PLANK JULY 23, 2012
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We've just witnessed an episode of political strategy of such creativity and nerve that journalists and political consultants may well be talking about it decades from now: Barack Obama's reelection campaign recast Mitt Romney's most formidable asset, his business career, from an image of a successful investor in startup businesses, to that of a trimmer, manipulator, tax-evader, and destroyer of value.
Questions about Romney's ambiguous role in Bain Capital from 1999 through 2002, and Bain's role in squeezing profit out of companies it owned, are likely to recur throughout the 2012 campaign. The focus on Romney's taxes creates a nice setup to a debate about Paul Ryan's budget and the high-end tax cuts that both Ryan and Romney advocate. And Obama team deserves credit for letting Obama himself deliver the message (something conventional wisdom on negative campaigning discourages), while crafting at least two brilliant ads that managed to simultaneously mock Romney and cast serious doubt on his Bain career without going over the top.
In terms of sheer aesthetic merit, it’s a strategy that measures up with Obama’s gambit to secure the Democratic nomination in 2008 by means of grinding out delegates in caucus states. But if there was a greater lesson to that latter performance it’s been that campaign politics and the politics of the presidency aren’t the same thing. Many admirers of the 2008 campaign, myself included, imagined that an Obama White House would show greater political savvy than previous Democratic administrations. But, of course, that hasn’t been the case. The Obama operation that has been so brilliant at the running for office has never been quite as good at the politics of being president.
Certainly, there have been some brilliant political maneuvers over the past several years—among them, the decision to follow Nancy Pelosi's lead and insist on finishing health reform even after the 2010 electoral defeats. And negative achievements never get enough credit: Avoiding any kind of distracting scandal for the entire first term is more than Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter could achieve. Rep. Darryl Issa's investigations of the loans to Solyndra and “Fast and Furious” have amounted to very little.
But on balance, the tactical genius that beat the odds in the 2008 nomination fight, and seems to be defining the narrative against Mitt Romney, has been absent from the White House. It hasn't used the power of the executive branch aggressively enough to fill judicial and agency appointments. On budget matters, it persisted too long in a strategy based on the idea that bipartisan cooperation could be found, recognizing too late that it couldn't. It didn't craft a strong, persuasive alternative vision of either economic recovery or our long-term economic future, until last fall. It took a huge political hit for the health care law, in part by getting lost in the weeds of cost-reduction rather than sending a clear message of the benefits it would create for working families. Obama last week all but confessed to the “bad at politics” charge, telling Charlie Rose that his big mistake “was thinking that this job was just about getting the policy right.... But the nature of this office is also to tell a story to the American people that gives them a sense of unity and purpose and optimism.”
There are lots of defenses on all of these choices, and I've made many of them. It's difficult to simultaneously manage an economic crisis and implement a long-term progressive economic vision. The President can “tell an optimistic story,” but he's not FDR with the whole country gathered around the radio; in the age of the Internet, his story might not be heard. Moreover, it's difficult to succeed as president when the opposition party has determined to oppose every single thing you do, even if it's exactly their own policies; no president ever faced that challenge before.
But we should also use this opportunity to recognize that being good at campaigns and elections and being good at politics in office are, however unfortunately, very different things. That's not a surprising insight—spend a little time around Congress, especially the Democratic caucus, and you'll see dozens of people who have mastered the art of winning elections even in a hostile constituency, but can't figure out how to do much more when they're in office than avoid losing reelection. (Consider Senator Max Baucus, for example, who has won six statewide elections in conservative Montana, by an average of 25 points, and yet lives in such constant panic that he'll lose the next that he's accomplished almost nothing of significance.)
The Obama administration drew more on Congress, and was better connected to Democratic members of Congress than the two Democratic presidents who preceded him (both of whom were governors with few close allies on Capitol Hill.) That should have been a strength, but it seems likely that the hyper-cautious, risk-averse, next-election-obsessed culture of the Hill infected the administration in just the wrong way.
