“A Tired, Old And Wrong Cliche”: President Obama Is No ‘Bystander’
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) delivered a widely noticed speech in September 2011, condemning President Obama, not just on policy grounds, but specifically on the issue of leadership. “We continue to wait and hope that our president will finally stop being a bystander in the Oval Office,” the governor said. “We hope that he will shake off the paralysis that has made it impossible for him to take on the really big things.”
Much of the political media agreed and echoed the assessment. Pundits crying, “Why won’t Obama lead?” became so common, a tired cliche was born. The president may have run as a young, ambitious leader, eager to change the world, but the Beltway was increasingly convinced: Obama is an overly cautious, overly cerebral president who would rather talk than act.
Two weeks ago, Dana Milbank went so far as to endorse Charles Krauthammer’s thesis of Obama as a “passive bystander.”
The real problem with Obama is not overreach but his tendency to be hands-off.
Since the second year of Obama’s presidency, I have been lamenting the lack of strong leadership coming from the White House, describing Obama in June, 2010, as a “hapless bystander … as the crises cancel his agenda and weaken his presidency.” I’ve since described him over the years as “oddly like a spectator” and as “President Passerby.”
Let’s put aside, for now, the fact that the bystander thesis completely contradicts the other common anti-Obama condemnation: he’s a tyrannical dictator whose radical agenda is destroying the very fabric of America.
Instead, let’s focus on why the bystander thesis appears to be outrageously wrong – especially today.
Faced with an intensifying climate crisis, a hapless bystander, content to watch challenges pass him by, might have decided to do nothing. Maybe he’d call for action in a State of the Union address or issue a white paper, but President Spectator would struggle to shake off the paralysis that makes it impossible to take on the really big things.
Except Obama’s done the opposite, unveiling an ambitious domestic agenda, striking a deal with China that few thought possible, and challenging the rest of the world to follow his lead. It’s an effort wrought with political and policy pitfalls, but Obama’s doing it anyway because he sees this as an effort worth making.
As we discussed back in February, there’s a group of pundits who’ve invested almost comical amounts of time urging Obama to “lead more.” It’s never been entirely clear what, specifically, these pundits expect the president to do, especially in the face of unyielding and reflexive opposition from Congress, but the complaints have been constant for years.
As the argument goes, if only the president were willing to lead – louder, harder, and bigger – he could somehow advance his agenda through sheer force of will, institutional constraints be damned. And if Congress resists, it’s necessarily evidence that Obama is leading poorly – after all, if only he were a more leading leader, Congress would … follow his lead. The line of criticism became so tiresome and so common that Greg Sargent began mocking it with a convenient label: the Green Lantern Theory of Presidential Power.
What seems obvious now, however, is the need for these pundits to reconsider the thesis.
Obama saw a worsening climate crisis, so he decided to take the lead. Obama is tired of waiting for a hapless Congress to act on immigration, so he’s leading here, too. Obama saw an Ebola threat, and he’s leading a global effort to save lives. Obama sees an ISIS threat, so he’s leading an international campaign to confront the militants.
The president showed leadership when disarming Syria of its chemical weapons. He’s showing leadership in trying to strike a nuclear deal with Iran. He showed leadership on the minimum wage, raising it for federal contractors while Congress sat on its hands. He’s showed leadership on health care, rescuing the auto industry, and advancing the cause of civil rights. [Update: several readers reminded me he’s leading on net neutrality, too.]
The policymaking process is filled with choke points, but when the president has his eyes on a priority, he doesn’t just throw up his arms in despair when one door closes; he looks for a new route to his destination.
Now, if Obama’s critics want to question whether he’s leading the country in the right direction, that’s obviously grounds for a spirited debate – each of the president’s decisions can and should be evaluated closely on the merits. “Leadership” is not an a priori good. Obama can take the lead on a given issue, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s right.
