What Obama should have done in 2009

[WhyteRain]

Anything Obama did would have been "controversial." The GOP made sure of that. Obama's mistake was wasting time trying to work with them. Any fool could see they weren't interested.

How much "time" did Obama spend trying to work with Republicans after telling them "I won"?  Minutes?  Surely not hours.

Historians and social scientists in the future will have to analyze the madness that seized so many Americans who thought this guy -- who was the author of zero "hope and change" as a state or U.S. senator -- was going to get a complete personality transplant and be a real reformer in the White House.

"Let's elect as President the guy with the most far-Left voting record of our Senate caucus, a guy who never found any corruption in Chicago that bothered him, a guy with no experience ever at compromising with anyone, a guy whose only executive experience was to rain money on teachers unions as part of the Annenberg Project ...  What could go wrong?"

If only Obama had taken my single piece of advice to him upon his inauguration, he'd be a shoo-in for re-election today:  "Tell Pelosi and Reid not to bring you a single piece of legislation to sign that didn't get the votes of at least 10% of the Republicans".  Instead, he let Nancy and Harry make him sign bills that got the minimum number of votes to pass, losing even moderate Democrats whose "no" votes still couldn't save them from being crushed in the 2010 midterms!

Obama said he wanted to be like Reagan -- but he did everything the opposite of Reagan, and I'm not talking about policy grounds at all. 

Reagan's signature economic reform in 1981 was his "Economic Recovery Tax Act" (ERTA).  He campaigned on it.  Do you know what the vote on it was?  Was it a party line vote?

Senate:  68 yea, 9 nay
House:  323 yea, 107 nay

That was in a Senate with 46 Democrats and a House with 255 Democrats!

How did he do it?  Democrats seem to think all Reagan had was good looks and charm.  That's idiotic.  (They make the same mistake about Sarah Palin -- who was loved by Alaska Democrats because of her independence from Alaska's "good ol' boy" GOP machine and from Big Oil until she became McCain's running mate; but I digress.)

An excellent analysis of how Reagan passed ERTA -- the centerpiece of "the Reagan Revolution" -- with overwhelming bi-partisan support is found at http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft5d5nb36w&chunk.id=d0e5140&toc.id=d0e5140&brand=ucpress

(Note the author of the article is anti-ERTA, as the title suggests, "Starving the Public Sector: The Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981".)

The short analysis is this:

1.  Reagan compromised!  He campaigned for a (1) 30% and (2) immediate tax rate cut.  He settled for (1) 25% which was (2) spread out over years (5% in 1981, 10% in 1982, and 10% in 1983).

2.  Reagan made the deal palatable to Democrats by letting them add all sorts of sweeteners for their own campaign contributors.  From the article:

Tip O'Neill mused that "when they had the pure Kemp-Roth and the 10-5-3 we had them licked and they knew we had them licked. But where we made our mistake was … in allowing them to get the information of what was in our bill … the sweeteners…. They took the goodies that were under our table [and put them in the GOP bill]...."[31]

The Senate adopted 80 of 118 proposed amendments to the Finance Committee bill, creating a beautiful Christmas tree. These ranged from lowering the minimum corporation tax rate to a one-time $1,500 credit for adoption of certain disadvantaged children to a $10 credit for each pecan tree planted in South Alabama to replace each one blown down by Hurricane Frederick in 1979.[60] In short, the Senate adopted many amendments serving many ends.

The administration's July 23 agreements, about which Conable now had more of a say (some wags suggested calling it "Hance-Conable 2"), included special provisions ranging from sops for gypsy moths (tax credits for rehabilitating old buildings and for woodburning stoves) to a credit for investing in television shows...

Reagan was smart.  Obama was, and is, dumb.  Reagan knew that legislation, like sausage-making, is an ugly business.  Reagan kept his eyes on the prize -- a dramatic lowering of marginal income tax rates -- and let the Democrats have everything else they wanted.  If Obama had done the same with his Stimulus, Financial Reform, and Health Care bills, he'd be coasting to re-election right now!