And sometimes successful campaign politics can make governing politics more difficult than it needs to be. The 2008 campaign promise not to raise taxes on anyone earning less than $250,000. That was a convenient insurance policy against attacks by John McCain. It was probably an unnecessary promise. And it hardly stopped McCain from inventing “Joe the Plumber,” an average striver who he claimed (incorrectly) would be affected the high-end tax increase.
But that promise has still tied the administration in knots, leaving it unable to offer a clearly principled, shared-sacrifice alternative on the budget. The simple answer to Warren Buffett's complaint that he pays taxes at a lower average rate than his secretary would be to end the preferential treatment of capital gains income—but that would have some modest effect on people earning less than $250,000. So instead some tortured “Buffett Rule” had to be created, which applied only to millionaires, and really reinforces the idea that taxes are a sort of punishment. Obama's promises of bipartisan cooperation, which probably helped him win states like Indiana and the support of a number of notable non-elected Republicans, similarly created an obvious danger once elected, because he didn't have the power over the Republican Party that he needed to keep that promise.
Obama's critiques of Romney's business practices may well have a similar impact. If he wins reelection by attacking Bain Capital's role in outsourcing and off-shoring jobs, he's made an implicit promise to do something about those two phenomena. But as president, he hasn't and probably won't. It's a great campaign attack, but it doesn't offer an answer to the economic anxieties of most Americans.
Just as being president isn't just about “getting the policy right,” campaigning for the presidency or for reelection shouldn't be just about getting the politics right. Governing is politics, as is campaigning. The only hope for our country in the near term is if the Obama team can figure out how to be equally good at both kinds.
23 comments
If he wins reelection by attacking Bain Capital's role in outsourcing and off-shoring jobs... good lord, if he wins reelection then he would have precisely gotten the politics right. And as far as I am concerned, Obama could simply twiddle his thumbs for the next 4 years and I will be please as punch they he can veto all the crap the Republicans throw his way (if any reach his desk that is). The next 4 years will be consolidation. Let the PPACA do its work, let the deleveraging of household debt continue. Lets not have war in Iran and lets slowly get out of Afghanistan, and most importantly lets maybe get a Supreme Court Judge.
- blackton
July 23, 2012 at 12:47am
America is supposed to have a f-ing capitalistic economy. The capitalists in this country have trillions in the bank. It's not the president's job to provide Americans with jobs. That's the job of the f-ing capitalists, who are making all-time record profits and have trillions to spend on employing their fellow Americans. It's too bad for us that they're a bunch of anal-retentive, greedy cowards. Instead of a market economy, we have a yellow-belly economy.
- magboy47.
July 23, 2012 at 1:31am
I agree with you, blackton, though that doesn't mean I don't also agree with Schmitt. Still, I have a hunch that, however belatedly, Obama has learned some lessons--as evidenced by his comments on Charlie Rose. The difficulty he'll face when, not if, he regains the White House is that the House will remain in GOP hands and the Senate likely will flip as well, so the chance for any meaningful legislation--particularly financial relief for state and local government--is slim to none, at least for the next two years.
- AaronW
July 23, 2012 at 1:36am
Well, mag, it is the president's job--or at least the government's job--to wrest some of that cash from those billionaire hoarders and use it to pay people to dig holes and fill them up again.
- AaronW
July 23, 2012 at 1:40am
Schmitt has a short memory. Obama did not campaign as a crisis president, and he has not governed as a crisis president. His problem isn't that he's been inconsistent as a campaigner (in 2008) and as the president, it's that he's been consistent. If he were a crisis candidate and president, he would have replaced his entire economic team after the financial collapse late in the campaign. But he didn't; he kept all of them, along with their moderate economic policies and their ties to the bankers. Even as experts outside the administration were saying that recovery from the financial collapse would be slow in coming, made slower by the relatively conservative advice Obama was getting from that economic team, Obama was providing comforting words to America about green shoots and the rest. Of course, we don't know the outcome if Obama had actually governed as a crisis president, or if the outcome would have made matters better or worse. But Obama's political problem today isn't because Obama the campaigner (in 2008) was different from Obama the president. His problem is that both have been the same.
