PLANK DECEMBER 6, 2012
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Since election day, our polarized political parties have been sparring over the fiscal cliff in public. We’ve been treated to press conferences and campaign-style events, offers and counteroffers. The result has been very little, if any, tangible progress.
This shouldn't be a surprise. Public discussions encourage posturing and allow die-hards to strangle compromise in its cradle. If the leaders of the parties are serious about reaching an agreement (some of their troops are not), they’ll have to shift course and enter into private, face-to-face negotiations, during which they would agree to cease tattling to the press about the transgressions of the other side. President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner will have to take the lead, as they did in the famously abortive “grand bargain” talks of 2011.
It’s understandable why both of them might be reluctant to go down this path again. Last year’s talks produced intra-party conflicts among Republicans that Boehner found hard to manage. For his part, the president reportedly believes that it was a mistake to closet himself with the Speaker and that only constant public pressure can induce the Republicans to abandon extreme positions.
But much has changed for each of them over the past fifteen months. Some of the early Tea Party fervor has cooled, and the House Republicans are more unified around Boehner’s leadership. Despite a brutal campaign, they suffered only modest losses and comfortably retained their majority. Both Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan signed onto his latest proposal, which included $800 billion in new revenues over the next decade. There are still limits on how far Boehner can go: Some conservative Republicans have been vocally unhappy about Boehner's offer of new revenue, and also his treatment of dissidents in committee assignments. Still, he speaks for his party to a greater extent than heretofore.
As for Obama, he was right to think that the mobilization of the public was a necessary condition of success. But he achieved that objective in the 2012 election: The people have endorsed higher taxes on the wealthy, and they are prepared to hold the Republicans responsible for the breakdown of fiscal cliff talks. A continued public campaign will not do much more to strengthen his hand. His task is to convert political gains into policy accomplishments.
Obama believes that the voters endorsed his fiscal views over Romney’s, and he’s right. In a parliamentary system, that would be dispositive. In James Madison’s system, it isn’t. Boehner believes that the voters rejected Democratic assaults on his caucus, reelecting almost all of them, and that he represents a different majority with equal constitutional standing. The president may force the Republicans to yield on the Bush tax cuts for high-income earners. But with the debt ceiling looming, Republicans will have leverage as well in the next few months. Unless Obama can divide and conquer his Republican opposition, he will have to reach an agreement with them on a range of spending and revenue issues.
While their positions are far apart, each side has put its opening bid on the table, and neither is likely to take another step unilaterally. It’s time to negotiate face to face: Only that process can allow the parties to explore options unpopular with their bases, assess one another’s sincerity, and build a modicum of trust. Regardless of which high-level figures are chosen to participate, they should agree to convene three times a week, with intensive staff work between meetings. And they should agree not to litigate their differences in public as long as the discussions continue.
There’s no guarantee of success, of course. Face to face talks are a necessary but not sufficient condition of agreement. In the end, one or both sides may prefer no agreement to accepting the other’s best and final offer.
In wasn’t easy to bridge the partisan divide during the 1980s and 1990s, and the polarizing trends of the past two decades have made it ever more difficult today. Nonetheless, our leaders have a duty to try. And the time to begin is now.
8 comments
This sounded promising for a moment while I imagined that the first person subjected to the Galston gag order would be Galston. This guy continues to mine a rich and seeingly inexhaustible vein of pious nonsense. It's as if everything he thinks he needs to know about government and politics he learned in the fourth grade.
- roidubouloi
December 6, 2012 at 12:12am
We have, supposedly, a transparent, open, participatory form of government. Gag orders are antithetical to that idea are they not?
- Sophia
December 6, 2012 at 3:23am
Republicans, at least, got Galston's memo. Today's NYT has a front pager to the effect that the rank and file is supporting Boehner in his negotiations with the President. It's most likely BS, but with Republicans even BS is progress. Unfortunately, Democrats didn't get Galston's memo. The President has stated that he will not negotiate with himself. Instead, he is going to have to negotiate with other Democrats, the latest alternative to the President's plan offered by a group that includes some (Summers, Daley) who served in the Administration. I suppose the President could ignore the Republicans (they aren't going to offer much of anything anyway), reach a compromise with fellow-Democrats, and then present the compromise plan to Republicans for a vote. I think Madison (the father of partisan politics in America) would approve even if Galston doesn't.
- rayward
December 6, 2012 at 6:27am
I don't see the advantage of secret talks. The public need for an education is critical. Republicans dispute the economic advantage of spending and cling to an economic strategy of top rate cuts. To make an analogy to dieting, you should eat on day one the way you plan to eat for the rest of your life. Underfunding government will, like a starvation diet, lose muscle that adds to appearance and function of the body as a whole. In other words, it is less about the debt and more about a long term strategy of fiscal stability accepted by the people as a reality and dispensing with the fantasy of the fad diet of top rate cuts.
- Nusholtz
December 6, 2012 at 7:01am
Look, the one thing we need to do is raise tax rates. But the one thing Republicans absolutely refuse to do, no matter what, is raise tax rates. How you think posturing in secret behind closed doors will resolve this is beyond me. If Boehner came out from a secret closed door meeting with Obama, and said "Yes, we must raise taxes" -- he'd be pilloried by the Republican Party. Likewise, if Obama came out and said "Boehner has convinced me, we must destroy America and the New Deal for the good of the Koch Brothers", the results would not be good. Secrecy, or its lack, has no effect on this. The Republicans are out of good cards in this. Taxes are going to increase. Their continuing denial of this just means MORE taxes are going to increase. Secrecy or it's lack has no effect on this either.
- AllanL5
December 6, 2012 at 9:41am
You have a point malahat, but I think I'd say in response is that the world of the public is not frozen pending a result but is rather in flux and responding to comments and pressures. With the NYT and other mainstream voices arguing as if there was a kind of balance and you could just split the difference between the administration and the GOP, we need Obama and others to point out that no such banal difference-splitting is going to work. What's needed is for the GOP to realize that they can't do as much economic wrecking as they have done, and for that the White House needs to nurture the initial public distrust of Boehner and his caucus.
- ironyroad
December 6, 2012 at 4:52pm
Galston is such an Eeyore. His blot of Beltway Broderism misses the point, which is that Obama standing firm is the best way to get to a deal. See Jonathan Chait: http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/12/obamas-refusal-to-deal-paving-way-for-a-deal.html By the way, can the new New Republic please try to bring back Chait? Now that Dick Morris has been suspended from Fox for a while, maybe Galston can fill his seat as a onetime Dem adminstration official who always thinks Dems are in the wrong.
- interloper
December 7, 2012 at 8:05am
This is utter nonsense. There needs to be a public negotiation on C-Span where the parties have to state their positions and the economic / accounting justifications for those positions. Once you do that the republicans have to start making responsible counter offers or they will look like buffoons to everyone. Having every aspect of the negotiation on TV would eliminate posturing, not promote it.
- rusty
December 7, 2012 at 12:56pm