But if Obama’s detractors would have Americans believe he’s not leading at all, I haven’t the foggiest idea what they’re talking about.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, November 14, 2014
“Wrong Once Again”: Republicans Are Furious About Obama’s Climate Breakthrough With China
Republicans are furious that President Barack Obama has cut a historic deal with China to lower both countries’ greenhouse gas emissions. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell just spent his reelection campaign claiming that China would never curb its emissions, so the U.S. shouldn’t either. Many other Republicans have argued the same. And yet China just proved Republicans wrong by committing to reach a peak level of carbon pollution by 2030—the first time the world’s largest polluter has set a deadline for lowering emissions.
Republicans won’t admit they were wrong, of course. They’ve already moved on to their next talking point. Remarkably, the party that’s become synonymous with climate-change denial has avoided any mention of it this time. A statement from McConnell’s office stressed only that Environmental Protection Agency regulations hurt coal jobs:
Our economy can’t take the President’s ideological War on Coal that will increase the squeeze on middle-class families and struggling miners. This unrealistic plan, that the President would dump on his successor, would ensure higher utility rates and far fewer jobs. Easing the burden already created by EPA regulations will continue to be a priority for me in the new Congress.
House Speaker John Boehner stated:
This announcement is yet another sign that the president intends to double down on his job-crushing policies no matter how devastating the impact for America’s heartland and the country as a whole. And it is the latest example of the president’s crusade against affordable, reliable energy that is already hurting jobs and squeezing middle-class families. Republicans have consistently passed legislation to rein in the EPA and stop these harmful policies from taking effect, and we will continue to make this a priority in the new Congress.
Even Senator James Inhofe—Congress’ most vigilant climate-change denier—neglected to mention what he really thinks of global warming. He emphasized that this deal lets China get away with not making any real cuts, while the U.S. will have to cut up to 28 percent of its emissions by 2025:
In the President’s climate change deal, the United States will be required to more steeply reduce our carbon emissions while China won’t have to reduce anything. It’s hollow and not believable for China to claim it will shift 20 percent of its energy to non-fossil fuels by 2030, and a promise to peak its carbon emissions only allows the world’s largest economy to buy time. China builds a coal-fired power plant every 10 days, is the largest importer of coal in the world, and has no known reserves of natural gas. This deal is a non-binding charade. The American people spoke against the President’s climate policies in this last election. They want affordable energy and more economic opportunity, both which are being diminished by overbearing EPA mandates. As we enter a new Congress, I will do everything in my power to rein in and shed light on the EPA’s unchecked regulations.
That’s not true. This climate accord marks the first time that China has publicly committed to any limit on carbon, at all. As a developing and rapidly growing economy that bears little responsibility historically for climate change, China can rightly argue it won’t act unless the U.S. does. To discredit this deal as a “non-binding charade” is simply misleading; these commitments may be formalized next year at an international meeting in Paris. The announcement now is meant to build momentum for these talks, and convince other countries to put forward their own ambitious targets.
The hardest part—how to move both countries’ giant economies away from fossil fuel dependence—comes next. Republican opposition will be firm, even if their excuses shift away from climate-change denial.
By: Rebecca Leber, The New Republic, November 12, 2014
“McConnell, Boehner”: Sorry Voters, You Just Put Crazy People In Charge Of Congress
For as long as John Boehner has been Speaker of the House, his majority has been defined by its intransigence. This isn’t spin cooked up by Boehner’s liberal critics or by Democrats on the other side of the aisle. Boehner himself has at times seemed to revel in the barking madness of his hardline members.
That’s not to say Boehner enjoys this aspect of his job. It’s generally been a problem for him. But his willingness to grapple publicly with the difficulties he faces isn’t just self-effacing charm. It’s also cunning. To make progress, it follows, his members must be placated. How can he be expected to corral his herd of beasts if Democrats refuse to appease them?
It’s what has allowed him to say things like, “[t]he votes are not in the House to pass a clean debt limit,” when the opposite is clearly true.
But that was before. Starting in January, Republicans will control Congress completely. Obviously this doesn’t obligate them to advance any particular, or constructive agenda. The last six years have demonstrated that there’s more political upside for Republicans in gridlock than in cooperation with Democrats. But now that they’re calling all of the shots, you might think Boehner, along with incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, would stop talking about their own members as irrational animals that can’t easily be controlled.
