President Obama: Spice up the honeymoon
The campaign's promises won't happen with a weak economic plan and the likes of Gary Locke.
Flickr contributor Transplanted Mountaineer
President Barack Obama is more than halfway through the first 100 days of his Presidency — the so-called "honeymoon period" after which policy initiatives no longer benefit from post-electoral afterglow. We've been getting a picture, day by day, of what things may be like once the honeymoon is over.
I have been a consistent Obama booster. I endorsed his candidacy for the Democratic Presidential nomination in my political memoirs, published at the end of 2007; wrote local and national essays doing the same; sent a check to his campaign; and stood up to be counted at my Belltown precinct caucus, which Obama supporters carried one-sidedly over Hillary Clinton.
I supported his candidacy because I liked his positive message of hope and unity, and because he appeared to offer a break from the hyper-partisanship and polarizations of the Clinton/Bush years. I also had talked with people who had known him since his college days. All praised his intellect and capacity for growth.
Thus far the Obama presidency has had little in common with his disciplined campaign, which seldom strayed from its central themes. It has been ad hoc, inconsistent, and herky-jerky. Promised unity and consensus have given way to one-party proposals to deal with the current financial/economic crises.
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and White House economic czar Larry Summers, among the most qualified of his Cabinet and senior advisers, have yet to present a coherent financial/economic rescue plan. After promising change, Obama has relied greatly on Clinton administration alumni. His Cabinet is undistinguished; most are strangers to him and appear mainly to have been chosen for racial, gender, ethnic, partisan, and geographic balance rather than their substantive qualifications to run their respective departments. Rumors persist that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton got her job through a bald political deal, made at the Denver Democratic convention, in which she agreed to back off last-minute opposition to Obama's candidacy.
Local appointees appear to illustrate the appointment pattern. Commerce secretaries in administrations of both parties traditionally have been respected business leaders — in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, for instance, former American Airlines CEO C.R. Smith and former Merck CEO John Conner. Former Washington Gov. Gary Locke, by contrast, has no senior standing in the business community. His tenure as governor was most notable for the huge holes he cut in the state-revenue base, with subsidies and tax giveaways for Boeing, Paul Allen, and major state businesses which, since his governorship, have provided fees to his international law practice.
Locke is not a boat rocker. In his new post he will have jurisdiction over the Census Bureau, which soon will be undertaking its regular national headcount. The previous Commerce nominee, a Republican Senator, backed out of the job after he learned that White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel intended to seize control of the count if not the agency itself. Locke, no doubt, will go along with whatever Emanuel tells him.
It is hard to imagine someone less qualified as Deputy Housing and Urban Development Secretary than Ron Sims. Sims' weak suit, as King County Executive, was his administrative competence. His troubles with the county jail, elections office, sewage-treatment facility and transportation planning are well known. Like Locke, he is personable; a nice guy. But the HUD Deputy's job is to administer and run day-to-day a department notorious for its scandals, corruption, and screwups while the Secretary serves as outside man. Unless he is careful, HUD will eat Sims alive.
Gil Kerlikowske, by contrast, will as drug czar return to a Capitol culture in which he previously has served. As Seattle police chief, he functioned effectively as a practical law enforcer while utilizing the light-to-moderate hand which Seattle prefers. His job has been downgraded from its previous Cabinet-level status. But he will have access both to Obama and Vice President Joe Biden. Almost certainly, he will be an effective player in the new administration.
Most perplexing to even strong Obama supporters has been the diffuse nature of his first days in office. We face the deepest financial/economic crisis since the Great Depression. Yet Obama has not, as anticipated, concentrated on that subject to the exclusion of everything else. His almost $800-billion economic stimulus package was a one-party initiative which spends a lot of money in future years but provides little stimulus and few jobs in either 2009 or 2010.
He vowed to end wasteful Congressional earmarks yet, last week, signed rather than vetoed a spending bill with 8,500 such earmarks. Billions have been dispensed, ad hoc, to various financial houses, businesses and sectors while, at the same time, Obama has presented expensive new health-care, education and energy proposals which have little to do with immediate recovery. Although Obama still talks of bipartisan cooperation, his substantive proposals have been framed in such a way that they simply will not attract Republican and independent support.
To use a common analogy, Obama has not directed a powerful, focused stream of water on an economic house on fire. Instead, he has directed a weaker and more diffuse stream toward the house, garage, yard, alley behind, and vacant lot next door.
