We have a new and complex set of financial rules in this country — the first stiffening of policy and prohibition since FDR — and while they aren’t as profound as we wanted, they are still nothing to sneeze at. The Achilles Heel is that the regulators MUST bare the weight of their responsibility if this is to work — no establishment shenanigans.
You need to be aware of the growing controversy around naming Elizabeth Warren — peoples hero and certainly mine — to the position she personally championed in 2007 to protect the middle class, and has mobilized growing support for since, to provide regulation … a.k.a … consumer financial protection.
Little Timmy Geithner doesn’t like her, having tangled with her in the last months, and since the new reforms give him … in his treasury position … a good deal more power, he will surely have an opinion about this nomination. While Obama has been very supportive of her, the White House machine is proposing a list of possible names without adding weight to hers. Chris Dodd says she might not be confirmable but that’s a straw man. Warren could step in as Queen Watchdog and do a powerful job for the little guy.
Krugman and Johnson … two of my favorite populist economists … have endorsed her to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, as has over 250 organizations under the umbrella of Americans for Financial Reform. Many in this group are allied with the Obama administration, including labor groups.
Add that the bankers fear her and that’s EXACTLY the person we need in the job. This, from Huffy:
But some have speculated Warren may face an uphill battle to become its inaugural chief. Lenders fear her — particularly given her strong advocacy on behalf of the debt-strapped middle class — and are furiously fighting her potential nomination as she’s viewed as the most consumer-friendly of the candidates. Their friends in the Senate may take up their cause.
Proponents and critics agree that the first director will have a lasting impact on the agency, from the hiring of staff to the general attitude it takes towards consumer protection. Some are expected to prepare a Supreme Court-style campaign when Obama names his nominee.
During a radio interview Monday, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd said there’s a “serious question” over whether she, as Obama’s nominee, could be confirmed by the Senate.
“We are confident she is confirmable,” White House spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki said.
The administration, though, could bypass the Senate entirely — without engendering the ill-will that would result from a recess appointment.
According to the bill’s language, the Treasury Secretary has sole authority to build the new agency before it’s ultimately transferred to the Federal Reserve. That includes anointing a person to head the effort on his behalf, and under his authority. The interim head would serve until the President’s nominee is confirmed by the Senate.
That person could be Elizabeth Warren.
And the legislation doesn’t appear to contain a deadline for a Presidential nomination, experts say, which means Warren could start the agency from scratch, put her people in, begin cracking down on predatory and abusive lenders, and initiate a culture that would put consumers’ interests above those of the nation’s most powerful financial institutions.
In short, she could set a tone the agency will follow for the next several years without the administration needing to fight a potentially drawn-out confirmation battle that could stall Obama’s pro-consumer agenda.
This is a no-brainer. Warren got us here — she deserves the job and WE deserve her! The Lefty’s have circled the wagons around Elizabeth. Since Credo/Bold Progressives began their petition on her behalf on Friday, we now have over 140,000 citizens supporting her nomination — please add your name, if you choose. If so, do it now … a nomination could come this week. And if you think petitions are crap, know that this one is different … this one is a DEMAND by the people.
There is NO reason why this woman shouldn’t have this job and in fact, she’s earned it … if she wants it. If this is politicized away from her by Geithner, Summers, yadda et al, we need to come down on this administration HARD. This may not be the most important toss-up in town … but it’s the one that is the most obviously grassroots and the one that will allow us to sleep better at night.
.
Elizabeth Warren. Or else.
Jude
Timothy Geithner’s realm grows with passage of financial regulatory reform
David Cho, WaPo
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Tim Geithner Opposes Nominating Elizabeth Warren To Lead New Consumer Agency
Shahien Nasiripour, HuffPo
07-15-10
Treasury Makes A Mistake - Claiming They Are Not Blocking Elizabeth Warren
Simon Johnson, Baseline Scenario
It’s one thing to block Elizabeth Warren from heading the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
It’s quite another thing to deny in public, for the record, that any such blocking is going on (e.g., see this report; Michael Barr apparently said something quite similar today).
There is a strong groundswell of opinion on this issue from the left - see the BoldProgressives petition. But the center also feels strongly that, given everything Treasury has said and done over the past few months, it would be a complete travesty not to put the strongest possible regulator in change of protecting consumers. (See Ted Kaufman on the NYT’s DealBook, giving appropriate credit to the SEC, and apply the same points to broader customer issues going forward.)