Nope!
Per Bloomberg: “McConnell said Obama’s plans to take executive action on immigration, if Congress doesn’t act, would amount to ‘waving a red flag in front of a bull.’”
It’s hard to fault GOP leaders for playing expectations games, if expectations games allow them to escape accountability for the actions and agency of their members. But that really shouldn’t be an effective tactic anymore. Republicans and Democrats are coequals now. President Obama will do some stuff that Congressional Republicans won’t like, and vice versa. But the fact that Boehner and McConnell announced that they would “renew our commitment to repeal Obamacare” doesn’t give Obama an excuse to write off Congress, or act recklessly, or even to duck negotiations over specific reforms to the Affordable Care Act.
The administration would endure endless derision if Obama or his top aides said Obama wouldn’t cooperate with Republicans because their latest Obamacare repeal vote had “poisoned the well.” When congressional Republicans used the same language prior to the election, you could at least chalk it up to the fact that the Democrats controlled more of the agenda than they did, and that they weren’t pleased with the terms. But that’s not true anymore. If Republicans decide not to tee up immigration legislation, it’s because they don’t want to pass immigration legislation.
They shouldn’t be able to lay that decision at Obama’s feet, on the grounds that they’re too unruly to be controlled. And if they are, then consider the implications of placing a party that’s been commandeered by such waspish politicians in charge of votes on issues like ISIS, Ebola, or the debt limit.
By: Brian Beutler, The New Republic, November 7, 2014
“A Cardinal Reality Facing The Justices”: The Supreme Court Is Now A Death Panel
Back in March 2011, when the biggest threats facing Obamacare were the Supreme Court and the 2012 elections, I argued that the demise of the Affordable Care Act would put people’s lives in immediate danger.
At the time, the law had relatively few beneficiaries—people under 26 covered by their parents’ health plans, a small population of people with pre-existing medical conditions. But some of them had already used their new coverage to finance the kinds of life-saving treatments that would leave them in need of chronic care for the rest of their lives. Take away the health law, and most of these organ transplant recipients and other patients would have become unable to afford their medications, and some of them would die.
Since then, millions of people have gained coverage under the law, and that group of chronic care patients has grown much larger. But despite the fact that the Court upheld the law, and President Obama won reelection, the ACA isn’t out of danger.
On Friday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case that will determine whether the federal government can continue to subsidize private ACA coverage in states that didn’t set up their own insurance exchanges.
That case is King v. Burwell, but the issue at stake has come to be defined by a comparable case called Halbig v. Burwell.
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the challengers in King, but the Supreme Court agreed to grant cert to those challengers anyhow, despite the absence of a Circuit Court split. If the five conservative Supreme Court justices are so inclined, they can void ACA subsidies for millions of beneficiaries, and cripple the insurance markets in about three dozen states.
Some of those beneficiaries will be the kinds of transplant recipients and other patients I wrote about three and a half years ago. Except today there are many more of them. Several of these patients explained the risk to their lives in an amicus brief, urging a different circuit court to reject the challenge to the subsidies, and thus to the viability of the insurance markets their lives depend on.
“Without insurance, Jennifer [Causor’s] treatments would be completely unaffordable. Her transplant cost nearly $280,000. She takes three anti-rejection drugs, one of which has a sticker price of $2,400 per month…. Should she become uninsured, Jennifer would face bankruptcy and even death.”
You can read the whole brief below. Conservatives are brimming with excitement over the Court’s decision to hear the challenge. Should the five conservatives rule that the text of the law doesn’t provide for federal subsidies in states that didn’t set up their own exchanges, they’ll place the onus on Congress or state governments to address the consequences for constituents who lose their benefits. The contested text could be fixed with a comically simple technical corrections bill, which Democrats would happily support. If Republicans were to sit on their hands, or use the ensuing chaos as leverage to extract unrelated concessions, it will cost people their lives. That is a cardinal reality facing justices, and the people soliciting their conservative activism.