For those who would say, "Oh, well if we let the Republicans participate on those bills, the reforms would have been far too modest", let me point out something:  ERTA only lowered the top marginal income tax rate to 50%.  Yes, you read that right, the "moderate" reform that got overwhelming Democratic backing lowered the rate to a level that today would be politically impossible to raise it to!  By compromising, Reagan won a permanent victory.

[WhyteRain]

Are you seriously blaming Obama for the fact that Republicans wouldn't listen to him? Their stated intent was to avoid compromise; just look at Mourdock.

What was he saying that they should have listened to?

Face it:   Obama -- like most people who learned their politics in college pizza parties and faculty lounges -- is a total stranger to compromise.  He cannot do it.  He couldn't even vote to make doctors try to save born children who survived abortions.  He couldn't vote to let Bush raise the debt ceiling.  Compromise is utterly foreign to his DNA.   As John Boehner has said about negotiating with Obama, "You can't get him to 'Yes'". 

Reagan let the Democrats "water down" every one of his major policy bills so long as core principles were maintained (e.g., marginal rates could never rise).  Clinton signed whatever Gingrich and Dole put in front of him so long as certain principles were maintained (notably requiring the expansion of the coverage of the Community Reinvestment Act as a condition of signing the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999). 

The guy with the most far-Left voting record in the U.S. Senate -- and who may still hold the record for "present" votes in the Illinois lege -- went to the White House and acted like a Senator, as though nothing had really changed to make him more malleable as President than he had been as a legislator.

His arrogance and intransigence resulted in the biggest midterm losses for his party in generations but he acts like he had nothing to do with it (just as he says now that he had nothing to do with the deficits).  He was arrogant (stupid?) enough to tell Sen. Webb in 2010 not to worry about a repeat of 1994 because, "This time you have me."  This is a guy who probably literally believes that his rise to power really did mark the day the oceans ceased to rise and the planet began to heal! 

He's going to get buried in November and the sad thing is, he won't have a clue why.

[WhyteRain]

Anything Obama did would have been "controversial." The GOP made sure of that. Obama's mistake was wasting time trying to work with them. Any fool could see they weren't interested.

That wasn't true for the first 6 months. Most of the GOP officials were taken aback at the magnitude of Obama's victory and his win in states like IN and NC. There was substantial fear that total obstruction would be met with more electoral losses. It was only in the August 09 recess at local town hall meetings that the Tea Party showed it's strength pushing back against those members who sought to compromise with the WH. The August recess also marked the decline in productivity of the bipartisan six Senators working on a compromise on health care reform.

Given that timeline, I still think that Trende's insight that a split stimulus might have been played better is worth consideration.

Not a single House Republican voted for the recovery act. That was in February 2009. The GOP had no intention of playing ball.

The opposition party doesn't vote for your bill and that's all their fault?

I see no one wants to address the fact that Reagan's signature 1981 economic legislation got overwhelming bipartisan support. 

The fact is that the Democrats see themselves as "the natural ruling party", and yet 2009 was the first time in 16 years they had a new president and control of Congress.  Moreover, unlike the GOP which has a high rate of turnover, virtually the entire Dem Party leadership was -- incredibly -- unchanged from 1993 to 2009.  These were people who were nursing many years of grudges.  (Another result of the ossification of the Dem Party is that now we have a record age gap between Repubs and Dems in Congress, with Repubs averaging five years younger.)

With the extreme Left in full control of the Democratic Party in 2009 (and today), there was no inclination to "compromise" with a GOP that many thought was about to go extinct anyway.

[WhyteRain]

Anything Obama did would have been "controversial." The GOP made sure of that. Obama's mistake was wasting time trying to work with them. Any fool could see they weren't interested.

That wasn't true for the first 6 months. Most of the GOP officials were taken aback at the magnitude of Obama's victory and his win in states like IN and NC. There was substantial fear that total obstruction would be met with more electoral losses. It was only in the August 09 recess at local town hall meetings that the Tea Party showed it's strength pushing back against those members who sought to compromise with the WH. The August recess also marked the decline in productivity of the bipartisan six Senators working on a compromise on health care reform.

Given that timeline, I still think that Trende's insight that a split stimulus might have been played better is worth consideration.

