AMERICA:Obama's critics on the left believe he wasted much of his first year currying favour with Republicans who would leave him in the lurch, writes LARA MARLOWE
PRESIDENT BARACK Obama came to office promising to change the way Washington works. One of his chief goals was to end the hyperpartisanship that has virtually paralysed the US legislative process.
Obama’s critics on the left believe he was naive to seek bipartisan support for healthcare reform – that he wasted much of his first year currying favour with Republicans who would leave him in the lurch. Having won the White House and both houses of Congress, the argument goes, Democrats should have rammed legislation through, ignoring Republican objections.
Republicans reject the label “party of No” that the Democrats pinned on them. Far from being obstructionist, the Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell argues, Republicans have been shut out by Democrats.
The cycle of mutual recrimination was repeated this week, as Obama renewed his quest for the Holy Grail of bipartisanship. Leading House Republicans responded to the President’s invitation to a televised meeting on healthcare on February 25th with a letter saying they would “rightly be reluctant to participate” unless a litany of demands were met.
“Last May, Republicans asked President Obama to hold bipartisan discussions on healthcare . . . but he declined,” the letter claimed. The hurt, aggrieved tone continued. “We cannot help but notice that each of the President’s recent bipartisan overtures has been coupled with harsh, misleading partisan attacks,” wrote Representatives John Boehner and Eric Cantor.
Obama’s spokesman Robert Gibbs issued a rebuttal, saying, “The President . . . began this process by inviting Republican and Democratic leaders to the White House on March 5 last year . . .”
Republicans have made threats of Senate filibusters standard operating procedure. The GOP is torn between the need not to appear obstructionist, and determination to deprive President Obama of any legislative victory that might help the Democrats in the November mid-term elections.
The public is not duped. In a poll published in yesterday’s New York Times, nearly 60 per cent said they want Obama and the Republicans to compromise in the interest of consensus. Sixty-two per cent said Obama was trying to work with Congressional Republicans, but that the Republicans were not trying to work with him.
In the poll, 75 per cent said they disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job. Populist, grassroots movements like the right-wing Tea Party, with its anti-government rhetoric, stand to gain most from hyperpartisan gridlock.
Mr Obama appeals ceaselessly for bipartisanship. On February 9th, he convened what the White House said would be the first of a series of monthly bipartisan meetings of House and Senate leaders at the White House, to discuss job-creating legislation.
“The American people . . . are tired of every day being Election Day in Washington,” Obama said. “The people who sent us here expect a seriousness of purpose that transcends petty politics.” But there were limits to compromise, Obama admitted. He provoked laughter by portraying himself as a hen-pecked husband. “Bipartisanship cannot mean simply that Democrats give up everything that they believe in, find the handful of things that Republicans have been advocating for and we do those things, and then we have bipartisanship. That’s not how it works in any other realm of life. That’s certainly not how it works in my marriage with Michelle, although I usually do give in most of the time.”
Republican-Democrat bad blood has stalled legislation in the Senate on energy policy and banking rules. Obama used an executive order to create a bipartisan fiscal commission. Senate Republicans supported the commission – then blocked it.
This week, Obama threatened to circumvent the Senate by appointing nominees to high-level government posts during the President’s Day recess. Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama had blocked more than 70 nominees because he objected to Pentagon budget cuts that threatened jobs in his state. Senate Republicans partially relented and confirmed 29 of Mr Obama’s nominees.
But the Senate failed the biggest test of bipartisanship this week: the jobs package that was discussed at the White House on Tuesday. When Democratic Senator Max Baucus and Republican Senator Charles Grassley proposed a joint plan on Thursday, the White House issued a glowing statement saying: “The President is gratified to see the Senate moving forward in a bipartisan manner.”
Within hours, this paragon of bipartisan entente fell apart. Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, reduced it to four job-creating initiatives, the most important of which would waive the 6.2 per cent Social Security tax for new hires. Reid pared the Bill from $85 billion (€62.4 billion) to $15 billion, and jettisoned a raft of measures that Democrats said had little to do with job creation and a lot to do with corporate tax breaks. Republicans then said they might not support the Bill after all.
The New York Timescalled the emerging jobs Bill in the Senate "pathetic, both as a response to joblessness and as an example of legislation deemed capable of winning bipartisan support".