by Damozel | As a person who used -- naively --- to think that the solution to Bush and the GOP would be some sort of middle path between conservative and liberal, I am sorry to say I have come to agree whole-heartedly with Krugman on this:
A proud centrist. For that is what the senators who ended up calling the tune on the stimulus bill just accomplished.
As Deb Cupples taught me to understand, sometimes there is no middle path. Certainly the hash that a few self-congratulatory senators made of the stimulus package isn't by any stretch a "middle path." As I said in my conclusion to Saturday's piece on the "compromise" --- by which I mean the revisions to the stimulus package offered by "centrist" Democrat Ben Nelson and his ilk as a lure to "centrist" Republicans Specter and Collins -- it's entirely horrifying to see the Democrats assent to cutting the baby in half and calling it a compromise.
Krugman says dourly: "I blame President Obama’s belief that he can transcend the partisan divide — a belief that warped his economic strategy." Me too. Being bipartisan for the sake of being bipartisan just makes no sense to me. Given what we've seen of the GOP for the last eight years, it is in fact arrant nonsense.
Instead, however, he offered a plan that was clearly both too small and too heavily reliant on tax cuts. Why? Because he wanted the plan to have broad bipartisan support, and believed that it would. Not long ago administration strategists were talking about getting 80 or more votes in the Senate.
Mr. Obama’s postpartisan yearnings may also explain why he didn’t do something crucially important: speak forcefully about how government spending can help support the economy. Instead, he let conservatives define the debate, waiting until late last week before finally saying what needed to be said — that increasing spending is the whole point of the plan.
John Cole gave what I consider to be the most memorable summing up ever of this whole "find the middle ground" theory of governance.
Glenn Greenwald has often and often commented on the fact that the last eight years have demonstrated that compromise with the GOP AIN'T POSSIBLE. In December, he wrote (respecting an entirely different issue):
Instead, they'll feel respected and accommodated. They therefore won't be distracted by petty sideshow controversies. As a result, he'll encounter less reflexive resistance to implementing the key parts of his progressive agenda. A New Politics will emerge: one of respectful and civil disagreements, but not consumed by crippling partisan and cultural hatreds.
[I]n what conceivable sense is this approach "new"? Even for those who are convinced this will work, isn't this exactly the same thing Democrats have been doing for the last two decades: namely, accommodating and compromising with the Right in the name of bipartisan harmony and a desire to avoid partisan and cultural conflicts? This harmonious approach may be many things, but the one thing it seems not to be is "new."In fact, wasn't this transpartisan mentality exactly the strategic premise that drove the Bill Clinton presidency, exactly what Dick Morris' triangulation tactics were designed to achieve?....
What did all of those post-partisan, cultural outreach efforts generate? Hatred so undiluted that it led to endless investigations, accusations whose ugliness was boundless, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, and ultimate impeachment over a sex scandal. Bill Clinton was anything but a cultural or partisan warrior. He was the opposite. And that was what he had to show for it.
The GOP doesn't compromise; it postures and politicizes, and the election hasn't changed that one little bit.
So I am not really sure where postpartisanship ends and spinelessness begins in light of this fact. It starts to feel as if the problem with the Dems is that they are afraid to take responsibility for generating solutions --- they'd rather have a watered-down and ultimately ineffectual solution to THE MAJOR ECONOMIC CRISIS OF OUR TIME and share the blame than come up with a plan that will work.
Meanwhile, here's what post-partisan compromise has got us in exchange for the stimulus package:
One of the best features of the original plan was aid to cash-strapped state governments, which would have provided a quick boost to the economy while preserving essential services. But the centrists insisted on a $40 billion cut in that spending.
The original plan also included badly needed spending on school construction; $16 billion of that spending was cut. It included aid to the unemployed, especially help in maintaining health care — cut. Food stamps — cut. All in all, more than $80 billion was cut from the plan, with the great bulk of those cuts falling on precisely the measures that would do the most to reduce the depth and pain of this slump.
On the other hand, the centrists were apparently just fine with one of the worst provisions in the Senate bill, a tax credit for home buyers. Dean Baker of the Center for Economic Policy Research calls this the “flip your house to your brother” provision: it will cost a lot of money while doing nothing to help the economy.
In the Senate, Republicans inveighed against “pork” — although the wasteful spending they claimed to have identified (much of it was fully justified) was a trivial share of the bill’s total. And they decried the bill’s cost — even as 36 out of 41 Republican senators voted to replace the Obama plan with $3 trillion, that’s right, $3 trillion in tax cuts over 10 years. (NYT)
Andrew Sullivan, interestingly, seems to think that postpartisanship may still be a good thing. Even so, he tellingly concedes:
The kind of Republican who might have actually taken current economic conditions into account when grappling with a new president was voted out of office last November. Only Specter, Collins and Snowe are left (with Lugar hanging in). McCain's post-election bitterness has resulted in the usual hissy-fit. What's particularly rich is that many Republican senators who have urged removing some spending from the package have nonetheless retained support for the spending itself - as long as it is called something else and delayed sufficiently so it won't have as much impact on demand.
But unlike Krugman --- whom Sullivan characterizes as calling for "partisan war", like that's a bad thing at this juncture --- Sullivan thinks Obama's acceptance of Republican tampering makes good sense from the standpoint of long-term strategy:.
We are at the beginning of a very, very tough process, of problems that will require constant adjustment and change and will meet all sorts of resistance. The banking bailout is yet to come. Recallibrating what can be effectively done in Afghanistan and Iraq will also be a grueling act of triage. The contraction in world trade looms at the end. It may be impossible for Obama to sustain any bipartisan consensus in this - but to my mind, that makes it all the more important that he should appear to have tried. And if he succeeds, and this recession lifts, he emerges with his core political identity - and appeal to independents - intact. That is not worth sacrificing over some early partisan choppiness.
Strategy is more important than tactics. He won the last election in part to get us past that kind of politics. He should not surrender after two weeks. Especially when it has already helped him define himself successfully.
I guess I'm not seeing how passing a timid and ineffective stimulus package that doesn't reach the people who will suffer most is a good strategy. But there again, I don't give a rat's ass about Obama's "core political identity" or "appeal to independents." I want him to solve the problems. If he does that, nobody else will care either. If he doesn't, ditto.
Steve Benen says he's happy the bill is going to pass. However:
Which: exactly. Dividing the baby for the sake of giving everyone a share = dead baby. And that's what I'm very much afraid the stimulus package is going to turn out to be.
RELATED BUCK NAKED POLITICS POSTINGS HERE
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Record High U.S. Jobs Loss, Yet Republicans Want Tax Cuts for Wealthy Folks
Krugman says Economy Poised at Cliff's Edge, Political Theater Must Stop
Obama Knows What You Need, Even If He Won't Tell You: "Now is the Time [for Bipartisan Horse-Trading] (The Op-Ed)
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