The Folly of Obama

I should have turned my attention toward this long before, but I'd like to offer up my thoughts on Obama's strategy as it relates to passing a stimulus bill. I'd been willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on some level, until I saw this presser today.

Here's the problem: when he says we need to "put politics aside", I fear he actually means that was part of his approach to passing this bill. He says there are some "philosophical differences" between he and the Republicans, and that he wishes they had a better idea of what was in the bill. Watch the video. Am I the only one that feels like there's a glimmer of deer in the headlights about him, or at least the beginning of a realization that things aren't going the way he planned?

He thought in a time of national crisis he could assemble a broad coalition and that that coalition could subsequently create an agenda. And that, respectfully, is a fool's errand. You need to set an agenda and find a way - any way - to accomplish it. You never alter exactly what you want, never make a compromise from what you believe is best, unless not doing so threatens the agenda itself. Thus good governing boils down to the quality of the agenda itself and nothing else. Bush understood that. His failure was that his agenda was reckless and foolish; a failure of ideas, not accomplishment. When Obama says he wants to leave politics aside he's making a devastating miscalculation: it's all politics. Once you set it aside, there's nothing left. Josh Marshall hits the nail on the head in this post when he writes:

I hear a lot of talk about whether Obama's governing approach can be 'bipartisan' if a good number of Republicans don't vote for his Stimulus Bill. But that dubious point seems to be obscuring a more obvious and telling reality: the Republican leadership in both houses has decided that it's in their political interest to oppose the Stimulus Bill no matter what.

In the most cynical of evaluations, it's not clear to me that they're incorrect. If the stimulus is judged a success, their political gain from adding more votes to what will be seen as Obama's bill will not be that great. So they're figuring that only failure will work for them politically; and they judge that they want Obama to own it entirely.

What Obama inappropriately labels philosophical differences are actually political differences. And before Democrats get on their high horses about how cynical it is to play politics with policies that effect people's lives (and it is), remember that it was the Democrats that had a chance to halt funding in Iraq two years ago, but made the political decision to go ahead and fund it because they knew Republicans owned the misadventure and that it would probably continue to weigh them down come '08 (which it arguably did).

All that aside, it's almost incomprehensible that Obama believed that men the likes of John Boehner and Mitch McConnell would meet him halfway on anything that wasn't 100% in their political interests. Obama can bring science (back) to Washington. He can bring expertise, multilateralism, deliberation, transparency, accountability, and even the rule of law if he wants to. But he cannot bring decency. He can't bring personal or political sacrifice either. Not from his ruling party, and most certainly not from the opposition.

As I said in an earlier post, politics is the art of winning and nothing more. You make the tough choices about what to put on your flag, about who and what to fight for -- not by calling time out and trying to change the rules.