This can now go only one of two ways.
1.Elizabeth Warren gets the job. Bridges are mended and the White House regains some political capital. Secretary Geithner is weakened slightly but he’ll recover.
2.Someone else gets the job, despite Treasury’s claims that Elizabeth Warren was not blocked. The deception in this scenario would be nauseating - and completely blatant. “Everyone was considered on their merits” and “the best candidate won” will convince who exactly?
Despite the growing public reaction, outcome #2 is the most likely and the White House needs to understand this, plain and clear - there will be complete and utter revulsion at its handling of financial regulatory reform both on this specific issue and much more broadly. The administration’s position in this area is already weak, its achievements remain minimal, its speaking points are lame, and the patience of even well-inclined people is wearing thin.
Failing to appoint Elizabeth Warren would be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. It will go down in the history books as a turning point - downwards - for this administration. ++
The Warren Drama: Another Missed Opportunity?
Robert Kuttner, The American Prospect
July 18, 2010
For the past several days, people who care about whether financial reform is to be real or sham have been following the drama of whether President Obama will name Elizabeth Warren to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The Bureau is the best thing about the financial reform bill that Obama will sign later this week, and its prime architect was Warren, a folksy Harvard law professor who has become a well known and admired public figure championing reform.
It’s no secret that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner doesn’t want Warren. As Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel monitoring the Treasury’s conduct of the bank bailout under TARP, Warren turned what might have been an obscure and toothless agency into a feisty forum for challenging the Treasury’s coddling of the big banks. She did not pull her punches in asking tough questions of the treasury secretary and demanding sometimes embarrassing documents.
Over the past several days, the Treasury has leaked other names being considered for the job, giving the deliberate impression that Warren is just one candidate among many. White House political adviser David Axelrod, given the chance to clearly deny that Geithner was trying to block Warren’s appointment, described her as well qualified but his statement was widely taken as faint praise.
All of this infighting and leaking must be amusing to President Obama, the man who ultimately will make the appointment. It was Obama who personally decided that he wanted a strong consumer protection agency in the financial reform bill, partly to offset the perception that the administration was too cozy with Wall Street.
The provision survived lukewarm support by many in the administration because it was one of the few provisions in which Obama took a direct personal interest. Obama, not Tim Geithner, will choose the first head of the new agency. Strong presidents, like Franklin Roosevelt, tolerate advisers with differing viewpoints.
A reform package that should have been a clear winner politically has turned out to be a political draw because too many voters believe that the Administration has favored Wall Street over Main Street. The best possible antidote to that perception would be the appointment of Warren. She is the rare public official involved with financial regulation seen as a passionate fighter for regular people. The Administration desperately needs a dose of that.
There is a whispering campaign that Warren would be given a rough time in a confirmation hearing. But a contentious confirmation process would be a pure gift to the White House and the Democrats.
Much of the financial reform package is fairly obscure and technical. Mention the words credit default swap, and it just reinforces the impression that the government is in bed with Wall Street. But consumer protection is the easiest part to grasp. Do we want banks to gouge consumers on overdraft charges, mislead them on the cost of credit cards, and devise deceptive mortgage products? Most Americans would say no.
This is the fight Warren has been waging. If Republican senators want to hold hearings defending the poor misunderstood bankers, and giving the compelling Warren a hard time for protecting consumers, bring it on. It would make terrific television and nothing would be more clarifying about which party is the bigger stooge for Wall Street. This administration needs a few star players who stand up for regular people.
Obama needs to make his decision soon, because the longer this question hangs fire the more annoyed the Democratic Party base becomes with the White House and the more the Treasury invites pressure from the bankers to give the job to anybody but Warren.
This is actually a story not just about Warren, but about three public officials. This is going to sound very down-in-the-weeds, but stay with me because here’s where the politics get really interesting. The other two are named Michael Barr and Richard Neiman.
Barr, the assistant treasury secretary for financial institutions, is said to be the Treasury’s preferred alternative to Warren. The banks are lobbying hard to get Barr the job.
In fact, Barr worked hard inside the administration to get a strong consumer protection agency, and he and Warren enjoy a good relationship. A University of Michigan Law Professor on leave to work at Treasury, Barr is friendly to some forms of regulation. However, on other key regulatory issues, such as too-big-to-fail, and a strong version of the Volcker rule separating commercial banking from financial gambling, Barr has been very much Geithner’s man.
