“The Disappointment Must Be Crushing”: ‘He’s Wanted To Be A Historically Significant Speaker’
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who’s unlikely to face a credible opponent when he seeks another term early next year, will soon lead a massive majority. The current House GOP caucus is pretty significant, but thanks to some modest gains in this year’s midterms, Boehner will soon sit atop a party with 247 House seats, the most for Republicans since the Great Depression.
But the New York Times noted the other day that there’s uncertainty lurking behind the numbers.
[W]hat he is able to do with that power will determine whether he is remembered as something more than the House leader during a stretch of frustrating gridlock and deep partisanship.
“He’s never wanted to just be Speaker,” said Representative Tom Cole, an Oklahoma Republican and a close ally. “He’s wanted to be a historically significant Speaker.”
The quote surprised me a bit. Several years ago, before the Ohio Republican was elevated to his current post, a friend of mine who works on Capitol Hill told me, “John Boehner cares about three things: cutting taxes, playing golf, and smoking cigarettes – and not necessarily in that order.”
Boehner, the argument went, didn’t have grand ambitions about becoming a historically significant figure. He welcomed promotions and leadership posts, but it was widely assumed that he saw the stature and prestige as their own rewards. In this vision of Boehner, we see a guy who didn’t intend to leave an imposing legacy – there would be no buildings named after him following his tenure.
But Tom Cole, one of Boehner’s closest allies, suggests this perception is all wrong. This Speaker actually does care about his place in history and he wants to be seen as a success.
Which in some ways makes the last four years something of a tragedy.
If Boehner set out to be a historically significant Speaker, he succeeded in the worst possible way: Congress, at least since the Civil War, has never been quite this dysfunctional. Congress has never failed quite so spectacularly to complete routine tasks. Congress never, in rapid succession, threatened to trash the full faith and credit of the United States, then repeatedly threatened to shut down the government, following through in one ridiculous case.
The most notable aspect of Boehner’s record is a complete inability to lead his own members and govern effectively. When this Speaker manages to pass spending measures that keep the government’s lights on, much of the country considers it a minor miracle, thanks entirely to the soft bigotry of low expectations.
After four years with the gavel, Boehner’s total of major legislative accomplishments remains stuck at … zero. Simon Maloy noted yesterday, “His record of leadership to date is defined almost entirely by its reflexive opposition to the president, and in the process he’s helped turn Congress into a dysfunctional morass in which elected representatives don’t actually know how to do their jobs.”
It didn’t have to be this way. There have been any number of opportunities for Boehner to tackle real legislative initiatives – up to and including immigration reform, which the Speaker promised to act on before he broke his word – and just as many chances to sit down with President Obama to strike meaningful compromises.
But Boehner, fearful of far-right revolts and members who ignore his attempts at leadership, has generally been loath to even try. If he genuinely “wanted to be a historically significant Speaker,” the disappointment must be crushing.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, December 2, 2014
“Gridlock Only Gets You So Far”: Voters Will Catch On To The Fact That The GOP Is Using Obstruction To Win Elections
There are three reasons that the Republicans pursue gridlock: ideological purity, hatred of President Barack Obama and because it helps them win elections. The first two they may be able to get over, but not the third.
Republicans discovered in 2010 that by opposing anything and everything of any consequence that Obama proposed, gridlock would ensue and the public’s anger and cynicism toward Washington would grow. Rallying around the tea party’s themes and the deep economic frustrations from the near depression, they swept out incumbent Democrats by the score.
Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell made it known that his number one goal was the defeat of Obama in 2012. That did not work out so well, but the Republicans quickly pivoted to 2014, where there was clearly fertile ground to elect more of their party. Part and parcel of this strategy was to not pass any meaningful legislation on immigration reform, job creation, education, tax reform or to improve America’s infrastructure and, finally, doing their very best to rally the base against anything having to do with government. The growing anger towards Washington and the party in control of the presidency – the Democrats – provided another windfall.
The difference now is that the anger which pollsters determined in 2010 created a majority for “standing up for principle” has now shifted to “it’s time to compromise, to get things done.” In short, voters want government to work and are sick and tired of the obstruction and gridlock.
Despite their efforts to shift blame, the Republicans now are boxed in, because it is pretty clear that they are the problem, not the party proposing solutions. Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann, respected political analysts, have laid this out very clearly in their writings, including the book “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks.” So even if Republicans decide that the “shut the government” caucus led by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz should be hidden away in the basement of the Capitol, they are still confronted with many political players who believe they were elected by being obstructionists.
