President Obama Really, Seriously Needs to Lead

“All Presidents start out wanting to be domestic policy Presidents,” Professor Phil Mundo observed with characteristic insight, “and end up as foreign policy Presidents.”  Events abroad have a way of overshadowing (if not overtaking) a President’s goals for his domestic agenda: President Kennedy portended a dramatic vision of national reform but was pulled into the Cuban Missile Crisis and mulling over Vietnam before his Presidency was tragically cut short; President Johnson surely wanted to be remembered for the Civil Rights Act and his Great Society, not for launching the Vietnam “Conflict;” President Nixon, his “Southern Strategy” of Silent Majority-populism notwithstanding, was a Republican who governed largely from the left (as I have previously blogged) and distinguished himself in foreign policy by attaining arms-limitation talks with the Soviets and recognizing Communist China; President Carter promised, post-Watergate, that “I will never lie to you,” and his honesty and good government of the State of Georgia proved irrelevant in the face of ongoing inflation, high unemployment, and a violent Islamist revolution in Iran; President Reagan was seen as the consummation of the hopes of the New Right, but in his 2nd term he conducted a politically-prudent Realist foreign policy; President Bush Sr.’s signature achievement was UN support for and quick prosecution of the Persian Gulf War, his signature failure his inability to master an extended recession; President Clinton hoped to give us single-payer health insurance and integrate gays into the US Military but failed on both counts, instead bringing the North American Free Trade Agreement to passage, promoting humanitarian interventions in Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo and establishing closer relations with the People’s Republic of China; George W. Bush campaigned as the “Compassionate Conservative” but in less than a year he was drawn into a shooting war against religious fanatics in Central Asia, and a year after that he was drawn into what has proved a costly military makeover of Iraq.  Much like President Clinton before him, President Obama has taken the loss of the House of Representatives as his cue to focus on foreign policy.  So we get advocacy of free trade agreements with South Korea and Peru, UN authorization of humanitarian intervention in Libya, highlighting of the greatly-improved situation in Iraq, jubilation at the killing of pampered terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, and a greatly-augmented call on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to negotiate a settlement with the Palestinian Authority based on the 1967 border.

Considering the profound malaise in both the economy and the Federal budget, it’s almost as if Barack Obama no longer wanted to be President.

This is no time for focusing on a foreign policy wish list.  The President has done some good in foreign policy and continues to pursue some noble objectives, but whatever the story may be behind the scenes, there isn’t enough evidence of movement by the President on domestic policy.  I am finally prepared to concede (though I have only been troubled with the thought in recent weeks) that the President’s critics on the Left have half a point.

They have half a point.  The President’s biggest failure is not that he isn’t running the Federal Government like Portland, Oregon.  Even in February 2009 this would have been an equally-rapid path to November 2010; today the Republicans have their largest House majority in generations.  The course of instant gratification many on the Left wanted from President Obama was never available to him.  What he could have done (and what he keeps doing in compartmentalized fits) is take a stand.

Now I’ve plagiarized Paul Krugman.  But for months I have quietly yearned for the President Obama, not of the 2008 campaign trail (who delivered many progressive reforms but crucially failed to put people back to work) but of the 2011 State of the Union Address.  The call to a new national purpose–of the development of a 21st-century national infrastructure, education system, and research sector; the demand for reform of our immigration policy; even his call to see the brave new World of computerization, capital mobility and competition with huge the educated work forces of China and India as a “challenge” rather than a menacing tide…All of these calls inspired me, all of them sounded both like the medicine we needed and a means of triangulating the rallying-cries of a Republican Party reborn in the mold of Libertarian populism.

