Much wailing and gnashing of teeth by the left on Obama's supposed inability to corral Democratic members of Congress to do his bidding. Already, the spectres of the ineffectual Carter and 1st term Clinton administrations are being raised to illustrate what seems fated to befall this administration. Apparently the fractious and independent congressional Dems like Ben Nelson and co. will gum up the works because of a failure of FDR or JFK-like leadership on the Prez's part.
Ambinder rightly calls balderdash on this meme, in a post which will hopefully help nip it in the bud. He rightly points out that Obama and the Dems are in this position because of strength, rather than weakness. In the Carter and 1st term Clinton administrations, Democratic control of the House and Senate was much narrower than it is today. Consequently, in lieu of having a bunch of extra Republicans in congress, we have a bunch of Democrats who are from states that have a sizeable number of Republican voters. All in all this is a far better situation, even if some of these moderate or conservative democrats go off the reservation from time to time, or have to prove their deficit hawk bona fides by watering down the stimulus package.
It's also important to remember that, even if some Dems defect, Obama is achieving better party unity than either Clinton or Carter. Obama had no Senate defections and 7 house defections from the stimulus plan, compared to six senate and 41 house defections from Clinton's 1993 economic plan.
The real impediment for Obama is the significant increase in filibusters, which nowadays essentially forces a 60 vote supermajority on all non-budget-reconciliation senate votes. Had today's filibuster been in place 15 years ago, Clinton wouldn't have passed much of anything. Even with 58 Senators and great party loyalty, Obama is held over a barrel by moderate senators who can extact dilutions of his reforms as the price of getting cloture.
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