Thoughts of Future Past

Only a lit­tle over three weeks remain before the next elec­tion. We should take stock of where we are, where we came from, and where we could be going.

Four years ago on this date, Amer­i­cans faced in awe the pos­si­bil­ity that we could actu­ally elect a black man to the most pow­er­ful office on Earth. The impos­si­ble hap­pened. On Novem­ber 4, 2008, Barack Hus­sein Obama became the 44^th Pres­i­dent of the United States. He was sworn in on Jan­u­ary 20, 2009, just three days after the 80^th birth­day of Rev­erend Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. On that very evening, Repub­li­can Con­gres­sional lead­ers met in the Cau­cus Room restau­rant in Wash­ing­ton DC to plot the down­fall of the Obama pres­i­dency, even if it meant under­min­ing and destroy­ing the US economy.

The lumi­nar­ies in atten­dance included, among oth­ers, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Eric Can­tor (R-​​Richmond, VA), Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Pete Ses­sions (R-​​Dallas, TX), Sen­a­tor Jim DeMint (R-​​SC), Sen­a­tor Jon Kyl (R-​​AZ), Sen­a­tor Tom Coburn (R-​​OK) — and Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Paul Ryan (R-​​Janesville, WI), the cur­rent Repub­li­can Vice Pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee. Also present were polit­i­cal oper­a­tive Frank Luntz and for­mer House Speaker Newt Gin­grich. They set the tone of Con­gress — and, thereby, the terms of the national debate — for the ensu­ing four years.

The nature of the meet­ing is well-​​documented, and undis­puted. Accord­ing to reports, dur­ing this four-​​hour meet­ing the par­tic­i­pants agreed to bring the work of Con­gress to a stand­still, regard­less of any active harm it would do to the Amer­i­can econ­omy. They agreed to block all leg­is­la­tion, even mat­ters they would oth­er­wise sup­port, sim­ply for the pur­pose of mak­ing Pres­i­dent Obama look bad. The birth of the Repub­li­can obstruc­tion­ism of the 111^th and 112^th Con­gresses occurred in that room.

Some of their effort failed. Pres­i­dent Obama shep­herded through Con­gress a stun­ning panoply of major leg­is­la­tion, from the Lilly Led­bet­ter Fair Pay Act to the Amer­i­can Recov­ery and Rein­vest­ment Act, from the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Con­sumer Pro­tec­tion Act to the Patient Pro­tec­tion and Afford­able Care Act. Most of the major leg­is­la­tion in Pres­i­dent Obama’s first term was enacted with few Repub­li­can votes — usu­ally with none at all, as the Cau­cus Room meet­ing had planned. Despite the unde­ni­able leg­isla­tive suc­cesses of the first two years, forged in an atmos­phere of unre­lent­ing hos­til­ity and brick-​​wall oppo­si­tion, Repub­li­cans did suc­ceed in paint­ing the Pres­i­dent as par­ti­san and unwill­ing to compromise.

This image was a carefully-​​crafted fic­tion, of course. Pres­i­dent Obama reached out to Repub­li­cans even dur­ing his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. He inten­tion­ally mod­eled his cab­i­net on the prin­ci­ples of Abra­ham Lincoln’s bipar­ti­san “Team of Rivals”. In Obama’s cab­i­net are Repub­li­cans Ray LaHood (Sec­re­tary of Trans­porta­tion), John McHugh (Sec­re­tary of the Army), Robert Gates (Sec­re­tary of Defense) and Chuck Hagel (Co-​​Chair of Intel­li­gence Board). He appointed Utah’s Repub­li­can Gov­er­nor John Hunts­man to be Ambas­sador to China, and nom­i­nated Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Judd Gregg to be Sec­re­tary of Com­merce (Gregg declined the honor).

Even dur­ing the pro­longed and con­tentious debate on health care reform, Pres­i­dent Obama reached out to Repub­li­can lead­ers for rec­om­men­da­tions and sug­ges­tions. The final bill was based on Repub­li­can pro­pos­als, and con­tained hun­dreds of Repub­li­can amendments.

