Give 'Em Hell, Barry!

There are, I think, two fundamental models for how a President should cope with losing big in their first midterm election in office: Harry Truman and Bill Clinton. Both the 1946 and the 1994 elections were very similar to the 2010 election, in terms of results in the House of Representatives. Democrats had big, big majorities, and Republicans picked up 50-60 seats, flipping the majority. The numbers from 1946 are eerily similar to this last election, actually. Clinton, in the popular narrative at least, largely cooperated with the Republicans, going along with right-wing policies like welfare reform. Truman, on the other hand, and again in the popular narrative, took a very combative stance, hammering the Republicans as a "do-nothing Congress." Both won re-election. Which strategy should Obama take? Compromise, or fight and denounce? My attitude is, he should anticipate a Truman-style strategy, though he should begin by sounding like Clinton. Here's why.
Here's why I think the Truman strategy is going to need to surface in the long-term. I'm listening to Obama's press conference, and he's talking about how Democrats and Republicans should work together to make progress on those issues where they agree, or can at least find mutually acceptable solutions. He's basically right about that. There's a problem, though: he's describing an empty set. The Republicans are not going to go along with anything that is mutually acceptable. That's only in part because they don't agree with us, though that affects things like whether they will refuse to raise the debt ceiling or maybe whether they force a government shutdown over funding of health-care reform. But they know, as well as anyone, that the one thing that makes an Obama re-election easy is a better economy. And just as the 111th Congress' Republican minority was the first minority to realize it had no incentive to cooperate, the 112th House's Republican majority will be the first opposition majority to recognize that it has no incentive to cooperate. ("We all have an interest in growing the economy and encouraging job growth," Obama just said.) They want Obama to be a one-term President; based on their behavior the last two years, if that means destroying the global economy, so be it.

So the reason Obama should not compromise is that Republicans will not compromise. They will not agree to a second stimulus. They will not agree to unemployment insurance, will they? I can't see it. And I don't see them making a deal to pass those things; their primary electorates would roast them over it. So we can stipulate that the economy is going to suck in 2012. Really, really suck. It might've gotten a lot worse by then, if a shutdown does in fact take place. So in order for Obama to win, he's going to need to give voters someone to blame other than himself. And that would, ideally, be a Republican do-nothing Congress, a la Truman. And he's going to need to make that argument hard.

And that's where the Clinton part comes in. He needs to have the ability to make the argument that the failure to compromise is in fact the Republican's fault. So he needs to say, as he is doing, for example, "Let's get Democrats and Republicans in a room together who are serious about energy independence and dealing with greenhouse gases, and see what we come up with." He extends the olive branch, come, let us work together on the nation's toughest problems. And then the Republicans say, no, no, no. And they will: don't doubt it. But the crucial part will be, not only to set it up so that Republicans were the aggressors in the failure to come together and solve problems, but that they are perceived as such. I don't know if the media will permit this, but it's the only thing we can try to succeed, because there will be a failure to compromise. Obama has almost no discretion in that: if he doesn't become, in effect, a conservative Republican, there will be a failure to compromise. So he needs to make it clear that he was open to cooperation, within reasonable bounds.

And I have to say, I like Obama's press conference on these grounds. He just said, of DADT, "this should not be a partisan issue." Note that this is not really a post-partisan thing to say: it's an example of saying, look, you guys are just really fucking wrong. Really, really wrong. It's not so much that it shouldn't be a partisan issue but that there shouldn't be a party on the opposing side of the issue. And he's framed a number of these issues like that: job creation; energy independence; solving climate change. And of course, these are partisan issues, and of course there shouldn't be a party on the opposing side of them, they're just bad positions to take that the Republicans have taken. And Obama is refusing to buckle on them: he's saying, work with me. Not "I will capitulate," but "I'd love to hear your good ideas." When Republicans don't have them, he's got a ready-made excuse.

And I also like that he has repeatedly refused to go along with questions like, "In light of this major electoral defeat, do you think that the voters have rejected your policies?" He said very explicitly that he just plain rejects that idea, just now. And I think that's important. So make it clear, let's all come together to solve problems. Hope that Republicans agree to play on his terrain. And expect that they won't, and when they don't...

Give 'em hell, Barry!