The goal of the Democrats, then, should be to revise and reinvigorate the plans to legislate and solve America’s problems and convince the voters that the Congress, controlled by Republicans, is once again blocking progress. When the Republican leadership is convinced that gridlock is now a losing game politically, they may actually change their behavior. Their rigid ideology and their hatred for Obama will give way to a new political reality – the public is on to them and, much like President Harry Truman in 1948, the “do-nothing Congress” label will be laid at their feet.
The Republicans have to confront these past six years and change their behavior. They will only do so only if it becomes crystal clear that the public understands and is sick and tired of their embracing of Washington gridlock.
By: Peter Fenn, U. S. News and World Report, November 26, 2014
“A Naïve View Of Politics”: The Poison-The-Well Myth, And How Politics Really Works
There are certainly some serious critiques of President Obama’s new immigration policy. It could encourage more illegal immigration in the long run. It may be another step toward an imperial presidency, detached from Congress. It definitely could have been executed less cynically, given that Mr. Obama all but admitted he delayed the announcement until after the midterms, in an (unsuccessful) effort to help Democrats on the ballot.
But there is also one critique that’s getting a lot of attention and isn’t so serious.
It’s the “poison the well” argument — the notion that Mr. Obama’s executive action to shield as many as five million people from deportation will prevent a bigger immigration bill from passing Congress and maybe prevent a whole bunch of other legislation, too.
John Boehner, the speaker of the House, and Senator Mitch McConnell, the next majority leader, have both used the phrase “poison the well.” A spokesman for Mr. Boehner said the move by Mr. Obama would “ruin the chances for congressional action on this issue and many others.” While maybe we should excuse politicians for trying to score political points, neutral commentators have picked up the argument, too. It’s one of those ideas that has the aura of sober-minded political analysis.
Obviously, we can’t run the final two years of the Obama presidency multiple times under different circumstances and see what happens in each. So it’s impossible to know for certain how any one action affects the course of events. But there are all kinds of reasons to believe that the poison-the-well theory is based on a naïve view of politics. And understanding why it’s wrong helps illuminate how politics really does work.
Whatever you may think of today’s politicians, they are highly successful people who have climbed to the top of a competitive profession. Most of the time, they make decisions that are in their interests — whether political interests or policy interests. A few notable exceptions aside (like Newt Gingrich’s infamous pique in 1995 over getting a bad seat on Air Force One), they do not make major decisions the way a small child would, based mostly on whether someone else is being nice or mean to them.
If you ask political scientists what they consider to be the biggest misconceptions about politics, you’ll often hear a version of the Nice-Mean Fallacy. The Obama presidency has offered a particularly rich set of examples. It’s true that Mr. Obama and his White House haven’t done a very good job of building relationships with Congress, and it’s true that the administration’s aloofness has probably hurt its effectiveness in some ways.
But consider the recent president whose relationship skills are often contrasted with Mr. Obama’s: Bill Clinton. Many members of Congress really did seem to prefer Mr. Clinton’s personality to Mr. Obama’s. And yet which of the two presidents failed to keep Democrats united on a major health care bill and thus failed to pass one? And which president held onto every single congressional Democrat he needed to pass such a bill?
Were the roles reversed, we no doubt would hear tales about how the gregarious president used his people skills to pass the biggest expansion of the safety net in a generation while the distant, professorial one failed. In truth, congressional Democrats weren’t making decisions based on either Mr. Clinton’s or Mr. Obama’s personality. They were making them based on bigger issues.
The Democratic Party of the early 1990s included more conservative Southerners than the 2009-10 version of the party, for example. The 2009-10 Democrats were also more desperate to succeed, remembering the disappointment of the Clinton bill and probably aware that economic inequality had worsened over the intervening decades. The Democrats stuck together because they believed doing so was in their interest.
Republicans have done the same in the Obama presidency. From the beginning, Mr. McConnell has understood that Republicans could veto Mr. Obama’s promise to be a bipartisan bridge-builder. “It’s either bipartisan or it isn’t,” Mr. McConnell said in 2010, explaining his caucus’s united opposition to the health care bill. No wonder that Republicans didn’t bite when the White House suggested adding medical-malpractice reform to the bill.
Many Republicans voters back this stance. Polls show that most want their leaders to stand on principle rather than to compromise. Democratic voters are fonder of compromise.
The story on an immigration overhaul has been similar. Some Republicans leaders see a bill as in their interests — helping them with Latino voters — and the Senate passed such a bill, 68-32, last year. Yet most House Republicans have philosophical objections and have few Latino voters in their district. House leaders have refused to bring the bill to the floor.