During the final weeks of the legislative fight for financial reform, Barr infuriated progressives in Congress by pressing for weaker rather than stronger forms of regulation. But as someone with credibility on consumer protection and loyalty to Geithner, Barr is seen by the banking industry as the perfect anti-Warren.
There is a third person in this tale, Richard Neiman, who is up for another key regulatory job, the chief regulator of national banks. (That post is known, misleadingly, as the Controller of the Currency.) Neiman’s current day job is New York State Banking Superintendent, and he also serves with Warren as one of three Democrats on the Congressional Oversight Panel that Warren Chairs.
Throughout his career, Neiman has been known as a Wall Street Democrat. He spent ten years at Citigroup, and another twelve with the TD Waterhouse group, another large bank holding company. As New York Banking Superintendent, Neiman was seen as so banker-friendly that Goldman Sachs opted to become a New York state-regulated bank under Neiman’s supervision.
On the Congressional Oversight Panel, Neiman has often sided with Republicans and bankers against the Panel’s two progressive Democrats, Warren and Damon Silvers of the AFL-CIO. He frequently issued separate statements taking issue with the Democratic majority, and even wrote a dissenting report co-authored with Republican panel member John Sununu.
If President Obama names Barr to head the new consumer agency and Neiman to regulate national banks, it will be a signal that Wall Street is still in the saddle, an affront to Warren, as well as a huge missed opportunity.
However, there is an elegant trifecta solution. Give Barr the more technical job of regulating national banks — he is well qualified and a lot less beholden to Wall Street than Neiman. And then make Warren the head of the new consumer bureau.
It’s not just that Warren has earned the job and that the appointment would cheer a progressive base that needs to be energized for November. Daring the Republicans and the financial industry to go after this dedicated and charismatic fighter for regular people would also be terrific politics. ++
“I’m asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington … I’m asking you to believe in yours.”
~ Barack Obama
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
July 20th, 2010
Sorry for not showing up more regularly these last weeks, dearhearts — I’m under the weather, both literally and figuratively. But this too shall pass, soon I hope. Thanks for your patience.
I once voted Libertarian in a fit of pique over the political infighting that had turned me cold to the Democratic ticket. I chose them because I understand these people and their desire for government non-interference. But everything is relative, of course, and Libertarianism worked better in centuries past, when things were not so interconnected nor the population so immense. To my credit, it was not a presidential year. Since then, I’ve learned that the art of politics is actually a morality play — and a Petrie dish for evolvement, which is pretty much why I do what I do, here.
You know that I don’t consider myself a Democrat despite my membership in several Dem organizations and my Lefty ways. I’m one of those Independents everybody worries about, but they needn’t … unless someone runs on the Socialist ticket. This ‘everybody out for themselves’ non-sense has turned the population cruel and selfish, and twisted government into a haven for scalawags that is only too eager to carve up an honest wo/man. I’ve had enough of both and I’m cranky about it.
I stumbled on to Glenn Beck and a group of those he wants to hire for his new “university,’ the other night, and I swear — the FCC needs to shut FOX News down as a danger to the nation as radical as Hamas or Hezbollah. But that can’t happen because there is no law on the books demanding that news agencies tell people THE TRUTH. We’re stuck with revisionist history, political assassination, ideological propaganda and end-times hysteria that crosses over into demented fear-mongering: all protected under the First Amendment. So if you want mush for brains feel free to tune in — but hatred is addictive, so be warned.
And in case you didn’t know that the Pubs are the Party of Absolutely Not for anything Obama proposes, here’s a list of things they were for before they were against — John Kerry should send spitballs across the aisle every day!
Did I mention that this moral void didn’t happen overnight? The fire under the pot has been deliberately turned up by increments for so long that elders still think ‘patriotism’ is chest-thumping, World War II style, and mid-lifer’s don’t understand how their jobs could have disappeared. The frogs are well-done now … they would be US … and ready to be served up as pâté, spread on crackers, to the moneyed elite.
This is not the first time the nation has had such crisis, and surely a look back … as you will find in some of the informative reads I’ve included below … serves to give us perspective. Last year at this time, the Baggers showed us the seriously nasty underbelly of conservative thought that etched itself like acid in the political dialogue until it created a toe-hold for the Crazy’s in mainstream politics. And because politics is local, we’ve got the likes of Rand Paul parsing the morality of the nation.
