Obama vs. Congress: The politics of ‘no’

“The gloves are off,” said Doyle McManus in the Los Angeles Times. “Hope” and “change” may still be part of President Obama’s rhetorical arsenal, but there’s a new message emanating from the White House, aimed directly at Republicans who have methodically blocked his ambitious agenda: “No more Mr. Nice Guy.” In his State of the Union address last week, Obama pointedly told Senate Republicans that if they are going to insist that 60 votes are needed in the Senate to get anything accomplished in Washington, “then the responsibility to govern is now yours as well.” Two days later, meeting with House Republicans at their retreat in Baltimore, Obama accused his hosts of practicing “the politics of no” and of being more interested in partisan warfare than in solving the nation’s problems. “Let’s start thinking of each other as Americans first,” he said in yet another speech this week. “I don’t want an attitude, ‘If Obama loses, we win.’”

But why would Republicans want to find common ground with Obama? said Jonah Goldberg in National Review Online. For all the talk about Obama’s “pivoting to the center,” he’s a liberal ideologue who’s wedded to a Big Government, big deficit agenda. It’s not just a handful of Republican congressmen who aren’t buying health-care “reform” and bogus “stimulus” spending—it’s most Americans. “At the core of Obama’s trouble is a misreading of the 2008 election,” said Fred Barnes in The Weekly Standard. America is still “a center-right country,” but Obama thought his victory was a mandate for “sweeping initiatives” bringing massive deficit spending and costly caps on emissions, and expanding government bureaucracy. He was wrong, and his plummeting poll numbers prove it.

Obama is indeed in trouble, said Robert Kuttner in The Boston Globe, but your diagnosis is all wrong. His fundamental miscalculation has been—and apparently continues to be—that Republicans are the least bit interested in solving the country’s problems. But Republicans figure their interests are best served by denying Obama any victories whatsoever. They even voted against establishing a bipartisan commission to reduce the deficit, after some Republicans proposed just such a commission. Why knock your head against a “brick wall”? Actually, it’s “good politics” for Obama to embrace bipartisanship, said Colbert King in The Washington Post, because the public is sick of gridlock. But let’s not be naïve. “Republicans don’t want comity; they want the White House. And the way to reach it is by going around, over, or through Obama.”

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Obama now fully understands that, said Eugene Robinson, also in the Post, which is why he is back in campaign mode, directly addressing his message to the voters. From now on, he’ll position himself as a solutions-seeking “outsider” bashing that “den of iniquity called Washington.” Instead of playing defense, he’s going on offense, and if Republicans keep saying “no,” they’ll risk “sounding truculent and Machiavellian.” There’s one flaw with that strategy, said USA Today in an editorial. The country doesn’t want solutions—at least not solutions that involve any sacrifice. Voters want cheaper and more reliable health insurance, “but not the tradeoffs that would make it possible.” They want jobs, now, but are “wildly critical” of government stimulus spending and big deficits. They want deficit reduction, but not at the cost of higher taxes or cuts in any program that benefits them. Are you listening, Washington? The people have spoken.