An Obama Reset?

There’s a thoughtful op-ed in the WSJ today by Ted Van Dyk, a veteran Democrat and author who worked in the LBJ administration. In it, he argues that President Obama needs to “reset” his presidency by scaling back his policy ambitions and exerting more influence over the legislative process, arguing that by delegating control to Congressional leaders and committee chairs, he has come up short on his campaign promise to engage in genuine bipartisanship (we’ve emphasized our favorite passages in bold).

The first warning signals for me came with your acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. In it, you stressed domestic initiatives that clearly were nonstarters in the already shrinking economy.

Van Dyk takes a notable swipe at at least one senior Obama staffer’s cynical (or callously opportunistic) candor:

Many of the missteps that have followed flowed, in part, from your reliance on these Clinton holdovers. Your chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, defined your early strategy by stating that the financial and economic crises presented an “opportunity” to jam through unrelated legislation. To many of us, the remark was cynical and wrong-headed.

The crises did not represent an opportunity. They presented an obligation to do one thing: Return our financial system and our economy to good health.

He then contrasts the manner in which the Johnson and Obama administrations have pursued health care and energy initiatives:

[A]t every stage [in the Johnson administration], congressional leaders of both political parties and financial, business, labor and other private-sector leaders were consulted. Johnson wanted to assure that his legislation was substantively sound and could get consensus support in the Congress and the country.

Your strategy, by contrast, has been to advocate forcefully for health-care and energy reform but to leave the details to Democratic congressional committee chairs. You did the same thing with your initial $787 billion stimulus package. Now, you’re stuck with a plan that provides little stimulus until 2010. A president should never cede control of his main agenda to others.

This tactic has already had negative consequences. Frightened by the prospective costs of your health-care and energy plans — not to mention the bailouts of the financial and auto industries — independent voters who supported you in 2008 are falling away. FDR and LBJ, only two years after their 1932 and 1964 victories, saw their parties lose congressional seats even though their personal popularity remained stable. The party out of power traditionally gains seats in off-year elections, and 2010 is unlikely to be an exception.

This might indeed be a factor behind the decline in Obama’s ratings over the last few months. However, we think it’s unlikely that the GOP will gain seats in 2010, based on the last time we checked the data (when only Sen. Dodd’s seat appeared to be at risk), some recent high profile implosions in the GOP, and an expanding vacuum of formidable GOP candiates for 2010 and 2012.

You made promises about jobs that would be “created and saved” by the stimulus package. Those promises have not held up. You continue to engage in hyperbole by claiming that your health-care and energy plans will save tax dollars. Congressional Budget Office analysis indicates otherwise.

Amen. We’ve been complaining about the double and triple speak since the 2006 Congressional elections. The first time we hear a politician talk in NET terms about some program they advocate — whether jobs, revenues, or outlays — we’ll announce it, loudly.

It’s time to re-examine these initiatives. Could your health plan be scaled back to catastrophic coverage for all — badly needed by most families, but quite affordable if deductibles are set at the right levels? Should the Rube Goldbergian cap-and-trade proposals be replaced with a simple carbon tax, with proceeds to be allocated to alternative-fuels development?

No wonder we like Van Dyk’s op-ed. We’ve advocated for both of these more centrist alternatives over the ‘expensive messes’ he says are now in the works:

The evolving health and cap-and-trade bills are loaded with costly provisions designed to gain support from congressional leaders and special-interest constituencies. In short, they have become an expensive mess. This legislation will not clear Congress by the August recess, as you have requested, and could be stalled for the remainder of 2009. Settle for incremental change: Do not press Democratic legislators to vote for something they fear will destroy them in 2010.

Van Dyk’s warning below about enacting ‘high risk’ legislation is probably sound, and we certainly like the centrist tenor of his piece. But as noted above, we can’t ignore the state of utter disrepair that the GOP finds itself in — and as Rahm Emmanuel might counsel, why not take advantage of the opportunity?

This tension between short term opportunism (Emmanuel) and sound long term strategy (Van Dyk) has analogues in the investment world. Short term opportunism contributed to today’s woeful state of the GOP, and will probably have similar effects on the Democrats, eventually. But for the time being, there’s little standing in the way of the party’s agenda.

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URLs:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124779697143755743.html

http://www.citypages.com/2008-02-13/calendar/ted-van-dyk/

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0295987510?ie=UTF8&tag=symmetrycapit-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0295987510

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090717/ap_on_re_us/us_sc_governor_travel