Can we expect more of the same? Too soon to tell.
Our presidents traditionally fumble early in their terms. In recent history we remember John F. Kennedy's stumbles into the Bay of Pigs and Vietnam; Lyndon Johnson's deepening of the Vietnam commitment; Jimmy Carter's hapless conflict with the U.S. Corps of Engineers; Bill Clinton's bog-downs over gays in the military, the White House travel office, and a BTU tax; and George W. Bush's infamous ceding of Iraq policy to Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. Franklin Roosevelt's first 100 days were busy but many of his early initiatives turned out not to work and had to be abandoned. His first big achievement, Social Security, did not occur until two years later.
It was Obama's ill fortune to take office when financial/economic troubles all were far advanced. He still enjoys broad public support, though not at historic levels. His intellect is just as strong now as it was when he was elected in November. He deserves the benefit of the doubt in his break-in period.
One thing should not be forgotten. This is Obama's first experience at running anything of consequence. His experience as a Chicago community organizer, Illinois state senator, and U.S. Senator exposed him to various public issues. But it did not prepare him for executive leadership, which he must now exert. He clearly must regain control both of his agenda and staff.
The latter are sending him out daily to deliver a new teleprompter message — always on a different subject. Quite soon he must prioritize his initiatives. Our economic distress is not, as Emanuel has said, an "opportunity" to jam unrelated policy initiatives through the Congress. It presents, rather, an obligation which Obama must meet before he does anything else. If, down the road, we enter recovery, then a grateful electorate will be ready to consider any other initiatives he presents to them. If, however, his efforts toward recovery are perceived as failing, he will be unable to accomplish anything else.
I'm still betting on Obama. But he needs to get the One Big Thing, economic recovery, right before he tries a lot of other things.
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Comments:
Posted Mon, Mar 16, 7:32 p.m. Inappropriate
Regarding this:
"Rumors persist that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton got her job through a bald political deal, made at the Denver Democratic convention, in which she agreed to back off last-minute opposition to Obama's candidacy."
Allow me to explain something to the desperate conspiracy theorists who just can't manage to accept the simple reality that they have allowed political pundits to do their thinking for them when it comes to the Clintons. THERE WAS NO LAST MINUTE OPPOSITION. To persist in trying to force these ridiculous rumors does a great disservice to President Obama, whom I believe chose Hillary Clinton, among other reasons, because he was trying to make a POINT. That POINT, btw, is that personally attacking people and starting vicious, ridiculous rumors just because you have a political disagreement with them, is unacceptable, whether you are on the right or the left. Attacking the Clintons is old school, partisan politics. Grow up.
Posted Tue, Mar 17, 12:55 a.m. Inappropriate
demgrl: You should talk with Obama staff, who had an entirely different view of Hillary's operation at the Democratic convention. This is not about attacking the Clintons or partisan politics. It is simply reporting
a flood of reports from convention delegates, Senators, Members of Congress, journalists and others who have a view that such a deal took place.
Posted Tue, Mar 17, 8:08 a.m. Inappropriate
Mr. Van Dyk, your analysis is questionable and your expectations unrealistic. If I recall, your idea for a stimulus package was more tax cuts, which I am not alone in pointing out that given more tax cuts, people will save, not spend, so that tax cuts which won't stimuluate recovery any faster than anything else that has been proposed. Locke's so-called "hole" in the revenue stream was, in part, responsible for keeping 787 production in Everett, which preserved jobs. I agree that Ron Sims is a questionable choice for an adminsitrative post, but here's a thought: You criticize the president for picking the same old folks, but the one time he steps outside of the box -- picking Locke, who worked well with business in Washington state -- as commerce secretary, you deride that as a poor choice. Meanwnhile, let's recap: in the Clinton years, the nation was at peace, the budget was balanced and the economy was booming. Yeah, picking Clinton retreads sounds like a bad idea. Clinton, meanwhile, worked with the Republicans to achieve both a balance budget and welfare reform; the hyperpartisan years were largely a Bush construct. There does seem to be a banking plan, despite your inability to see it, and people in the mortgage industry tell me that things are slowly turning. But let's think for a minute how politics works: If you have the majority, you can do things. The Democrats have the majority; most of the Republicans remaining in Congress are diehard ideologues who would probably sell their mothers before throwing the president a bone. Obama should change the stimulus plan to satisfy a bunch of people who can't distinguish economics from faith, and who probably don't want him to succeed anyway? I have to suspect that there is little the president could that would satisfy you at the moment.