Where has the talk of our new infrastructure, of immigration reform, of how we (in essence) “gotta compete with the wily Chinese” gone?  Some may say the President had no choice, that the Republicans simply aren’t willing to work with him.  Like all circularities, this is strangely off-point: President Obama should leverage any future budget and tax agreements with House Speaker John Boehner and his restive caucus of Conservatives to work-out a deal to advance his own priorities; after all, the Republican Party has campaigned in overall cuts to Federal spending, only rarely on eliminating specific programs.  Last December the President struck a deal with Senate Republicans on extending almost all of President Bush’s tax cuts in order to achieve their compliance on or consent to almost the balance of his 1st-term agenda; I applauded that deal at the time and am still happy with the result.  The President obviously can’t get everything he wants, but he can and should have a public position on how much he is willing to compromise his own policy goals to reach a resolution with the Republicans; after all, as the House Republicans’ Pledge to America calls for an annual $100 billion cut in spending aside from the Department of Defense and entitlements–and made general promises about restraints on growth in Federal spending–Speaker Boehner has a built-in benchmark against which his supporters can chart his progress.  To the Republican base, the Speaker isn’t just on the offensive or on the defensive, he is advancing and retreating as part of a narrative on his domestic policy agenda.  The President should approach negotiations over raising the debt limit right now and campaigning for November 2012 as one and the same; integration of these seemingly-separate battles would be good strategy for both.  Yes, he can: If the President himself were to take to the bully pulpit to remind us of popular Federal programs the Republicans want to put on the chopping block to defend tax cuts for millionaires and tax breaks for oil conglomerates (which are politically unpopular but which Republicans in State or Federal government are almost contractually-obligated to defend) this could simultaneously give the President credibility of commitment to his priorities in ongoing budget negotiations and rally the support of the public.  Put differently, if he doesn’t have progress in negotiations to show for it, why should the President hold deficit-reduction talks behind closed doors?

Maybe that sounds naive, or even dangerous?  “Just let the 2 parties hash-out deficit reduction in Congress, with Vice President Biden’s input,” you say?  A dark picture is emerging gradually of the chaos such a subcontracting approach invites.  Talks on deficit-reduction haven’t made visible progress in over a month.  Even worse, the Washington Post reports, several Senators are proposing deficit-reduction plans of their own.  We need to come up with 1, after all, lest the United States Federal Government default on its sovereign debt for the 1st time in history.

All of this has some relation to the President’s disinclination to lead the debate.  Some will argue discretion if not secrecy plays a role in the deficit-reduction talks, and so it may be that House Republicans and the President are getting close to $2 trillion in savings.  My answer to this is simple: Why haven’t the sticking points in the bill even moved?  Why are both sides still saying they’ll agree to cut farm subsidies and certain Defense Department programs (both wins for Liberals, if you’re keeping track), while Republicans refuse to eliminate tax breaks for oil conglomerates and Democrats refuse to talk serious about the cancerous growth of Medicare costs (both refusals of which represent big losses for the general public, if anyone is paying attention)?  Why should either party want to make an agreement on a 10-year budget blueprint appear farther-off than it actually is–particularly with our economic recovery at death’s door and the stock market plunging again on fear of a US default?

The deficit-reduction talks indeed haven’t really moved since deficit-reduction talks began in early-May–right before we passed the Federal debt limit and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner started his fiscal fancy footwork.  If you don’t believe me, measure the movement towards resolution in these talks from the Washington Post’s chronicle.  From May 5th:

“That search could start, Cantor said, with a list of GOP proposals that would save $715 billion over the next decade by ending payments to wealthy farmers, limiting lawsuits against doctors, and expanding government auctions of broadcast spectrum to telecommunications companies, among other items.”

From June 21st:

“The two sides are closest to agreement on proposals such as cutting student loan subsidies and farm programs and facilitating new auctions of the electromagnetic spectrum by allowing broadcasters to reap some of the profit from the sale. It’s commonly assumed federal workers will contribute more to their pensions and that corporations will pay more to have the government guarantee their pension plans. The government is likely to sell excess property.”

I’m not saying Vice President Biden can’t bring Congressional Democrats and Republicans to a durable deal.  I am saying that the Washington Post has taken pains to keep its news content separate from its editorial content, considering how many times it has had to repeat itself in articles on the ostensibly-progressing deficit talks over the past 7 weeks.  After all, no game is less-dynamic than chicken before that crucial moment.