We’ve seen this before, but seriously, kids … we crossed a line a few weeks back and now we’re in new territory. What is mean is gawd-awful, shameful meanness and obvious to all but those who embrace it — what is honest and heartfelt shines like a beacon in a very dark night. There’s a line in the sand been drawn between the delusional and those who are seeking a return to balance and sanity.
Arianna Huffington commented on it recently:
It’s about choosing sides in the real battle being fought all across the globe — the fight between extremism and rationality, between hatred and common decency.
There was some discussion during the Bush ascendency about the war between Dark and Light, quickly poo-poo’d by the cynics who are evidently comfortable with this level of schism and not imaginative enough to discern a real emergence of choice, going forward, for breaking the old paradigm embrace of punitive, authoritarian servitude that perpetuates class war. Essentially, we let the Dark make our choices for us for eight years — but the next election proved that the nation could change its mind. Now, because government is broken on so many levels, we hear how things aren’t getting better and we’re looking for another hero to bring us back into good times. Common, kids! That isn’t even good reality TV.
Understanding where we are, and why, is an example of rationality not all citizens embrace; and behaving decently has been confused right out of some of us. If the Greed Is Good mantra hadn’t taken hold back in the 80s, the boyz with the most toys might not be ignoring attempts to constrain them. If real wages had kept up with inflation we might not have sold our souls to Visa and Master Charge, becoming so preoccupied with our credit reports that now, as a full quarter of us have faulty credit scores, we have no options in sight. And if the holy-rollers hadn’t gotten their hands on evangelism and a TV camera thirty years ago, there might be more decent folk today, actually understanding the gentle stewardship of the Christ message instead of just wearing sound bites on a T-shirt silk-screened with Jesus holding an AK-47.
God/dess gave us both a brain AND a heart — we need to use them. And there’s no question about what needs doing: do unto others as you would have done unto you.
Yesterdays eclipse put the polish on a 19 year period that began back in the early 90s — now we begin again. Since it’s difficult to argue that that same period of time is how long we’ve been bubbling in the frog pot, beginning again will require us to shake off a lot of old experience as unworkable and make new choices.
Some say this period is all about money, certainly the election will be about jobs. But money isn’t life and character isn’t money — character is what is developed with too much of it and with too little. Those who pass that spiritual test will have a strength that those depending on their bankbook can’t buy and don’t know how to get. Me, I think it’s waaaaay past time the God of Mammon was exposed as a blood-sucking tyrant with feet of clay — there’s more in my weekly piece, if you’re interested.
And yes — it’s a war between Dark and Light. A time of great change and essential choice. This isn’t about going to war with the hateful — it’s about standing up for what’s decent. We’re poised on evolvement and we can’t waste our time and effort on those who insist on devolving. Now, we make a stand for what’s right and we don’t give an inch.
By the way, the Eric Alterman piece is too long to post and do open it if you have some time. Very informative, although Eric is always getting prodded by the far-Left as a wimp. I dunno … maybe just a pragmatist with the long view. Reality is like that. And don’t miss the Salon piece — very accurate assessment of the Clinton camp. Excellent reads for understanding where we are, today.
Keep shinin’
Jude
Jobless Jack
Mark Fiori ‘toon
Kabuki Democracy: Why a Progressive Presidency Is Impossible, for Now
Eric Alterman, The Nation
July 7, 2010
The Disappearing Intellectual in the Age of Economic Darwinism
Henry A. Giroux, t r u t h o u t
Monday 12 July 2010
“Carnival barkers, pied pipers, snake oil salesmen [and] bile and paranoid fantasies”
P.M. Carpenter, BuzzFlash
Mon, 07/12/2010
The one thing Democrats have going for them is the electorate’s enduring wariness of the GOP. The midterms, now predicated on the economy’s absence of dramatic improvement, should be trending unmistakably Republican. But it isn’t.
The results of Gallup’s Daily tracking poll from early July — titled “Democrats, Republicans Still Tied on 2010 Generic Ballot” — show that “Republicans maintain their competitive position on the generic congressional ballot, with 46% of U.S. registered voters preferring the Republican candidate in their district and 44% the Democratic candidate.” Competitive, but hardly a lock.