Posted Fri, Mar 20, 8:32 a.m. Inappropriate
T.M.: No, your memory of my suggested stimulus plan is incorrect. I favored a package containing immediate personal and business tax cuts, including possible temporary suspension of the payroll tax (thus favoring people at the middle and bottom of the income scale); money to the states to cover unemployment and social-service costs; and a carefully targeted jobs plan focused on infrastructure. Such a plan could have gotten the 80 Senate votes Obama said he wanted. However, he turned framing of the stimulus plan over to House leaders who, instead, produced a package which provided for much new long-term spending but little stimulus and few jobs in 2009 and 2010 and could not attract bipartisan support. It also, by the way, contained the provision granting the retention bonuses to the AIG executives.
It would be a big mistake to think that the President's program can be enacted with Democrats-only support. Even his stimulus package would have failed had some 50 so-called Blue Dog Democrats in the House, and several of their Senate counterparts, not voted for it on the basis that the President's first new initiative could not be allowed to fail. From this point forward, on almost every issue, any important proposal will require
greater consensus. I served in the LBJ White House when he introduced his historic Great Society legislation in 1965. Before doing so, however, he carefully cultivated Republican, independent, business and other support for his proposals. He knew that, down the road, they could not be sustained on a one-party basis---even though the Democratic congressional majority was far larger then than the one today.
You are wrong, by the way, to characterize "most of the Republicans remaining in Congress" as "diehard ideologues." In politically correct Seattle, it is convenient to label them accordingly. They are conservative, overall, but a significant number still can be characterized as moderate. (It would be equally wrong to characterize most Democrats
as "diehard ideologues" on the other end of the political spectrum; a significant number also are moderate). It is in this "moderate middle" where swing votes can be found and critical support generated for passage of major legislation.
My major concern with the Clinton retreads in the Obama administration is the habitudes ex-Clinton White House staff, in particular, gained in the
"never-ending campaign" climate that prevailed there for eight years.
Obama campaigned on the basis of a higher politics. But the retreads are conducting themselves in the same way they did in the Clinton years---that is, with a focus on small bore day-to-day tactical politics.
Characterizing critics of the present stimulus plan as "a bunch of people who can't distinguish economics from faith" is silly. Serious economists of all outlooks will tell you that the present stimulus plan provides little stimulus. You should know that yourself.
Posted Tue, Mar 24, 8:59 p.m. Inappropriate
Mr Van Dyk, you say Obama "Promised unity and consensus have given way to one-party proposals to deal with the current financial/economic crises."
Does anyone really believe that someone in the Republican or Democratic party is going to be 'bipartisan?' What does that mean anyway? And is it physically possible?
Let's take some specific examples. The Democrats support increasing taxes to reduce the deficit. The Republicans support tax cuts to reduce the deficit. I'm not saying which one works. I'm just stating what the parties support. How is it possible to be bipartisan when the parties support ideas that are polar opposites of each other?
I, for one, am glad Obama is taking a strong one-party approach with things like taxes. During the 70s, the upper tax rate was 70%, and our economy was doing just fine. And rich people were doing just fine, as they always do. My high school economics teacher explained taxes by saying that after a person who made a million dollars paid his taxes, he 'only' had $300,000 left over.
It's impossible to support tax cuts and tax increases at the same time. 'Bipartisanship' seems to be code for doing nothing and we can't afford to do that. Obama is on stage as well as the Democratic party and their policies. They shouldn't water their plans down because the other party is only interested in his failure.
Posted Wed, Mar 25, 7:07 p.m. Inappropriate
Ted, the general drift of your earlier comments was that the stimulus package doesn't have enough tax cuts. But basically, you haven't responded to the counterargument that the tax cuts will largely only make the deficit bigger while doing little in the short-term to reboot the economy (unless you have some magic plan to make everyone go out and spend the money right away on something made in America). As for the Congressional Republicans, these guys voted in lockstep with Bush and now they're voting in lockstep against Obama. They're moderates? Oh, please. It was a different ballgame when LBJ was in the White House. He got to work with Everett Dirksen, who was not an ideologue. The current flavor of Republican would not relate to Sen. Dirksen. Serious economists who have weighed the president's stimulus plan have not all said that it provides little stimulus. A number of faith-based, the-market-can-do-no-wrong economists have certainly said so. Many of us have said it's just not big enough, but I for one understand that that's politics.
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