President Obama doesn’t have to make the Republicans out to be the enemy; that said, he should pick a fight with them.  Let the President and the Speaker both bloody their noses a bit; it might be good for them.  A shared golf game is nice, but this is our own economy we’re dealing with and we the people ought to be kept up to speed regarding what they plan to do with it; a little boxing could draw our interest.  The President’s own inclinations are against it, but both his principles and his political self-interest may demand it.

The Gallup Poll does not lie: President Obama’s honeymoon for having bin Laden killed is over.  It’s time for him to take his message for fixing the economy and investing in our future to the public, lest the Republicans 86 it in Blair House–or on the 14th fairway.

Clarifying an Intentionally-Complicated Position on Gay Marriage

I wanted to reply to responses I got on yesterday’s post, about the fight over legalization of same-sex marriage in New York and my own preference for civil unions as a way of sorting-out this extremely-contested issue.  Comments made by posters Kukri and Dodson differ from mine by a hair’s width (of maybe 2 hairs).  In any event, I felt I expressed myself more-clearly in the response, and when I finished I saw I had over 700 words on it, so here it is:

Kukri’s distinction–between the basis of marriage within religious institutions and that of civil unions as authorized by government whose role it is, and not religious groups’ to *enforce* our individual and civil rights–is useful because it reproduces the distinction I wanted to make between the legitimacy of the loving relationships of gay and lesbian adults and the traditional role religious institutions play (our various beliefs aside) in officiating over marriages.  The problem it poses is that municipal judges or clerks (and ship’s captains) officiate over marriages all the time, too–though certainly in a minority of cases.  This way of “partitioning” the issue into strictly-religious or secular dimensions would amount, in principle if not in practice, to telling traditional couples who happen to marry under a secular authority that they aren’t really married.  The religious Conservatives who have marshaled over the issue of gay marriage haven’t gone that far themselves, and if those who are to be married under their municipality or at sea are told that a status that they take for granted has been revoked, they are very likely to feel a more intense sympathy for gays and lesbians on this issue than they might feel already; as heterosexual couples they are also likely to inspire a great deal of sympathy for the cause of marriage equality.  So while that distinction sounds cleaner in principle than the obviously-political one I accept, in practice I would expect it to make the issue rawer, if anything, than it already is, and result in a stronger push for marriage equality.

This is why I see the “2nd from left” position of giving gay and lesbian couples the full legal benefits of marriage under civil unions while not forcing a legal tangle on an issue that religious institutions should really work-out for themselves, as giving all parties their due.  Governments and employers have no right to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation; on the other hand, requiring or even implying that religious organizations should officiate over marriages that both their leadership and their laity view as immoral and illegitimate isn’t a blow for civil rights so much as a disfigurement of institutions which, like our consciences, by rights are free.  Gays and Lesbians might find my preference for civil unions insulting, even cowardly.  That’s not the point on either count: I’m confident that love between monogamous, consenting adults is real regardless of sexual orientation, and in agreeing that gays and lesbians deserve full equality of rights regarding their unions while expressing sympathy for the sense of vulnerability adherents might feel for their religious institutions, I’m saying that giving both parties their due is more-important than being fully in either party’s camp.

On the question of whether religious organizations lobbying against gay marriage in the State of New York have simply trumped-up this fear of liability to lawsuit on discrimination grounds as a last-ditch attempt to deny marriage equality to gays and lesbians, that’s certainly possible.  But this is yet-another reason, though only a weak one, why civil unions seem preferable to gay marriage to me: It seems pointless, in this instance, to speculate about whether leaders of religious groups claim to feel put-upon in good faith.  (If you want to say a group of people are holding this issue up on bad faith, blame New York Senate Republicans; I’ll readily agree with that.)  It seems that we can either concede that religious groups are concerned for their autonomy or call them liars as well as bigots.  The 3rd way is much more-just in that it allows religious leaders to maintain their traditional role in relation to a word–but in that all they are able to keep is that word.  Let the State confer gays and lesbians their rights of union; if religious groups decide they don’t want to take the side of civil rights and recognize loving couples that want to hold their rites of passage within a faith, let the leaders of that faith decide to close the door, and let the State protect the couple’s privilege to bind their lives together in their own way.  It might be called cabbage instead of marriage, but where it is necessary and expedient gays and lesbians will find their own traditions.