What’s more, while the Democrats’ percentage has dropped a disturbing six points since last summer, the percentage increase for Republicans is statistically insignificant (it was 44).
As true as it is troubling, Gallup further reports that “historical trends suggest that a slight Republican lead on the generic ballot among registered voters … would translate into sizable Republican seat gains in Congress on Election Day, given their typical advantage in voter turnout.” But of course it’s also true that history has nearly always favored the out-of-power party in midterms, a kind of punishing, internal correction exercised — wisely or blindly — by the electorate every four years between presidential elections.
This year, however, doubts about GOP governance persist among the key voting bloc of independents. The hopeful ambivalence to be noted is that while independents may be wandering away from Democrats, they are decidedly not peddling into the GOP camp.
Why? A twofold answer comes echoing back with resounding clarity: One, the GOP is unforgettably incompetent; and two, the GOP has become inexhaustibly crazy.
The first fact requires no elaboration; we all, all of us, independents included, have just survived (maybe) nearly a decade of immense Republican incompetence — indeed, an incompetence by design, since bumpy is the road of managing a government one hates — and even Americans’ famous short-term memory hangs tight to the GOP’s darkest of bumbling deeds.
The second factor — that of bughouse unlimited — has, I think, for most voters been less of a sudden epiphany than a bubbling realization now coming to a boil. Systematically have the whackos, the wingnuts, the crazies and crackpots removed moderate — these days, one is tempted to even say thoughtful — Republicans from power, and the latter are beginning to strike back, or at least lash out.
Case in point, soon-to-be former congressman Bob Inglis, of South Carolina, who, as Politico reported, recently “lost his primary in part because he was openly critical of Glenn Beck and told his conservative constituents not to believe everything they hear on Fox…. Pointing a finger at Beck, Sarah Palin and such conservative figures, Inglis told AP:
“There were no death panels in the [healthcare] bill … and to encourage that kind of fear is just the lowest form of political leadership. It’s not leadership. It’s demagoguery.”
Yet the equally intriguing part of the Politico story were some of the reader comments that followed — those, that is, from the very Beck-Palin followers whom Inglis had warned. A sampling:
“Inglis knows that the only way for a Republican to get written up by the Beltway media is to attack other Republicans. Which is why Republicans don’t take this article, or Inglis, seriously.” Classic denial, mixed with the old “this guy is so beneath comment I must comment on it” routine.
And there was this: “Beck did not pull a lever in the booth nor did Palin. The people did” — my emphasis, that being Exhibit A in the displayed folly of political activists who mistake their fellow crackpots for a mass “movement.”
Or, there was this: “This is only newsworthy to a liberal rag like Politico that traffics in all things negative towards conservatives. Typical.” Rather, what’s typical is the Agnewesque habit of attacking the reporting source, even when the source omits independent comment, which Politico did.
Now I ask you: Are such delusional, seething “activists” likely to convert many independents?
There also, however, was another conservative comment that I just can’t let pass, in that it reflected the essential mainstream of yesteryear’s Republicanism. It was literate, though, so perhaps a plant; but in the absence of any contrary evidence let’s take it at face value:
“Pretty darn ridiculous. Inglis has a perfect ‘0′ score from organizations like NARAL, and perfect 100 scores from every right to life group. He gets a 90 from the Chamber of Commerce. He gets a 95 from FreedomWorks, a 92 from the American Conservative Union…. So why’d he get tossed? Because he wasn’t crazy enough. Because he wasn’t calling on people to drink the blood of liberals. I wish you nutjobs would get the hell out of my party. You make a mockery of honest conservatives. You follow your stupid carnival barkers, pied pipers, and snake oil salesmen who sell you non-stop outrage. Conservatism isn’t about hating the guts of the other guy — it’s about good policy. You’ve turned it into a joke. You’re ruining my party and you’ll ruin America. You contribute nothing but bile and paranoid fantasies. You have nothing positive to offer — only fevered nightmares. Mark my words — you’re not saving the nation or the Republican party — you’re injecting it with a deadly poison…. Grow up or go away.”
Doubtless, they won’t be going away anytime soon — and in the coming midterms they and their “nutjob” brethren will almost certainly deprive the nation of many a Congressional district’s marginal sanity. But they do perform an invaluable service: They’re also driving thoughtful independents away from the increasingly infantile Republican Party. ++
Restoring a Hallowed Vision
BOB HERBERT, NYT
July 9, 2010
“We’re going to show that there is a different day in America — that working people are sick and tired of the bosses getting million-dollar bonuses and the workers getting the short end of the stick.”
