s fault, his fault alone, and the bill itself must be a P.R. failure.
Sure, the legislation might help save the collapsing economy at the time. (Fact: It did.) But in terms of optics and how it looked, the emergency stimulus bill was a loser. Why? Republicans didn’t like it. The party that had just been pushed out of office didn’t support the bill, so the press declared it to be an Obama failure and a key Republican victory.
“Republicans find their voice,” cheered Politico after the GOP snubbed Obama weeks into his first term. The Los Angeles Times reported in January 2009, “[I]t was clear that [Obama’s] efforts so far had not delivered the post-partisan era that he called for in his inauguration address.” Meaning, nine days after being sworn in, Obama still hadn’t ushered in a “post-partisan era.”
Five years later the simple question remains: If Republicans emphatically do not want to cooperate in any meaningful way with Democrats, is there anything Obama can do to change that? Answer: No, not really. But according to the press, Obama is supposed to change that equation, or else he loses. He takes all of the blame.
I think it was inevitable in the beginning that the press, and perhaps the public, would see the president as a failure in this regard because of the way the 2008 campaign was sold. There was an implicit promise that this president would “transcend” the usual impediments due to his personal gifts for … transcending the usual impediments. And the White House has to take a little bit of responsibility for hyping that claim long after it was useful once in office.
However, there’s no excuse for it lingering beyond the moment when not one Republican would sign on to a very market friendly health care plan that was crafted for their pleasure. That should have wised up the entire press corps that this was not business as usual and the president’s gifts notwithstanding, the GOP had decided on a full blown strategy of obstruction unlike anything we’ve seen in decades.
The Villagers continue to dream of Tip ‘n Ronnie and assume that it’s purely a matter of presidential political skill and “reaching out” like that affable fella Ronald Reagan did to make it happen. But the truth is that Reagan had a Democratic congress chock full of Southern conservatives who were happy to vote with him while President Obama was dealing with a revanchist fringe of right wing extremists as his opposition. (Also too, he’s not quite as “relatable” as good old Ronnie if you know what I mean …) And frankly, that was obvious before the election of 2008 when anyone could have seen that a party that was willing to impeach a president over sex , take the presidency through dubious means in a state run by the GOP candidate’s brother and then act as if they had a mandate was not a party one could count on for bipartisan comity. I don’t know why anyone ever thought otherwise.
Boehlert is right though. The press is living in an alternate universe where all it takes is the right guy to “bring everyone together.” I think Richard Cohen, the Washington Post House liberal columnist probably expressed Villager sentiment the best back in 2000:
“Given the present bitterness, given the angry irresponsible charges being hurled by both camps, the nation will be in dire need of a conciliator, a likable guy who will make things better and not worse. That man is not Al Gore. That man is George W. Bush.”
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