- rayward
July 23, 2012 at 7:16am
And that trillion dollars of bailout money for wall street and the big banks? Our tax money used for speculation. Big banks unwilling to lend to small businesses the core of USA economy and creator of jobs. And Bernanke saying I can do nothing I can do nothing to obligate big banks to change their behavior. And BHO saying I can do nothing, the republicans don't DON'T let me do it. Tim Geitner don't let me do it. Larry Sommers don't let me do it. Ah Black youth unemployment at 50%. Population unemployment 25 million Americans, foreclosure homes 10 million. They don't let me do it. You can fool the people some of the time. You can not fool all of the people all of the time. The greatest puzzle is not why the assassin in the batman movie theater did what he did. The greatest puzzle is why BHO has been so unwilling to fight for the unemployed, to fight for the 50% Black youth unemployed, to fight big banks foreclosing 10 million homes with false documents. The attorney general did nothing, it had to be done by the States attorney generals. For whom is BHO working for? Big banks and big companies are making profits hands fool, while the rest of America is struggling. Now we know for whom BHO is working for. The republicans are enemies of the middle class. BHO is no friend of the middle class either.
- JAIMECHUCH
July 23, 2012 at 8:17am
Fascinating that this writer finds something aesthetically pleasing in a campaign of character assassination. Obama excels at campaigning and fails as a president because he's a preacher, not an executive. And he's a demagogic preacher, at that.
- Spengler47
July 23, 2012 at 9:01am
Go for it, BHO!!! What Dems and the country needs is a win based almost entirely on political appearances, not policies--- Campaign on Bain and Seamus, not job production, effective heath care, financial or immigation reform, Keynesian stimulus, etc,, etc.... . On such grounds, Dems will mourn a BHO loss to Mittens for generations to come, just like they mourn Al Smith's loss to H Hoover (and don't give me BS that Al was a closet Progressive and FDR's doppleganger). HH was certainly bright, occasionally mentioned appropriate policies (albeit, not on Charlie Rose), and given 4 more years, might have got policies right as well. Yeh, right. Dems can be as deluded as Repubs about their Dear Leaders.
- drofnats1
July 23, 2012 at 10:20am
". . . a campaign of character assassination" Really? To say, accurately, that a rich guy who cares mostly about other rich guys is a rich guy who cares mostly about other rich guys is not assassinating his character, it's illuminating it.
- ironyroad
July 23, 2012 at 10:26am
drofnats - Did Obama poison your dog or something? Your pissiness goes way beyond the usual disappointment in a politician.
- IowaBeauty
July 23, 2012 at 10:46am
"Well, mag, it is the president's job--or at least the government's job--to wrest some of that cash from those billionaire hoarders and use it to pay people to dig holes and fill them up again." AaronW, I don't think repairing roads and bridges and building rapid transit systems in America is exactly digging holes and filling them up again. I don't know how long you've been living in Australia, but maybe you've visited this country recently and noticed that our infrastructure is rotting. And Republicans in the House have made it clear that as long as they're in power there that Obama is not going to wrest a single penny from anybody to give Americans some useful jobs they can be proud of (and which will stimulate our economy). Capitalists in America have had record tax breaks and deregulation in place for over 10 years now. That's how they got trillions in the bank. It's clear that capitalism doesn't work anymore. From now on only the government can stimulate job growth in America. And the jobs that the government initiates will be in the private sector! How ironic is that? The government has to show the private sector how to do its job! And the private sector blithers on and on about how stupid and inefficient the government is!
- magboy47.
July 23, 2012 at 12:04pm
P.S.: And on top of not providing jobs, a filthy-rich capitalist America resists paying taxes that might provide jobs with the ferocity of a badger backed into a corner. Right now, nobody in this country is as un-American as the capitalists.
- magboy47.