– Bob King
In April 1968, the same month that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed in Memphis, where he had gone to support striking sanitation workers, the president of the powerful auto workers’ union, Walter Reuther, traveled to Memphis to give the strikers critically needed financial support.
The sanitation workers were black. In his biography of Reuther, Nelson Lichtenstein noted that the check he handed over to the strikers was the largest outside contribution that they would receive. Some officials at the United Automobile Workers headquarters in Detroit were taken aback. “But Reuther forged ahead,” Lichtenstein wrote, “offering an impassioned defense of interracial solidarity.”
Three-thousand delegates to the U.A.W. convention later that year heard Reuther say: “We laid $50,000 on the line to demonstrate we meant business. Who helped us back in 1936 and 1937 when we were being beaten up and shot at, when our offices and our cars were being blown up by the gangsters hired by the corporations?
“Who helped us? The coal miners … the clothing workers … as long as I am identified with the leadership of this great union, we are going to extend a hand of solidarity to every group of workers who are struggling for justice.”
Reuther believed that solidarity and a commitment to social and economic justice was the very essence of the union movement. If you want to hear a heartfelt restatement of those beliefs for the early 21st century, a period in which the union movement is in great distress and the living standards of working people have seriously declined, listen to the soft-spoken new president of the U.A.W., Bob King.
“My view of the labor movement today,” he said in an interview, “is that we got too focused on our contracts and our own membership and forgot that the only way, ultimately, that we protect our members and workers in general is by fighting for justice for everybody.”
The fundamental issue is that “every human being deserves dignity and a decent standard of living,” he said, “and the whole point of the labor movement is to help make that happen.”
In Mr. King’s view, the fight to organize workers and improve their wages and benefits is important, but it’s part of a much broader effort to improve the lives of individuals and families throughout the country and beyond. He is a believer in cooperative efforts and shared sacrifice, and is unabashedly idealistic as he outlines what can only be described as a new activism on labor’s part.
He promised his members last month that the U.A.W. would be marching and campaigning and organizing — for jobs, for a moratorium on home foreclosures, for civil and human rights and against the mistreatment of immigrants, and for peace.
“The Tea Party has been more vocal than we’ve been,” he said. “There is something wrong with that picture.”
This is not the way that prominent leaders in any segment of our society have spoken for a long time. The pragmatists and cynics, who have gotten a stranglehold on the culture, will scoff. But the pragmatists and cynics, with their hubris and half-baked ideologies, have handed all the wealth of the nation to a favored few and left the rest of the society a ragged mess.
It’s no accident that the great progressive successes of the labor movement, the civil rights movement, a variety of other social justice movements, and the emergence of a vast and thriving middle class all converged in the early post-World War II decades.
But the counterattack from the right, with its assaults on labor, its outlandishly regressive tax policies, its slavish devotion to corporate power and its divide-and-conquer strategies on racial and ethnic issues all combined to halt the remarkable advances of ordinary working people.
All you have to do now is look around at what the right has wrought.
Bob King has a vision that draws upon the lessons of that postwar period, starting with the basic right of workers to organize if they wish without being terrorized by employers. It was the fact that workers were organized in the auto and other manufacturing industries that sparked the creation of a large middle class in America. Those well-paying union jobs allowed working families to buy a home, to put their children through school, to build better lives.
The wages from those jobs fueled the consumer demand that powered America’s economic success.
Even as he looks toward the future, Mr. King is trying to remind us of what went right in the past. ++
Putting the left’s Obama “despair” in perspective
The president’s supporters expected big things and are feeling short-changed. Stop me if you’ve heard this before
Steve Kornacki, Salon
Monday, Jul 12, 2010
Politico ran a piece over the weekend about the left’s “despair” over the direction of the Obama presidency.
The grievances are all familiar at this point: the stimulus wasn’t big enough, healthcare reform took too long and compromised away too much, we shouldn’t be in Afghanistan, and so on. The interesting question, to me at least, is what this all adds up to politically. How serious, in other words, is Obama’s problem with the Democratic Party base?
