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Go Home Why Obama Should Copy Bush (really!)

THE PLANK NOVEMBER 9, 2008

Why Obama Should Copy Bush (really!)

BY JONATHAN COHN

You hear lots of talk about which former president Barack Obama should use as a model. Bill Clinton comes up regularly. Franklin Roosevelt, too. But what about the guy in the White House now?

I know, President Bush’s approval ratings are hovering around 30 percent. This election was in many ways a referendum on his tenure and the verdict could not have been more unambiguous. The voters didn't like it. “Saturday Night Live” got an entire skit (and a pretty funny one) out of John McCain trying to escape the stigma of his failure.

But was Bush really a “failure”? That depends on how you define it.

Consider what Bush has accomplished. He has overhauled the tax code, tilting it towards the wealthy and significantly reducing federal revenues. He signed a landmark education reform that changed the curriculum in virtually ever public school. He gutted the regulatory state and hollowed out the bureaucracy. He added a drug benefit to Medicare, thereby enacting the largest single entitlement expansion since the 1960s. He tipped the Supreme Court’s ideological balance with two strongly conservative appointees.

And that’s just what he did on domestic policy. Bush also sponsored a massive program to help treat AIDS in under-developed countries. He rewrote long-standing doctrine on foreign policy and human rights. And, oh yeah, he engineered--and then prosecuted--a war that overthrew a dictator, destabilized a region, and committed the U.S. to an occupation whose end is still unknown.

That’s quite a tally--arguably, one that no president since Lyndon Johnson can match. (Before that, you'd have to go back to FDR.) And with the exception of the Medicare drug program, every single one of those accomplishments represent a realization of goals that he, his fellow travelers in the conservative movement, or both had sought for years or even decades.

America today looks radically different than it did in January, 2001. And it looks that way because Bush made it so.

Now, for the most part, the country doesn’t seem to think Bush’s changes have left us better off. And I’d agree, with a few key exceptions. (High on the list would be that AIDS program, for which I believe Bush deserves more credit than he's received.) But he still achieved quite a lot. And, simply in terms of leadership style, President-elect Obama could do worse than to take a page or two from Bush’s playbook.

One of Bush’s most remarkable qualities--and one, I admit, that I frequently admired--was his stubborn focus on goals and willingness to push political boundaries aggressively. It took a president of uncommon gumption and boldness to push such a radical agenda; America, after all, is not a radical country by nature. But Bush understood political opportunity when it presented itself and he seized it. And while I’d hate to see Obama systematically ignoring policy experts and manipulating intelligence--or deliberately stoking partisan division for the sake of winning elections--I wouldn’t mind if, like Bush, Obama showed the same sort of singular focus.

Like Bush, Obama is pursuing an ambitious agenda: Re-organizing the country’s economy and infrastructure to fight climate change and achieve energy independence; overhauling its massive health care system; undoing all of the tax changes Bush signed into law and, in the process, addressing the country’s long-term fiscal crisis; beginning unprecedented levels of investment in young children’s education and well-being; repairing America’s image in the world and, in the process, finishing the fight against Islamic extremism.

Already, the opinion class is tut-tutting. It’s too expensive, they say, and too radical. But it’s not all that different from what Bush tried. The difference is that Obama would be pushing in the opposite ideological direction and, if the polls are to be believed, in a direction that the country happens to favor.

Not only does that mean Obama should, if anything, have an easier time achieving it. It also means that, if he accomplishes those goals, he can leave with his party’s majority intact--and his approval ratings higher than 30 percent.

Fortunately, Obama seems to get this. He hasn't given up the talk of "changing Washington" and bipartisanship; I imagine he believes it, too. But he's also made it clear he's not about to back away from goals just because they'll encounter initial resistance.

When asked repeatedly in the final weeks which of his legislative goals he planned to discard, because of the financial crisis, he refused to play along, insisting his agenda remained the same. Just today, incoming Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said something similar on ABC's "This Week." After making the case for energy independence and health care reform, even in the midst of an economic calamity, Emanuel said "This opportunity, this crisis, provides--as the president-elect has said repatedly--the opportunity to do things Americans have pushed off for years." President Bush couldn't have said it better. 

--Jonathan Cohn 

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28 comments

So, you're suggesting that Obama imitate Bush's modeling of the Unitary Executive?

It isn't just that the American people don't approve of what Bush did. They don't approve of how he did it, either.

You can go after a big agenda without being like Bush.