July 23, 2012 at 12:09pm
The genius of both FDR and, sorry to have to say, Reagan was in recognizing that the job of president, properly understood, is not now and has never been the making of policy, except in the very broadest outlines. Neither one, for good or ill, devoted himself to policy. They left that to others of their choosing, and look how much each changed our world! Making policy is for hired wonks (like Jefferson or Hamilton, for example). The job of the president is politics, not policy. Selling the policies his administration crafts, to the Congress, to political leaders and party members, and to the general public. Figuring out how far he can take policy given the temper of the public. And doing what he can do shift the public mood so as to push out the boundaries and create more room for the sort of policies he favors. The failure of Obama was the failure to understand this, to think that meeting with policy advisers in the Oval Office was the essence of the job. Not only did he fail to do his real job as chief salesman and politician, he quickly lost touch with the public mood. It really is that simple, and made that much more heartbreaking by Obama's evident political talent. It would be one thing if he didn't have the talent, like Hoover perhaps. But he does. He wasted it during his first term. Political and communications strategy are 99% of his job, including being the visible leader of his party. Let's hope that in his second term he takes that to heart. And for those of you who have been reading along, you will recognize that I have been saying the same thing for the last three years. It may come as a revelation to Obama, or to Schmitt (who still seems not quite to understand the proper division of labor in the White House), but not to me.
- roidubouloi
July 23, 2012 at 12:50pm
The headline is dead wrong. It is not Obama's skills as a politician and campaigner that were not of use as president. It is that he thought that, having won, he no longer needed to keep fighting and campaigning, that he personally could shift to "governing." The campaign is perpetual, and governing is done by bureaucrats and cabinet secretaries. There is no holiday, not even the day after you have won an election.
- roidubouloi
July 23, 2012 at 12:53pm
"What Dems and the country needs is a win based almost entirely on political appearances, not policies" There isn't any other way to win, drofnats. Deal with it.
- AaronW
July 23, 2012 at 1:35pm
magboy, relax. I agree with you. I was just aiming for a bit of levity and referencing Keynes who suggested that even if you don't have any "shovel-ready" infrastructure projects on hand to fund, when faced with a recession and high unemployment government should fund make-work programs. As for my visits back to the USA, it has been two years since I was on the mainland, which is the longest I've stayed away in the ten years I've been living overseas, although I did visit Hawaii just over a year ago. But, yes, I realize what bad shape American infrastructure, both public and private is in. (American strip malls? Shabby. American housing stock? Shabbier.) In fact, I think that living abroad, at least in a place like Australia that tends to keep itself in pretty good shape (Although, while well-maintained, the transportation infrastructure in Melbourne is pitifully inadequate to meet the needs of the current population) is a better way for a seppo--Aussified cockney rhyming slang for American--to keep himself attuned to all of the motherland's infrastructural deficiencies. Every time I go back, and this very much includes my HI trip, I'm struck by how run-down everything looks, the people included. It makes me want to shove the entire Republican Congressional delegation onto a QANTAS A380, bring them over here to Oz and rub their noses in it: "You see? While Australians did conceive of Mad Max, life isn't really like that here and it doesn't have to be in the US. This is what things look like when you spend money on roads and playgrounds, when you disperse your subsidized public housing all around the city even in--gasp!--desirable neighborhoods and when you provide your citizens with tax-funded medical care. See? It's pretty good, ain't it?"
- AaronW
July 23, 2012 at 1:59pm
I'm with roi on disagreeing with the headline. I meant to say something about it in my original post. I'll point out though, that the headline doesn't accurately represent the article's argument. The headline implies that Obama's very success at campaign politics somehow caused his failures in office. The article itself, however, suggests something different, and, I think, more or less stands in agreement with you, roidubouloi, suggesting that there can be no policy without politics and that the real job of POTUS is Politician-in-Chief.
- AaronW
July 23, 2012 at 2:04pm
"Seppo" explained: American = yank = septic tank = septic = seppo. Cockney rhyming slang works by matching the designated noun with a two or three word rhyming phrase, then dropping the second word. Wife = trouble and strife = trouble. Suit = bag of fruit = bag.