To accept the poison-the-well argument is to believe, first, that Republicans would have passed an immigration bill if Mr. Obama had not acted. This seems unlikely but not totally out of the question: Perhaps more Republicans want to show they can compromise now that they control both chambers, hoping their presidential nominee can win swing voters in 2016. In that case, an immigration bill might be more feasible in 2015 than it was in 2013.
But the poison-the-well theory then requires a second belief, too: That even if an immigration bill were in Republican interests, they would refuse to pass one, out of spite from Mr. Obama’s executive action. This belief seems strangely dismissive of Republicans’ instinct for self-preservation. It also conflicts with the history of both parties.
On the same day in August 1981 that President Ronald Reagan threatened to fire striking air traffic controllers, many Senate Democrats voted for his tax cut, and House Democrats did the same the next day. Mr. Clinton and congressional Republicans, less than a year after impeachment, collaborated on a sprawling bank deregulation bill in 1999. A few years later, many congressional Democrats voted for the Homeland Security Act even as President George W. Bush was calling them soft on terrorism.
In each of these cases, politicians voted with their interests, not their feelings. There is every reason to believe the same will happen over the next two years.
Some of the same Republicans worrying aloud about poisoned wells no doubt understand this reality. But they continue making the point partly because it helps unify the party on a divisive issue. “It’s a way the G.O.P. can achieve consensus,” as Brendan Nyhan, a Dartmouth political scientist and Upshot contributor, says. “They’re internally divided on policy on immigration but agree on a process critique of Obama’s actions.”
Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio may be on one side of some big immigration questions and conservative House Republicans may be on the other, but they can come together on metaphorical well water. Which is to say that politicians generally act in their interests, even when doing so involves pretending otherwise.
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“The ‘Right’ In It’s ‘Wrong’ Mind”: Will The GOP Scrap Obama’s State Of The Union address?
In early 1999, the political environment in Washington, D.C., bordered on surreal. President Clinton had just been impeached. House Speaker Newt Gingrich had just been ousted from his leadership post, forced out by his own members. Gingrich’s apparent successor, Louisiana’s Bob Livingston, was soon after forced to resign in the wake of a sex scandal.
And at the same time, the U.S. Senate was weighing the charges against Clinton, hearing arguments as to whether or not to remove the sitting president from office.
It was against this backdrop that the White House announced in mid-January that it was time for the annual State of the Union address. TV preacher Pat Robertson, an influential figure in Republican politics at the time, gave his GOP allies some stern advice: don’t let Clinton speak. To give the president an august national platform, Robertson said, would allow Clinton to solidify his support and end the impeachment crusade. Congress isn’t required to host the speech, so there was nothing stopping Republicans from denying Clinton’s request.
GOP leaders on Capitol Hill weren’t prepared to go nearly that far. So, Clinton spoke, he pretended like impeachment hadn’t just happened, and Gallup showed the president’s approval rating reaching 69% soon after.
Nearly 16 years later, another Democratic president, also hated by his Republican attackers, is poised to deliver his penultimate State of the Union address. And like Pat Robertson, the idea of denying the president a SOTU invitation is once again on the right’s mind.
“Yes, there’s a risk to overreacting, but there’s a risk to underreacting as well,” said Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review. “And I fear that’s the way the congressional leadership is leaning.”
Mr. Lowry suggested one way Congress could react. “If I were John Boehner,” he said, referring to the House speaker, “I’d say to the president: ‘Send us your State of the Union in writing. You’re not welcome in our chamber.’”
Lowry may not dictate GOP decision making the way Limbaugh and Fox News do, but it’s important to note that he isn’t the only one publicly pushing the idea.
Politico reported yesterday that congressional Republicans are weighing a variety of tactics to “address” their disgust over Obama’s immigration policy, and “GOP aides and lawmakers” are considering the idea of “refusing to invite the president to give his State of the Union address.”
Late last week, Breitbart News also ran a piece of its own on the subject: “Congress should indicate to President Obama that his presence is not welcome on Capitol Hill as long as his ‘executive amnesty’ remains in place. The gesture would, no doubt, be perceived as rude, but it is appropriate.”
For the record, I rather doubt Republican leaders will go this far. Indeed, if they seriously pursued the idea, GOP officials would risk a backlash that would help, not hurt, the White House.
That said, don’t be too surprised if this talk grows louder between now and the big speech.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, November 26, 2014
“It’s Past Time For GOP To Stand Down”: Is The Benghazi Scandal Hunt Finally Over?