- asnevitt

November 10, 2008 at 1:01am

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If Obama "emulates Bush's leadership style" by standing up firmly for what he believes is right, and using the bully pulpit to get what he wants, then that's fine, so long as what he wants is not a bunch of ideologically blinkered BS.

If Obama "emulates Bush's leadership style" by exploiting and repeatedly stoking the nation's fears after a major, traumatic crisis in order to ram through an ideologically radical agenda that is not germane to solving the underlying problem that gave rise to the crisis, not only will I not vote for him in 2012, I'll probably turn into a libertarian.

- mkayser0

November 10, 2008 at 1:04am

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The one thing I would have liked to see but probably won't, is a presidency defined by turning Washington upside down using the model of mass fundraising + mass public outreach using the internet. If it's this powerful in a campaign, why not during the Presidency?

I think back in the days of the VP pick, when Obama alluded to deciding between "change vs. experience", that's when he decided against radically taking on Washington. He could have defined his campaign as being about a rebirth of public accountability, and taking on the powers that be.

Instead it seems he'll be more incremental. The internet will have an unprecedented role but regular politicking will play a significant part too, as it was in his campaign. I still think that's the big untold story, however. Technologically based mass outreach is a lever Bush did not have.

- mkayser0

November 10, 2008 at 1:32am

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you've got to be kidding me with this hogwash.

- Maxblum13

November 10, 2008 at 2:20am

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Noooooooooooooo!  He shouldn't emulate Bush's leadership style.  He is working from a position of strength and confidence.  He can afford to give peace a chance.  Not only can he afford it, it's more likely to get results.  Bush's policy record is not the great list of achievements you make it out to be, even from the conservative ideological perspective.  Yes, the tax cuts were a success, but tax cuts are easy.  Ditto (sadly) war, where the president is in charge, and nobody wants to be a pussy.

If you want to compare apples to apples, consider something *hard* that Bush tried -- Social Security reform.  Dead on arrival.  We don't need to see health care reform meet a similar fate.  Bush proceeded carelessly, in every realm, and alienated not just political opponents, but eventually political allies too, and, of course, the country at large.  I'm not eager to give Congress back, nor do I want to sweat election night in four years.  Nor do I think, frankly, it's the right way to govern.  I don't think that's a sign of weakness.  I think it's a realistic recognition that the big changes in store -- which, yes, are bigger, and gore much bigger oxes, than No Child Left Behind -- require, as Obama says, "all hands on deck."  What's more, a president who gets roughly half the popular vote -- let's admit it, the electoral college's superfluous layer of aggrandizement notwithstanding -- does not in fact have a mandate to freeze out the other half.  A president is in charge of the whole country, and *ought* to prefer to bring the whole country along with him, just as FDR did, when he proposes to make major changes.  I think that's what Obama wants to do, and I think he can.  (If anyone can ....)

Don't forget Bush's biggest accomplishment:  President Obama.  I don't want to see what heretofore unimaginable and unlikely Republican comes along after eight years of bullying and botched efforts by a Cohn-esque Obama administration to reclaim the White House from a Democratic Party in tatters.

- jhildner

November 10, 2008 at 3:04am

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p.s.  Supreme Court doesn't count.  Obama will propose people we should like and will get them through.  He won't need Bush's style to do that, which, after all, first gave us Harriet Miers.  He probably won't have the chance to tip the balance, at least not in his first term, but there's nothing to be done about that.  He can mitigate the damage, and perhaps change the direction, of the federal judiciary as a whole.

- jhildner

November 10, 2008 at 3:11am

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Trying to square asnevitt's and mkayser0's arguments makes me fear the two logical possibilities: either a vengeful legislative tyranny, or the continuing evolution of the imperial presidency. I fear the latter more. But, neither disjunct is good news for Obama's legacy.

- miguknamja4

November 10, 2008 at 5:44am

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Obama can also reinvent himself as the American Putting or the Supreme Misleader Jurist Khaminei.

- s4200

November 10, 2008 at 8:43am

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Great post. Totally agree.

- jobeek2

November 10, 2008 at 9:24am

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American putting?

useless mind exercise, Obama is not Bush, they have completely different temperments and political philosophies. He might emulate Reagan's optimism, but that will be about it, otherwise his style will be his own.

- blackton

November 10, 2008 at 10:21am

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I heard AB Desmond Tutu last week on NPR (Neil Cohen, Ted Kopple were hosting) quite warmly thank George Bush for his raising of so much money for fighting AIDs in Africa.  There is something to what Jon.

- jet

November 10, 2008 at 10:37am

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jacobt1, did you get a new handle? Is s4200 you?