- AaronW
July 23, 2012 at 2:09pm
"There is no holiday, not even the day after you have won an election." You're right there, roi. I remember watching G.W. Bush on TV in the White House Rose Garden the day after he won a second term. He praised the "architect" of his victory, Karl Rove, and then went on to say: "I've got lots of political capital now, and I intend to use it." And use it he did. He had been obsessed with getting rid of Social Security since he was a rich college bum calling Social Security "welfare for bums." So he immediately traveled to the heartland and tried to talk the mostly-conservative people there into letting him privatize it. They brought the hammer down on him so hard that he was speechless. Conservatives have parents and grandparents, whom they don't want to support, on Social Security, and they want to eventually be on it, too. And they know that the criminals on Wall Street would end up stealing every penny of Social Security investments there. So much for Bush's political capital! Obama has never had any political capital. Thanks to the Right's relentless propaganda, he's been an alien bum begging to be let in the door in America. Anything at all he can accomplish is Herculean. And he's managed, through monumental struggle, several such accomplishments. He's flawed, like all of us, but that only makes his successes, amidst ferocious opposition, that much more impressive.
- magboy47.
July 23, 2012 at 2:09pm
AaronW, I'm relaxed now. I took my blood pressure meds (which were prescribed only to prevent another atrial fibrillation attack--my BP's rarely high in itself, even during political discussions). Thanks for clarifying your satire. I'm not too good at catching onto it. I usually need a full-blown "skit," like on The Daily Show, to get it. I've always entertained a fleeting urge to emigrate to the Land Down Under. Going by Australia's economic standards for immigration, I shouldn't have too much trouble getting into the country. And if the voters in America continue to let the clueless Republicans dominate our economy, my urge to emigrate may become more than fleeting.
- magboy47.
July 23, 2012 at 2:31pm
P.S., Aaron, I felt very bad for Adam Scott Sunday. Is he the big sports story in Australia today? In the USA it's Penn State. Yuck City.
- magboy47.
July 23, 2012 at 2:45pm
Scott's collapse scored a mention, although, ironically enough, I heard about it from a friend in America via gmail chat. Right now, though, the major sporting stories in Australia are Cadel Evans's failure to retake the Tour de France, Oz's Olympic preparations and prospects--it looks like as in Beijing we're going to fail to clean up the way we did in Athens--and, of course, Australian Rules Football. Aussie Rules was invented here in Victoria and Melbourne remains the epicenter. For many Victorians, AFL is life. I can watch the sport--the pace and flow is actually more like basketball than American football--but I had the misfortune to adopt a team, the St Kilda Saints, who ten years ago looked like up-and-comers but whose moment has since come and gone. In a sport whose final score line often looks like 110-90, the Saints lost two consecutive Grand Finals (AFL equiv to Super Bowl) by a total of 3 points. Then last season, the first after the second of these heart-breakers, they returned with a minimally altered roster but looked like a completely different and vastly inferior team, plagued by a series of off-field scandals and dropping their first three games to teams that a year before they would have demolished. This year, with the season 3/4 over, they'll be lucky if they limp into the post-season in 8th place. (8 teams of 17 make it into the play-offs).
- AaronW
July 23, 2012 at 3:13pm
Magboy writes: " Thanks to the Right's relentless propaganda, [BHO has] been an alien bum bg to be let in the door in Ameything at all he can accomplish is Herculean. And he's managed, throTugh monumental struggle, several such accomplishments. He's flawed, like all of us, but that only makes his successes, amidst ferocious opposition, that much more impressive." Now, that right there, is about as good a summary of the very point I've been trying to make to some of my 'purist' ultra-lib friends who've soured over the past few years on BHO. (Funny, how many of these same folks viewed him as some sort of new Messiah during the '08 campaign too, which made me feel very uncomfortable at the time, as I felt they were setting themselves up for major dissillusionment.) Anyway, I'm tempted to plagiarize your words, Magboy, in private communictions with my lefty friends.
- Haole45
July 24, 2012 at 8:51pm