Morning Plum: Inside Obama’s game plan for 2014
In his State of the Union address tomorrow, President Obama will declare his intention to use executive authority to bypass Congress. The Wall Street Journal reports that a host of such policies are being considered on the economy, job training, infrastructure repair, climate change, and education.
Republicans are outraged. Yesterday Rand Paul declared that Obama’s promise of executive action smacks of a “threat,” adding that he should instead be “building consensus.” Senator Roy Blunt similarly argues that “we don’t need more class warfare” and that the President “has a lot of explaining to do.”
This is particularly interesting, given that Republicans have for years hewed to a strategy of denying Obama any support for his initiatives explicitly to prevent him from achieving accomplishments he could tout as bipartisan. Don’t take my word for it. Mitch McConnell has already told us of this strategy himself.
But the sniping about Obama’s promise of unilateral action — which will only grow louder — is obscuring what is really going on here, which is more complex and nuanced than it first appears.
The recalibrated strategy is partly a reflection of a realization that there’s probably no chance of winning GOP cooperation on most of Obama’s agenda. But the White House is not simply resorting to new tactics to move Obama’s agenda forward, though that’s important. Rather, it looks to me like Obama and his advisers are also embarking on an ambitious effort to re-engage the president with the public on a new set of terms.
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Along these lines, note this finding from the new Post/ABC News poll:
Presidents have the power in some cases to bypass Congress and take action by executive order to accomplish their administration’s goals. Is this approach something you…
Support: 52
Oppose: 46
More at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/01/27/morning-plum-inside-obamas-game-plan-for-2014/
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