I'm all for Obama becoming the American Putting. The American Putting People Back to Work. The American Putting Our Allies at Ease. The American Putting Meat on Them Electoral Bones.

And since I don't think Obama needs to learn much about winning (certainly not from Bush), I propose that we who supported him continue doing what we did this year. For a start I propose that whenever s4200 befouls these boards, we take turns donating to groups fighting for gay rights.

I'll start by dropping $25 into the piggy bank of the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center to help them fight Prop 8.

The piggy bank can be found here:

secure2.convio.net/.../Donation2

- Nippers

November 10, 2008 at 11:06am

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Jonathan, I understand what you are saying, but I don't think I like it.  In any event, if Obama was to singulary pursue goals a la Dubya, could he speak (and read) relatively malaprop-free and without the vacant Alfred E. Neuman eyesand stupid smirk?

- tec619

November 10, 2008 at 11:14am

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I'm reading McPherson's "Tried by War" -- disappointing book, more linear account than thematic analysis -- and the one bit of new understanding that I've found is the degree to which Lincoln, almost alone among the entire government and military, saw each Confederate invasion across the Potomac as an opportunity to be seized, not a catastrophe to be staved off. They're coming to fight on our territory? All the easier to cut off the invading army and destroy it in detail, argued Lincoln. Everyone else in Washington took a view more along the lines of, "Holy shit, we're doomed!" Panic is the necessary result when someone who can't see beyond the status quo is confronted with a new threat.

As long as the emerging Obama ignores the chicken littles of the establishment and looks for ways to leverage crises to achieve their larger strategic goals, then we'll be OK. And this is a trait better displayed by George W. Bush than by any of his recent predecessors -- particularly Bill Clinton, who entered office with too much of the establishment's mindset of defensive reaction rather than strategic audacity.

- rhubarbs

November 10, 2008 at 11:24am

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No, Jonathan , no, nein, nyet.  I have long greatly admired your writing on health care and I am on board with you there but you really are an unreconstructed liberal, the Ezra Klein of TNR. So are you prepared to admit - and willing to cheer on - Obama the left partisan, a persona diametrically opposed to what he ran as? I am much more sceptical than you are of large-scale governmental engineering. We do need bold action on the financial and economic fronts but as a non-ideologue, I am not exactly sure what such action should consist of. Even Marty Feldstein is arguing for a stimulus package; I am with him on this. Obama should convene a gaggle of the (gasp) economic elites, left, right and center (with a weighting toward the center-left) and canvas them for advice. Are you listening Rahm?

- liberal reformer

November 10, 2008 at 11:43am

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What an appalling suggestion. Bush's administration has been marked, and many of its policy initiatives achieved, above all by an unparallelled arrogation of executive power and disdain for its intended constitutional limits. Barack Obama is a bona fide constitutional law scholar, whereas one might readily wonder whether George W Bush is aware that such a document exists. Bush surrounded himself with sycophants and assiduously shielded himself from dissenting voices. He showed a clear disdain for analysis, and even for objective information. He famously decided matters of the gravest consequence based on his "gut." America does not need one more day of this kind of "leadership." Fortunately for all of us, Barack Obama is not made that way.

- bconklin

November 10, 2008 at 11:45am

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Didn't the AIDS package undermine itself as it refused to use the money for programmes that advocated the use of condoms?

- GoodLiberal

November 10, 2008 at 11:46am

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Amen, bconklin.

- liberal reformer

November 10, 2008 at 11:56am

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I don't think Cohn is being quite honest about how Bush managed to wreak such drastic changes in so short a time. Sure, Bush was determined and ambitious -- fine qualities for Obama to emulate. But Clinton was pilloried for "overreaching" in his first term, and he never reached half so far as Bush. Really, Bush was able to move so far so fast because he ignored all experts, purged all dissenters, never changed course based on results, and hammered crude ideological solutions into complex real-world systems. In the terms of Obama's "scalpel vs. hatchet" metaphor, Bush made his mark by smashing the government with large rocks.

The best example for the ambitious, determined Obama we want and need was set by ruthless old FDR -- a point most recently made by that flamingest of liberals, Fareed Zakaria. If one were absolutely determined to find a counterintuitive role model for Obama, one might pick Nixon -- who better combines the qualities of high intellect, low cunning, pragmatism and a total lack of scruples? But the four-term Founding Father of the 20th Century is a much better choice.

- bdgreen

November 10, 2008 at 12:05pm

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Political observers are offering FDR, Ronald Reagan, and even George W. Bush as presidents to emulate.

