Did the President really win?
The title of my post arises because of something I read in the NY Times this morning:
But there is no doubt that in the course of this debate, Mr. Obama has lost something — and lost it for good. Gone is the promise on which he rode to victory less than a year and a half ago — the promise of a “postpartisan” Washington in which rationality and calm discourse replaced partisan bickering.
Never in modern memory has a major piece of legislation passed without a single Republican vote. Even President Lyndon B. Johnson got just shy of half of Republicans in the House to vote for Medicare in 1965, a piece of legislation that was denounced with many of the same words used to oppose this one. That may be the true measure of how much has changed in Washington in the ensuing 45 years, and how Mr. Obama’s own strategy is changing with the discovery that the approach to governing he had in mind simply will not work.
“Let’s face it, he’s failed in the effort to be the nonpolarizing president, the one who can use rationality and calm debate to bridge our traditional divides,” said Peter Beinart, a liberal essayist who is publishing a history of hubris in politics. “It turns out he’s our third highly polarizing president in a row. But for his liberal base, it confirms that they were right to believe in the guy — and they had their doubts.”
For that lesson in governing, Mr. Obama paid a heavy price. He nearly lost the health care debate, and pulled out victory only after deferring nearly every other priority and stumping with a passion he had not shown since his campaign. His winning argument, in the end, was that while the political result could run against him — and other Democrats — remaking health care was a keystone of his “Change You Can Believe In” credo.
It’s really the last paragraph that intrigues me, so I’ll quote it again:
For that lesson in governing, Mr. Obama paid a heavy price. He nearly lost the health care debate, and pulled out victory only after deferring nearly every other priority and stumping with a passion he had not shown since his campaign. His winning argument, in the end, was that while the political result could run against him — and other Democrats — remaking health care was a keystone of his “Change You Can Believe In” credo.
And in that last paragraph, there’s actually only one clause that intrigues me: “His winning argument….”
Think about that. Did Obama really have a winning argument? With Pelosi beside him to break kneecaps, he was able to bully the true-believers in Congress into voting for his health care plan. But outside of the Washington, D.C. bubble, Obama’s argument was and continues to be a loser. Americans hate it.
So Obama didn’t win the argument when it comes to his actual constituents — the American people. With them, he lost it resoundingly. Instead, after a bruising battle, he managed to convince his acolytes to stick with him. That doesn’t sound like victory. That sounds like the political desperation of committed ideologues.
I think John Podhoretz might agree with me:
The story here is not that he succeeded against all odds and with the winds against him to push through historic legislation, even though that is what the media would have you believe. The story is that a party holding a 75-seat margin in the House of Representatives was barely able to squeak by with its greatest legislative priority and most devoutly desired policy. That is the salient fact here. What Obama pulled off was a textbook example of raw intra-party discipline; the unpopularity of the measure and its political consequences remain exactly as they were before the vote.
So would Jennifer Rubin:
It was especially fitting that the final votes were acquired with a giant wink and a good deal of political cowardice on the part of Bart Stupak and his gang. They know the executive order is an unenforceable fraud, and they know the pro-life movement knows it’s a fraud. But they did it anyway. Just as the Democrats know the CBO score is a fiction, and they know that fiscally concerned voters know it’s a fiction. But they did it anyway. They have decided they are in the history-making business as well as the base-will-kill-us-if-we-don’t business, so they’ve jumped off that precipice. One suspects the obviousness of the canard is one factor that will make this not a cataclysmic event but a political game changer.