Not a single House Republican voted for the recovery act. That was in February 2009. The GOP had no intention of playing ball.

The opposition party doesn't vote for your bill and that's all their fault?

I see no one wants to address the fact that Reagan's signature 1981 economic legislation got overwhelming bipartisan support. 

The fact is that the Democrats see themselves as "the natural ruling party", and yet 2009 was the first time in 16 years they had a new president and control of Congress.  Moreover, unlike the GOP which has a high rate of turnover, virtually the entire Dem Party leadership was -- incredibly -- unchanged from 1993 to 2009.  These were people who were nursing many years of grudges.  (Another result of the ossification of the Dem Party is that now we have a record age gap between Repubs and Dems in Congress, with Repubs averaging five years younger.)

With the extreme Left in full control of the Democratic Party in 2009 (and today), there was no inclination to "compromise" with a GOP that many thought was about to go extinct anyway.

Have you been listening to the things that the Republicans have been saying!? They are actively not compromising! It's not that they're willing and Obama's not, it's the exact opposite!

The Democrats' definition of "compromise" is "We get everything we want".

The Democrats' answer to any new ideas from Republicans is to refuse to hold votes on them in the Senate.

The Democrats have no answers.  They cannot write a budget.  They cannot write entitlement reforms.  They cannot do anything because they are completely hostage to their "groups".  All they can do is say "no no no!" to every new reform the Republicans propose.

Of course, if you trust the company town reporters of the nation's richest metropolis, you won't know any of this.

[WhyteRain]

Regardless of what could have been/should have been/would have been in Obama's first term, it's quite clear to anyone with any credibility whatsoever that electing a Republican President this year would be a death wish for this country.

By your lights, in what year was electing a Republican President not a death wish for this country?  1980?  1968?  2000?  1952?

[modify:]  I'll grant that electing a Republican President in 1860 was a death wish for the country.

[WhyteRain]

One thing - the most important thing going away - that Obama has not even been talking about, much less "compromising" on, is entitlement reform. That is the major reason we are in irons. This is one issue where the POTUS must lead. He hasn't been.

To be fair W tried to do something during his second term and squat happened.  The voters don't want entitlement reform.  They think they've fully paid for their benefits and aren't about to give them up.  I don't blame Obama for not wasting time on something that wasn't going to happen.

I am not taking a position on the Bush reforms of SS, but his main problem with it was that he did not campaign on it in his 2004 race.  If he had made SS reform a campaign issue -- and then won -- then he would have been successful in pushing his reforms in 2005-06.

[WhyteRain]

Meh, I disagree. I think deficit reduction as a whole has been a dumb idea for the past year, since we're still not out of the economic hole. Premature austerity has undermined US economic growth, and pretty much tanked a bunch of European economies.

"Austerity" (a misnomer nowadays) is not what tanked European economies.

An inability to pay their debts is what tanked European economies.  Gee, I wonder how that could happen...

"Austerity" was talked about as a solution to the debt crisis, but new loans to pay for the old loans became the preferred path.  (There will eventually be real austerity, but it will be much worse than it would be now.  Or maybe these weak states will just sell their national assets and/or their foreign policies to powers that have not gone debt-insane.)

You must be logged in to read this quote.

It's not that "smart" government spending cannot stimulate the economy.  Reagan did it with deficits that averaged less than 4.2% of GNP.  Bush 43 did it with deficits that never topped 3.5% GNP (and fell to 1.1% before Obama-Pelosi-Reid took power in 2007).  But stupid government spending -- of the "cowboy poetry" and Solyndra-type that we all associate now with Democrats -- can't stimulate even with record federal spending and deficits of 11% of GNP.

(Btw, there's the answer to "Why weren't you Tea Partyers upset at Bush's deficits?"  We were, but it must be acknowledged that while Bush spent like a drunken sailor, Obama spends like a drunken admiral.)

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Let's get rid of the "stupid" government spending.  Only then can we talk about how much of the rest we need.  As long as the Obamacrats keep claiming that every dime of cowboy poetry and Solyndra spending is "critical investments", they won't have any credibility with us.