My sense is that it’s not actually that bad. This isn’t to diminish the disappointment (or even betrayal) that many of Obama’s most ardent 2008 supporters feel, or the legitimacy of their policy gripes. But when you consider other modern presidencies, the frustration that now grips the left is hardly atypical.
Five of Obama’s six immediate predecessors enjoyed at roughly this point in their presidencies what could fairly be described as serious tension with their party’s base. The lone exception was George W. Bush, who was shielded from meaningful intraparty dissent by 9/11, which came not quite eight months into his tenure. It wasn’t until Bush’s second term that the right became outwardly restive. (Although it should be noted that in the months before 9/11, John McCain rarely missed a chance to poke a stick in Bush’s eye.)
For three recent presidents, this tension ended up having a deleterious long-term impact: Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush. The good news for Obama is that their examples aren’t particularly analogous to his, because Ford, Carter and Bush all faced skeptical and even hostile bases from the start of their presidencies.
Ford’s story is a little different, of course, since he was never actually elected president (or vice president). He inherited the presidency in 1974 from Richard Nixon, who had rather devilishly finessed what was then a gaping ideological and cultural divide in the GOP, managing to corral both the establishment/Rockefeller wing and the ascendant (heavily Southern) ideological wing. In the ’72 GOP primaries, Nixon was challenged from both the left and the right, by Reps. Pete McCloskey and John Ashbrook. But he wasn’t really vulnerable on either flank and received more than 80 percent of the vote in all but one primary.
Ford, a pragmatic establishment figure, never had a prayer of pulling off this balancing act — especially after he appointed Nelson Rockefeller, the right-wing’s bête noir, as his V.P. The New Right, its growth spurred by post-Civil Rights defections from Southern Democrats, was hungry to assert itself and lined up behind Ronald Reagan who entered the ’76 primaries against Ford. The lines were sharply drawn and Reagan essentially battled the president to a draw, but establishment forces had just enough juice to push Ford over the top at the convention.
Carter was also at odds with his party’s base from the start of his term. He had managed to win the ’76 Democratic nomination mainly by grasping the significance of that year’s radically expanded primary calendar (there were 30 Democratic contests overall). While Democratic powerbrokers split their loyalties among several candidates (or stood back to wait for the late emergence of Hubert Humphrey or Ted Kennedy), Carter competed in ever primary, notching at least one win on every Tuesday when there was a contest and building so much momentum that late establishment efforts to thwart him were futile.
It may be hard to believe today, given the activist tone of his post-presidency, but Carter governed as a moderate-to-conservative Democrat and never made peace with organized labor or the liberal interest group establishment. Early in Carter’s presidency, Kennedy began making noises about challenging him in 1980. Like Reagan and the New Right in ’76, Kennedy and the left were itching for a fight, eager to reclaim their party. The Kennedy challenge ended up failing. Popular history faults Kennedy’s stammering Roger Mudd interview for this, but the Iran hostage crisis – which temporarily boosted Carter’s standing in late 1979 and early ’80 (just as the primaries were beginning), may have been a bigger factor.
The story went the same for Bush, the old Yankee Republican who’d run as a pro-choice supply side skeptic in the ‘80 Republican primaries. As a gesture to the fading Rockefeller wing, Reagan put Bush on the GOP ticket in the fall. As vice president, he then labored for eight years to recast himself as a Reagan adherent on all of the right’s litmus test issues.
It was enough to win Bush the GOP nod and the White House in ’88, but when he went back on his “Read my lips” pledge and raised taxes in 1990, the right-wing revolted. Their outrage was temporarily muted by the 1991 Gulf War, but as the glow of triumph faded and 1992 approached, Pat Buchanan decided to challenge Bush for the nomination. Buchanan started late and was a very imperfect vessel, but he won nearly 40 percent in New Hampshire primary, a showing that humbled Bush and vividly illustrated that extent of his vulnerability.
As I noted above, the common thread in these examples is that Ford, Carter and Bush were all distrusted by their party’s bases before they came to office. The GOP base with Ford and Bush and the Democratic base with Carter had little to no built-in loyalty.
The story is different with the other two recent presidents to encounter early problems with their base. Both Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan came to office with more stable relationships with their bases — Reagan because he was the embodiment of the GOP base and Clinton because of his knack for straddling his party’s fault lines. For different reasons, both of their examples are more analogous to Obama’s.