Yet the final votes on the Afford­able Care Act included not one Repub­li­can “yea”. This wasn’t because Repub­li­cans had been excluded in craft­ing the bill; it was because Repub­li­can lead­er­ship had vowed to oppose any­thing Pres­i­dent Obama sup­ported, regard­less of the con­tent of the bill, or the con­se­quences for the nation. The whole point was to pre­tend Pres­i­dent Obama was “forc­ing” a par­ti­san agenda on the nation, when in fact, the par­ti­san nature of the con­ver­sa­tion in Wash­ing­ton was being engi­neered entirely by the Repub­li­can Party.

The lame duck ses­sion at the end of the 111^th Con­gress, in Decem­ber of 2010, proved to be amaz­ingly pro­duc­tive. In the absence of pres­sure to cam­paign, Con­gress approved — with over­whelm­ing sup­port from both par­ties — an his­toric nuclear arms treaty with Rus­sia, a bill to help sur­vivors of the 2001 Sep­tem­ber 11 ter­ror­ist attacks, an exten­sion of the Bush-​​era tax cuts, an exten­sion of the stim­u­la­tive pay­roll tax hol­i­day, an exten­sion of unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits, a repeal of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”, a sweep­ing reform of food safety laws, and a $4.5 bil­lion child nutri­tion plan and expan­sion of the the fed­eral school lunch program.

That lame-​​duck ses­sion reveals what could hap­pen, the bipar­ti­san progress that can be made, if Repub­li­can lead­ers sim­ply get out of the way, stop try­ing to bring down a duly-​​elected Pres­i­dent, and sim­ply let Con­gress do its job. The President’s sup­port­ers have fre­quently chided him for bend­ing over back­wards in an attempt to be accom­mo­dat­ing to intran­si­gent and inflex­i­ble Repub­li­can oppo­si­tion. Whether the amaz­ingly pro­duc­tive 2010 lame-​​duck ses­sion was due to the President’s will­ing­ness to com­pro­mise, or sim­ply a result of a sud­den and tem­po­rary spasm of respon­si­bil­ity and civic con­scious­ness on the part of Repub­li­cans, remains an unset­tled question.

What does this bode for the future? There are a num­ber of vital issues which need to be resolved within the first few months after the elec­tion — the ques­tion of the once-​​more-​​expiring Bush tax cuts and pay­roll tax hol­i­day and unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits; the sequester of fed­eral funds loom­ing due to the fail­ure of the bud­get Super­com­mit­tee, man­dated because of Repub­li­can obsti­nacy over rais­ing the debt ceil­ing; and speak­ing of the debt ceil­ing, another increase in fed­eral bor­row­ing author­ity for FY 2013 and beyond; and the details of the 2013 fed­eral bud­get — among other sticky mat­ters. The final form of these deci­sions will undoubt­edly be shaped, in part, by aware­ness of the win­ners and losers next month.

It will be shaped, too, by the dif­fer­ences between the 111^th Con­gress and the 112^th. In 2010, elected Repub­li­cans included a far smaller per­cent­age of Tea Party activists than we have infest­ing the halls of the cap­i­tal today. The débâ­cle of the 2011 debt ceil­ing debate could not have occurred (and did not occur) at any prior point in Amer­i­can his­tory. A res­o­lu­tion of the fis­cal cliff we face may have to await the actual swearing-​​in of the 113^th Con­gress next Jan­u­ary. The crea­tures cur­rently seated may be entirely inca­pable of any ide­o­log­i­cal compromise.

The point is, the cur­rent atmos­phere in Wash­ing­ton is a direct and intentionally-​​engineered result of the Jan­u­ary 2009 Cau­cus Room plot. One way or another, the fla­vor may change some­time after the elec­tion. We may have four more years of dead­lock. That could well hap­pen. There are two other possibilities.

If there is a Demo­c­ra­tic wave, then suf­fi­cient num­bers of Tea Party obstruc­tion­ists may be washed away to allow actual progress and com­pro­mise — the lifeblood of Amer­i­can gov­er­nance for the last two cen­turies — to flow once more.

Alter­na­tively, a new Repub­li­can pres­i­dent and Repub­li­can con­trol of both houses of Con­gress would put the respon­si­bil­ity of national stew­ard­ship into the hands of peo­ple who have shown no desire to actu­ally govern.

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