There’s an ironic post-script to this article. The Supreme Court is likely to resolve this case with a 5-4 decision, one way or another. Either a single conservative will side with the Court’s four liberals as in 2012, and leave the law unscathed, or the five conservatives will align to void the subsidies.
Under the circumstances, supporters of the law might be nervous about the potential loss of a liberal justice. Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s health and advanced age make many liberals very uneasy, especially now that Obama’s ability to fill Supreme Court vacancies has come into doubt. But for the purposes of King, this issue is immaterial.
If Ginsburg’s seat were to become vacant, then the fate of the law would remain in the hands of a conservative swing justice. A 4-4 split effectively upholds the lower court’s ruling—and since the Fourth Circuit upheld the subsidies, the subsidies would stand. If the Fourth Circuit had ruled the other way, her health would be much more material.
When I mentioned this admittedly morbid but nevertheless important curiosity on Twitter, a large number of dimwitted (or in some cases persistently dishonest) conservatives flooded my mentions column in outrage. Most of them missed the meaning altogether, and accused me of wishing death upon a conservative Supreme Court justice. But even the ones who didn’t managed to contain their enthusiasm over the possibility of millions of people losing insurance for a moment, to reprimand me for being so cavalier about people’s lives.
By: Brian Beutler, The New Republic, November 7, 2014
“One Silver Lining For Liberals”: As Democrats Fall, Minimum Wage Thrives On Election Night
Democrats suffered a series of disastrous defeats on election night, decisively losing their Senate majority and falling short in several gubernatorial races in which they hoped to defeat Republican incumbents. But there was one silver lining for liberals: Tuesday’s elections proved, once again, that the minimum wage is a winning issue.
Initiatives to raise the minimum wage appeared on the ballot in four reliably Republican states. In all four, they passed easily.
Even as Alaskans appeared to boot Democratic senator Mark Begich out of office — he has declined to concede the race — they still overwhelmingly voted to raise their state’s minimum wage to $9.75 per hour. Tellingly, although his future colleagues in the Senate have steadfastly opposed any efforts to raise the federal minimum wage, Republican senator-elect Dan Sullivan announced in September that he would support the state initiative. This was a flip-flop from his position in the Republican primaries, and probably had something to do with polls showing the measure’s overwhelming popularity in the Last Frontier.
Similarly, Republican Tom Cotton’s easy victory over Democratic senator Mark Pryor didn’t stop Arkansans from boosting their minimum wage to $8.50 per hour. Like Sullivan, Cotton decided not to oppose the overwhelmingly popular measure. Although he voted against raising the federal minimum wage as a congressman, he announced in September that he would support the state hike “as a citizen.”
In South Dakota, Republican Mike Rounds easily defeated Democrat Rick Weiland and Independent Larry Pressler. But voters still raised their state’s minimum wage to $8.50 per hour. Rounds opposed the measure, while his opponents supported it.
And in Nebraska, Republican Ben Sasse defeated Democrat Dave Domina in a landslide, even as voters raised the state’s minimum wage to $9 per hour. Although Sasse opposed the measure, he avoided discussing the issue on the campaign trail.
More than half of the states in the nation now have minimum wages higher than the federal level.
Clearly, even in red states, there is broad support for one of the key planks of the Democratic economic agenda. But, just as obviously, it was not a determining factor in how midterm voters cast their ballots. This presents an opportunity for congressional Republicans.
The next round of Senate campaigns will take place in a far more liberal battleground than Tuesday’s elections did — and, if history is a guide, they will feature a more liberal electorate. This will put blue-state Republicans like Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), Mark Kirk (R-IL), and Pat Toomey (R-PA) in jeopardy. One easy way for them to blunt the economic attacks sure to come their way on the campaign trail would be joining with Democrats to raise the federal minimum wage.
While the House of Representatives has refused to consider a minimum-wage hike in the past, they may have a different attitude when the bill is coming from a Republican-controlled Senate. After all, they supposedly want to prove that they can govern. And, as Tuesday’s elections prove, conservative voters are unlikely to punish them for giving working families a boost.
By: Henry Decker, The National Memo, November 5, 2014
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