On paper, Reagan offers the best parallel. Just like Reagan in 1980 (and 1976), Obama in 2008 was fundamentally the candidate of his party’s base, with a passionate (and vast) network of anti-establishment backers propelling him to the nomination.
The Reagan presidency began with great expectations on the right — expectations that, two years into his tenure, had given way to considerable frustration and angst. Conservative ire with Reagan was similar in nature to today’s liberal frustration with Obama: He compromised too willingly, listened too closely to pragmatic Washington hands (like his chief of staff, Jim Baker), and was intimidated by the political risks of pursuing his base’s wish list.
Sure, he pushed a massive tax cut program through Congress in 1981. But at the time, this was off-set — in the right’s eyes — by his the acceleration of a payroll tax hike to preserve Social Security and his acquiescence to a gas tax increase to fund infrastructure. When he irked the Pentagon by scaling back his defense spending request in 1982, hawks openly challenged his commitment to their cause. As budget deficits soared to unprecedented heights, conservatives wondered why their president showed no desire to fight for the elimination of Cabinet departments (like Education and Energy) and the reduction of costly (but politically-popular) social welfare programs. And whatever happened to the moral crusade — against abortion and pornography and for school prayer — that candidate Reagan had seemed so eager to lead?
This was hardly the revolutionary presidency that conservatives had dreamed of during the 1980 campaign. And – especially after the G.O.P. was gut-punched in the 1982 midterm elections — they began to express themselves. In January 1983, three of the architects of the New Right’s rise — Richard Viguerie, Paul Weyrich and Howard Phillips — even called for a challenge to Reagan from the right in the 1984 Republican primaries.
“There is no way in which conservatives are going to get elected in 1984 running on a record of the biggest tax increases and the biggest deficits in the history of the country,” said Phillips. A conservative challenger, Viguerie argued, would simply run on Reagan’s own 1980 message — “In other words, reduce taxes, balance the budget, stop busing, bring school prayer back, you name it.”
The movement died out by the summer of 1983, for one simple reason: the economy began its comeback. Republicans rallied back to Reagan, independent voters followed, a 49-state landslide ensued, and Reagan went on to assume his exalted status within the G.O.P. What the right called betrayal back in 1982 today looks like fine print.
It’s not hard to see a parallel to Obama, whose first two years are not without their achievements. Today, liberals argue that the stimulus, healthcare, and financial reform packages were all too watered down. But a generation from now?
The Clinton comparison isn’t as neat, since Clinton wasn’t as beloved by the Democratic base when he was elected in 1992. But he was still popular with the base, especially when you consider the centrist credentials he’d built up in preparation for that race. Even as he planted himself in the middle of the political spectrum, Clinton retained an uncanny ability to connect with his party’s core constituency groups — African-Americans in particular. It also helped that his principal opponent in the ’92 primaries ended up being Paul Tsongas, who promised to run a devotedly pro-Wall Street White House. By necessity, Clinton ran hard to Tsongas’ left, thereby boosting his reputation with the left (before lurching back to the center for the fall campaign).
As president, Clinton’s relationship with the Democratic base was complicated. They appreciated his bottom-line insistence on universal healthcare coverage even as they were appalled by his championing of NAFTA. The party’s wipeout in the 1994 midterms made him vulnerable to a primary challenge in 1996, more because of his overall weakness. But Newt Gingrich’s Republican Congress gave Clinton an opportunity in 1995 to position himself as the defender-in-chief of the social safety net and to rally the base. Thus, he avoided a primary challenge and coasted to the nomination in 1996. (His firm grip on the Democratic nomination made it much easier for Clinton to sign welfare reform in the summer of 1996.)
An Obama-Clinton comparison is inexact, obviously – mainly because the Democratic base expected (and expects) more from Obama than it ever did from Clinton. But like Clinton, Obama could well face a Republican Congress in the second two years of his first term — a possibility that White House spokesman Robert Gibbs even admitted on Sunday. If this happens, there will be undoubtedly be grumbling on the left that it’s Obama’s fault — that his timid, compromising style was the cause. But fighting off the GOP Congress could also unite the left behind Obama, as it did for Clinton.
Every president, it seems, is bound to disappoint his party’s base. But when that base is cheering for (and invested in) the president for the start, it’s a lot less likely that the damage will be permanent. ++
“I’m asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington … I’m asking you to believe in yours.”
~ Barack Obama
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July 12th, 2010