- Anonymous

November 10, 2008 at 12:49pm

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If you wanted a Bush of the Left, you should have voted for Hillary Clinton (though come to think of it, Jon, you very well may have). I didn't, and I'm much happier with what we've got.

- CharlesFosterKane

November 10, 2008 at 12:50pm

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By the way, I didn't mean to say that Obama should back away from his goals or give in to the faux-high-minded yet ignorant tut-tutting he gets from supposedly wise commentators who like nothing so much as the feeling that they are uttering wisdom.  Obama is most definitely committed to major change.  He has said that one of the reasons he actually relishes being president during times like these is that such times jolt Americans out of their default position of small-c conservatism and make major policy change possible.

But sticking to an ambitious agenda and declining to go small bore in a Clintonesque way (when times were good and small-c conservatism was the order of the day) have little to do with Bush's leadership style, which is both repugnant and ineffective, certainly in the long term, often in the short term too.

- jhildner

November 10, 2008 at 12:50pm

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One positive note: Obama takes counsel, and that very well, but he has wisely ignored practically every single piece of advice the punditry has had to offer him.  Bully for him, and so much the better for us.

Obama, by temperament and intellect, is the anti-Bush; there is nothing this Administration can teach the next one, except by negative example: whatever it is that the Bushites did, do the opposite.  And continue to ignore the well-meaning punditry.

S4200

"Obama can also reinvent himself as the American Putting or the Supreme Misleader Jurist Khaminei."

Well, on another thread you thought the Palin was "easy going and decent"; so I guess you have already demonstrated yourself to be uniquely lacking in judgement, analytical capacity and character perception.  That you would come up with this bizarre, illiterate and inapt line is yet another nail in your intellectual coffin here.  Whatever Obama's failings, to suggest that he intersects with Khamenei is simply hallucinatory hyperbole - so bizarre as to bring into question the sanity of the utterer.  Let me give you a piece of advice: when making analogies, it is good to find at least a common point that is easily understood.  Even if the point you're making is that Obama is Muslim, he would be Sunni and not Shi'ite; if you are suggesting that there will be random arrests and tortures in the US, well, W. is already doing that, so he could be just as well called Khamenei - and this holds for making idiotic and ignorant statements about world affairs.  So, in a word, WTF?

- icarusr

November 10, 2008 at 1:36pm

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Missing the point, most of these readers are.  Do y'all honestly think Cohn is advocating for Obama to embrace constitutional excesses?  C'mon.  No. :)

By any historical measure, Bush's presidency has been very significant.  He set a very ambitious agenda and vigorously pursued it.  I have noted the similarity to LBJ myself, right down to them both being a coupla Texans. ;-)  

Bush changed the nation.  I think that is what Cohn means - that Obama should identify significant goals and pursue them.  He is saying Obama should be a president of significance, rather than merely fiddle with the nation's dials.  Arguably, we had presidents who fiddled rather than presidents of significance from 1988 to 2000.  Both Bush 41 and Clinton were decent presidents, but Obama has the opportunity to be a great president by setting his sights on bigger things. Like Bush did.  Although Bush is leaving office, like Truman, judged to be a corrupt, disastrous failure - whereas Bush 41 had 50%+ approval when he left and Clinton even higher - so maybe we're a nation that loves fiddlers and disapprovers of changers.  We'll see.  We'll see how history judges them all, eventually.

- phargle

November 10, 2008 at 1:59pm

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libref,

Glad to see you back on these boards. I've been away myself a few weeks because of work, so if you've been back for a while, excuse my tardy welcome. All's forgiven, then? One of my favorite posting moments these last few months was when you referred to my debate-assessment standards as "Nippers high," or something along those lines. Good times. Fond memories. It sure was one hell of a ride, wasn't it? But we're all aboard this leaky ship now. Time to start bailing.

- Nippers

November 10, 2008 at 4:54pm

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Good to see you back, too, nip.

- liberal reformer

November 10, 2008 at 5:28pm

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This is the most unambiguous bullshit I have ever read: And a good reminder why I cannot, with rare exception...take this rag seriously.

thomas plagemann

San Francisco CA

- thosplag

November 10, 2008 at 5:40pm

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Wow.  You hypocritical SOB's.  Vilifying our president for the last 8 years over what you deemed as executive power abuse.  The truth is out then.  It was never about the abuse of executive power, it's ideological differences with President Bush.  I'm sure if Obama dismissed Congress, you'd be fly with that too, but only because it's him.

- jwl2672

November 12, 2008 at 6:07pm

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