How Not to Win the Future

[n2doc]

Brian Goldsmith
Some recent articles have emphasized a new White House M.O. to go with the new senior staff: more discipline, more consistent messaging, less flying-by-the-seat-of-the pants. All that may be true. But these changes in style have not affected one particularly critical kind of substance: President Obama still doesn't know how to negotiate.

Many progressives see a disconcerting, even maddening, pattern: the administration gives away the store before real bargaining even begins. And it gets less done just to buff Obama's image as a centrist.

On the Recovery Act, the White House reduced aid to hard-pressed states, which meant local spending cuts negated many benefits of the stimulus. It also included an enormous tax cut -- which had little or no stimulative effect -- all in hopes of attracting Republican support that mostly never came. As has been widely reported, Christina Romer, Obama's Council of Economic Advisers chair, as well as prominent outside economists, pushed for a bolder bill to save more jobs, but political advisers scaled it back so the president would seem more fiscally responsible. In the end, Obama got tagged as both a big spender and an ineffective job creator: the worst of all worlds.

On climate change, as the New Yorker's Ryan Lizza reported, the White House made three critical blunders -- and they were mistakes of exactly the same kind. Obama announced his support for more domestic drilling, more nuclear power loan guarantees, and a delay for EPA carbon regulation. He did so without winning any support from wavering Republicans -- or even asking anything in return. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), scrambling to build a coalition for cap-and-trade, was apoplectic. As Lizza wrote, "Obama had served the dessert before the children even promised to eat their spinach. Graham was the only Republican negotiating on the climate bill, and now he had virtually nothing left to take to his Republican colleagues." In the end, Obama gave a couple moderate-sounding speeches on global warming -- but failed to get a bill.

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http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/03/how-not-to-win-the-future/72042/

[Rex]

1. Hopefully he won't be an idiot and shoot his party in the foot

right before the big election, like last Nov. He might not like the left, but he needs every single one of our votes - and that drives his followers crazy.

[Lucky 13]

2. I think he's shown the far left that he believes he doesn't need them at all.

The name calling, the asinine deals, corporate blowjobs, and the more symbolic: Awarding GHW Bush the medal of freedom.

It all is a big FUCK YOU to the left figuring that "unless they want Sarah Palin" they will have to vote for him. He doesn't need them because it's been drilled into everyone's heads that there is no other choice...

...I think he's wrong.

I think we're on the verge of open revolt in the party. These guys either start acting like Democrats or Democrats won't vote for them.

[ananda]

4. Agree.

Obama has gone to the dark side.

[Poboy]

3. The administration gives away the store before real bargaining even begins.

True, always, and without hesitancy.

recommend

[ThomCat]

5. Well, at least pundits are recognizing what many of us

have been saying from the beginning.

Obama gives everything away in an effort to look cooperative, so he FAILS from the very start.

Health care reform was a perfect example.

HE STARTED by promising insurance companies that they would remain central to health care, and profitable. That killed any chance that they would ever be removed from the delivery of health care services, even though every reputable analysis said that the biggest problem was the insurance companies. Insurance companies inflate the cost without providing any significant benefit.

There was no need to have them at the table. When does any government panel that is regulating an industry insist on having that industry present to write the rules to regulate them! And, if an industry must be present while they are being regulated, why only the insurance companies and for-profit health care providers? Why were non-profit public health specialists, medical organizations and unions excluded? Why?

While he was giving away promises to try to get cooperation from conservatives and republicans who never ended up supporting him anyway, he was excluding all the progressive and liberal law-makers, refusing to let them sit in on discussions, refusing to let them see what was being written and considered in committee before it went up for a vote. So corporations and their lobbyists had more access than many Law-makers, just because it was Assumed that progressive and liberal lawmakers would vote for anything that was put forward. It was assumed that they had no choice but to vote for anything that was put forward. So only the lawmakers on the right and lobbyists got access and concessions!

So we ended up with a Republican bill, watered down and filled with loopholes, and we were assured repeatedly that this was supposedly the best thing ever, the best thing that was ever possible.

But it was going to be improved step by step with additional legislation.

It wasn't the best thing possible. Not by a long shot. And we haven't seen any improvements.

All we have seen in insurance companies evading conditions and requirement, raising costs at a record rate, reducing what services they cover, and shutting down where they provide service in preparation for the phase-in of this bill.

We got screwed, and we are going to keep getting screwed, because Obama can't negotiate his way out of an empty room with one door.

[n2doc]

6. And the repuibs used HCR has a hammer against us in the last election

But I do disagree with this part:
"When does any government panel that is regulating an industry insist on having that industry present to write the rules to regulate them! "

Happens all the time- see Minerals management agency and oil co's in the W administration, or for that matter Cheney's energy task force. Of course, who in their right mind would want to emulate those examples?

[ThomCat]

7. You are right. Who would want to emulate those examples?

The republicans do it because they are openly corrupt.

Obama seems to do it because he thinks that somehow it will make him look "bipartisan." He thinks it will give him a reputation as someone who works well with everyone.

You have to wonder if he realizes that it makes him totally ineffective. Does he know what a useless tool he is?