The stories you want. The opinions that matter.
No, thanks
Tag: dysfunctional

Obama’s Paradox Problem

WASHINGTON — Call it the Party-of-Government Paradox: If the nation’s capital looks dysfunctional, it will come back to hurt President Obama and the Democrats, even if the Republicans are primarily responsible for the dysfunction.

Then there is the Bipartisanship Paradox: No matter how far the president bends over backward to appeal to or appease the Republicans — no matter how nice, conciliatory, friendly or reasonable he tries to be — voters will judge him according to the results. And the evidence since 2009 is that accommodation won’t get Obama much anyway.

This creates the Election Paradox: Up to a point, Republicans in Congress can afford to let their own ratings fall well below the president’s, as long as they drag him further into negative territory. If the president’s ratings are poor next year, Democrats won’t be able to defeat enough Republicans to take back the House and hold the Senate. The GOP can win if the mood is terribly negative toward Washington because voters see Obama as the man in charge.

Everything the Republicans are doing makes sense in light of the three paradoxes, even though, by the numbers, they have been the big losers from the summer’s debt ceiling fiasco and their broader refusal to cooperate with Obama.

A Pew Research Center survey released last week showed Obama with a 49 percent disapproval rating, but Congress with a 70 percent unfavorable rating. So Obama is still “ahead.” The Democrats are also better regarded than the Republicans — or, perhaps more accurately, less poorly regarded. “Only” 50 percent of respondents had an unfavorable view of the Democratic Party; 59 percent had an unfavorable view of the Republican Party.

But the trend on the president’s numbers has been downward, and the Republicans seem willing to pay a high price to keep them moving that way. Remember: The core GOP argument is that government can’t do much good and generally makes everyone’s life worse. Democrats are the ones who insist that government can solve problems and improve people’s lives. If government isn’t doing that — if it is discredited and made to look foolish — guess whose side of the debate is weakened?

Obama’s central task is to break out of the three paradoxes, not just to get re-elected but also to get anything done. Having tried conciliation, his only alternative is to build pressure on the Republicans. He needs to get them to act, or, failing that, to make clear who is responsible for Washington’s paralysis.

That’s why his coming speech on jobs has to describe a program that’s broad and imaginative enough to capture the public’s attention. The middle-of-the-road voters his advisers want to win back look first for chief executives to be strong, decisive, and principled, not at how many millimeters they are from the political center.

Despite reports that the White House is split over how much Obama should ask Congress to do, the president has signaled that he understands the stakes. “My attitude is that my job is to present the best plans possible,” Obama said in an interview Tuesday with talk-show host Tom Joyner. “Congress needs to act. If Congress does not act, then I’m going to be going on the road and talking to folks, and this next election very well may end up being a referendum on whose vision of America is better.”

Obama hates to bring up the nasty fact that we have political parties, but very soon, he will have to point out that it is Republicans in Congress who are blocking his program. They will either have to start worrying about its low ratings, or begin to pay a real price for obstruction.

The model, of course, is Harry Truman. In a lovely book on the 1948 election, The Last Campaign, Zachary Karabell explains the problems that Truman’s attacks on the “do-nothing” Republican Congress created for his GOP opponent, Thomas E. Dewey.

“Dewey couldn’t distance himself too much from Congress or he would lose the support of his own party and perhaps jeopardize Republican chances in the congressional elections,” Karabell wrote. “Yet he needed to create some space between himself and the Congress in order to avoid being dragged down in their wake. It was a precarious position.” Indeed it was.

Truman, it’s true, didn’t get to this strategy until the election year. But the unemployment rate in 1948 averaged below 4 percent. Obama doesn’t have the luxury of waiting.

E.J. Dionne’s email address is ejdionne(at)washpost.com.

(c) 2011, Washington Post Writers Group

House Republicans’ Suicide Pact

As America lurches toward new and unfamiliar status as a nation that defaults its debts, commentators around the world are wondering how the democratic government that was once the most admired in the world – for many reasons – is now so “dysfunctional,” to use the polite term. But the truth is that the entire US government is not dysfunctional. Much of the government functions well enough or better, and even the members of the troubled US Senate seems to be trying, a little late, to deal with the problem before us.

No, dysfunctional is the too-polite term for the House of Representatives, specifically its dominant Tea Party Republicans, who can be described in far less dainty psychological terms. Even the most extreme Republican partisans in the Senate seem to realize that their House colleagues, seized by some combination of ideology, madness, and pig ignorance, are propelling the country and the world toward economic chaos.

Of course, the Tea Party Republicans insist that no such thing will ever happen – the warnings from economists, business leaders, financiers and public officials are merely so much “scare talk.” When President Obama says that he won’t be able to send out Social Security and Veterans Administration checks or meet the nation’s obligations on Treasury debt come August 2, he is just trying to frighten his opponents into giving up their principles. They don’t accept the idea that we have to pay for financial obligations already incurred – or that the rising interest rates caused by default will make future deficits much deeper.

But they don’t have to believe the president to understand that the threat posed by default is real. They could listen to ultra-conservative Senators like Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), members of the Gang of Six/Seven whose own profound ideological hostility to Obama and the Democrats still leaves space for prudence.

Or they could listen to more than 60 business groups, from the National Association of Manufacturers and the Chamber of Commerce to the Telecommunications Industry Association and the American Gas Association, all fearful of the consequences of default.

Now those business lobbyists may find out why it isn’t so smart to fund any bozo running for office who claims to support “free enterprise.”

It is revealing to listen to the Congressional freshmen affiliated with the Tea Party as the debt clock ticks down and panic begins to set in. Many of them have repeatedly vowed to vote down any bill to increase the debt limit, but somehow they’re sure that if those checks don’t go out and that debt doesn’t get paid, it will be the president’s fault and not theirs. Some say there is no reason why the Treasury should miss any of its bond payments. Others have sent a letter to the White House, urging Obama to “prioritize” those Social Security checks if worse comes to worst.

Such outbursts prove that the Tea Party is not only against taxes and spending, but is strictly opposed to arithmetic, which like climate science is probably just another socialist plot. They also prove the utter insincerity of these characters, who just voted this week for the “Cut, Cap and Balance” bill that would gut Social Security, along with Medicare, while erecting a constitutional wall around tax breaks for society’s wealthiest individuals and corporations. They want to pose as defenders of the middle-class and the American dream, even as they promote legislation that would destroy the programs and institutions that are the foundation of that way of life.

There is no need to look too far to find the source of our discontent – our “dysfunction,” if you must. It is in the Congress, which the American people mistakenly turned over to fakers and fools last November. Every poll shows that most voters regret that error now, and wish that Congress would tax the wealthy and preserve social insurance. Now those voters had better make their remorse heard, and loudly, if they hope to avert catastrophe.