But, nonetheless, I find myself disagreeing with a lot of the points made by Drew Westen in a post on HuffPo yesterday.
(Westen, by the way is a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Emory, and made waves with his book, "The Political Brain" last year. I had the pleasure of working with Drew while I was at the state party.)
So, in his post, Westen had some less than positive things to say concerning President Obama's leadership style, but in doing so, I think he missed a couple of important dynamics. Essentially, he takes Obama to task for conceding certain points to the Republican party in what Westen terms a, "chimera of bipartisanship that Obama oddly continues to pursue even while he remains unable to get a Republican vote on anything, no matter what concessions he offers."
I don't dispute that the President is not likely to garner significant Republican support, especially in the House, for any of his moves. But there are two points I'd like to make in rebuttal.
First, we have to look at where the American people are. As Westen says, we the people are in dire straits. Costs of everything from gas to health care are skyrocketing and wages aren't keeping up. And they've gone from being overwhelmed and confused to being overwhelmed, angry, and looking for someone to blame. It comes as a shock to no one that the target of that blame is that faceless monolith, "the politicians."
With waves upon waves of anger being directed at the politicians (mostly Congress, where almost every member has a D or an R by their name), it's no surprise that the perception of partisan gridlock is the voters' favorite straw man. And, while the number of self-identified Republicans is shrinking, those abandoning ship are not automatically jumping to the Democrats. The battle is still in the middle, with independent voters, and those voters are sick and tired of partisanship.
For President Obama to further galvanize an already angry citizenry is to cripple his Presidency. His only way out is up, above the mud. He has to be the grown-up in the room, because Boehner and McConnell, and even Pelosi and Reid, won't step up.
That brings me to my second point. I think this is part of a larger, long term political strategy. Simply put, Barack Obama is consciously and deliberately letting the Republican Party marginalize itself.
The Republicans want a hand in shaping policy, but they want it on their terms, and they refuse to yield an inch. The President gets that, and he's willing to let them scream and posture all they want, so that at the end, he can throw up his hands and say, "Well, we tried to reach out, and once again, they wouldn't compromise one bit." It's a long-term strategy, and as we saw last night, it hasn't fully come to fruition yet. But I have confidence that it will. You're using the Republicans' own weaknesses against them, and they're cooperating fully. (Thank you, Joe Wilson!) And until the Republican Party realizes that the battle is not for their own arch-conservative base, but for the people in the middle, this strategy will work.
It's a strategy that my friend Drew Westen could have written.
Now, this is not to imply that the "national agenda, and an ambitious one at that" which the President has set out is just a bunch of pawns in a larger political strategy. Far from it. This is a President of stern moral fiber and strong principles.
Westen cites health care as an example. I'll do the same. According to the good doctor:
"Obama could have told members of Congress when the health care fight began, 'If the average American doesn't have the same quality and range of options at the end of this process that you do, I will not sign any appropriations bill for next year that includes health insurance for federal employees, your family and mine included, because if it's good enough for us, it's good enough for the people we serve.' Had the president done that, he would have had populist sentiment at his back."
This is true, he could have done that, and I imagine that it would have been very popular. Here's the problem though. It wouldn't pass. (I'm presuming, by the way, that Westen's intent was limited to members of Congress and elected/high-level appointed officials, not to deny health care to federal employees like postal workers, clerks, and soldiers.)
Now we have to talk policy for a second. Westen's idea is good politics, and I don't doubt his assertion that it polled well. (In fact, I think I may have seen those numbers when I was working with him.) But as policy, it's completely unworkable on it's face. Such a proposal would bankrupt America, and would be dangerously close to universal single-player, which does not poll well at all.
More realistically, Westen's idea is merely a frame for something like the public option. But there's a huge pitfall here too. Doing something like providing the same quality of care that members of Congress get is not the same thing as providing the same health care that members of Congress get. Framing a policy alternative like the public option in terms of "the same quality and range of options at the end of this process that [members of Congress] do" at best brings us full circle to the same debate we've had since the beginning of the health insurance reform movement. At worst, it opens up a Pandora's Box of political fights. Westen's idea is a great talking point, but it's just not policy.
Let's look at history for a moment. Presidents have been trying to reform health insurance for decades. Roosevelt tried and failed. Truman, ditto. Kennedy, Johnson, Carter? Check, check, and check. And then there was the debacle known popularly as "Clintoncare." This is an effort that has been a long time coming and, Westen's criticism aside, we're closer now than we've ever been. Westen talks about principles, and I believe that President Obama's guiding principle is to get something done.
Let's look at process for a moment. In order to pass any kind of health insurance reform, the President has to have (limited) Republican support at some points along the way, primarily in the Senate. Them's the rules, archaic and counterproductive though they might be.
Finally, let's look at the future for a moment. As I said, the principle here is to get something, anything done. Anything is an improvement over the current system. Even a public option with an opt-out is an improvement. And, most people agree that this is a big first step, not an endgame. This is the breach in a wall that insurance companies and their lobbyists have held for decades. If we do this, if we do anything meaningful, even if it isn't the whole enchilada, then future efforts will still be incremental but easier to achieve. I believe that these thoughts are formost in the President's mind.
Westen's right, this is about leadership. But he and I have two different definitions of leadership. In the end, leadership isn't primarily about scoring political points, or revving up the Democratic base (of which Drew and I are enthusiastic members), it's about accomplishing a policy goal.
And in those terms, President Obama is a leader.