Is the Benghazi scandal hunt finally over? And if there’s no Benghazi scandal, could that actually mean that President Obama will reach the end of his eight years in office without an era-defining, presidency-threatening scandal on the order of Watergate or Iran-contra? To conservatives who have believed for the past two years that Benghazi would eventually show the world the true villainy of this president, this is a horrifying prospect, but it could come true.
You may have missed it in the traditional Friday news dump, but at the end of last week, the House Intelligence Committee – which, don’t forget, is run by Republicans – released a report that all but exonerated the Obama administration of having done anything, well, scandalous. “An investigation by the Republican-led House Intelligence Committee has concluded that the CIA and U.S. military responded appropriately to the attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012,” The Post reported, “dismissing allegations that the Obama administration blocked rescue attempts during the assault or sought to mislead the public afterward.” It also found that while the talking points Susan Rice delivered in the wake of the attack were inaccurate, it was because of conflicting information coming in and not a scheme to hoodwink the public. All the conspiracy theories about a “stand-down order” and whatever else they’ve been talking about on Fox News were emphatically rejected.
On yesterday’s Sunday shows, some Republicans took the news better than others. “I thought for a long time that we ought to move beyond that,” said Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) on “Meet the Press.” But Lindsey Graham was mad as only Lindsey Graham can be. “I think the report is full of crap,” the senator from South Carolina said on CNN’s “State of the Union.””That’s a bunch of garbage. That’s a complete bunch of garbage.”
There may be no one who owes more to Benghazi than Graham, whose relentless condemnations of the administration on the issue managed to keep conservatives in South Carolina from getting too angry at him for voting for immigration reform. On this issue he has effectively channeled the right’s anger and its hope that the true scope of the scandal will be revealed any day now. Back in May, Graham proclaimed, “We now have the smoking gun” when decidedly mundane e-mails revealed that Ben Rhodes, the White House official whose job is to craft and disseminate spin on topics of national security, was in fact crafting and disseminating spin on Benghazi. A year before, Graham said, “I think the dam is about to break” on Benghazi revelations. No wonder he’s upset.
But as scandals go, Benghazi has been truly remarkable in the depths of triviality to which it sunk – which is perhaps understandable given how fruitless the search for official wrongdoing has been. To take just one example, there was actually a moment when people argued passionately about whether in the immediate aftermath Barack Obama referred to the attack as an “act of terror” or a “terrorist attack,” on the presumption that the former is weak and terrorist-coddling, while the latter is strong and terrorist-terrifying. That really happened. These days, the creation of misleading talking points is the worst crime with which Republicans can manage to charge the administration — not exactly the kind of thing that brings down a president.
Benghazi will be a vital part of the history of the Obama presidency, not for what it says about the administration but what it says about the administration’s opponents. After multiple investigations by multiple committees, endless hours of testimony, thousands of documents produced, and untold Fox News discussions (and it isn’t over yet; the select committee chaired by Trey Gowdy still has to have its say), nothing scandalous has actually been discovered. Yet the administration’s critics remain convinced that there is an awful truth somewhere waiting to be uncovered.
They felt the same way about Solyndra, and “Fast and Furious,” and the IRS. In every case the supposed scandal was greeted by Republicans with a quivering joy; they were sure the facts would be worse, and the wrongdoing reach higher, than anyone could imagine. And in every case, the more we learned, the less shocking things looked.
Like every administration, this one has had its share of screwups and missed opportunities. But it has been remarkably light on genuine scandal, the kind characterized by criminality and coverup. I’m sure there are few prospects more disturbing to conservatives than the idea that Obama may complete two terms without being laid low by a scandal. Many, if not most, on the right are convinced that he and his administration are deeply, fundamentally corrupt, and the fact that that corruption hasn’t been exposed may only be proof of just how diabolical Obama and his minions are.
But now the hour is growing late, and in the last two years of this administration there will be conflicts aplenty to occupy all of our time. For all the fulmination over the president’s immigration order, there are at least genuine issues there to be debated, issues of policy and presidential power. And the fights of the last two years are just beginning; we’ll be arguing about the budget and tax reform and health care and other issues that will arise, all while the 2016 presidential campaign is ramping up.
Benghazi is all but over, and with it the hopes of Republicans to drag Obama down into the quicksand of what they imagined would be his own wrongdoing and well-deserved ignominy. Like a lot of what Republicans have hoped for in the past few years, it just didn’t pan out. Some, like Lindsey Graham, will keep shaking their fists at the television cameras, insisting that the ghastly truth will become clear any day now. But the rest of the world will move on.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect; The Plum Line, The Washington Post, November 24, 2014
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