Brendan Nyhan

It’s interesting to note how precisely the vote to end debate on the economic stimulus legislation corresponds to the gridlock zone model of the political scientist Keith Krehbiel. In the current configuration of power, the model predicts that the 59th most liberal senator — the so-called filibuster pivot — determines the fate of any legislation that would move the status quo in a liberal direction. As such, Obama should move policy as far to the left until the filibuster pivot is just barely willing to accept it.

That appears to be exactly what happened. Remember, Democrats have 58 seats pending a final outcome in the Minnesota race and they needed 60 votes. If we use Keith Poole’s 110th Senate rank ordering of estimated ideal points and assume new Democrats are to the left of Evan Bayh (the most conservative Democrat) and new Republicans are to the right of Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, and Arlen Specter (the most liberal Republicans in that order), then we find that the pivotal senator is Collins with Snowe to her left and Specter to her right. The final vote corresponds almost precisely to the prediction — Obama compromised with Snowe, Collins, and Specter and they were the three Republicans who joined 58 Democrats in voting in support of cloture.

The media has berated Obama for failing to attract sufficient Republican support, but the reality is that he didn’t need more than a handful of GOP votes in the Senate (nor did he need any in the House). Should he compromise away what he thinks is good policy just to appease Washington insiders? That would be, as he said, “bipartisanship for bipartisanship’s sake” — at best a second-order goal and one that can’t take priority over policy in a crisis of this magnitude.

Recessions bring out the worst sort of pandering in politicians. Here’s a choice excerpt from GOP chairman Michael Steele’s weekly radio address opposing the stimulus legislation that is making its way through Congress (ellipsis):

Democrats in Congress want a one-trillion dollar spending bill. You’ve heard about the pork-barrel programs they want to fund… 45 million dollars for ATV trails and removal of fish passage barriers is one that caught my eye. Exactly what is a fish passage barrier and why does it cost 45 million dollars to stimulate the economy with it?

Let’s take Steele literally for a moment and discuss the idiocy of this passage. First of all, I’m pretty sure Steele (and most other people) can figure out what a fish passage barrier is just from the name. (If not, he can use what George W. Bush calls “the Google”.) Second, how idiotic would it be to oppose a legislative provision because you were too lazy to look up the meaning of a phrase? (I understand that Steele is asking a semi-rhetorical question, but it is — at a minimum — a blatant appeal to ignorance.)

Let’s also note that fish passage barriers are a real environmental issue. For example, here’s an article on the Maryland Department of Natural Resources website that was last updated during Michael Steele’s term as Lieutenant Governor of Maryland under Bob Ehrlich:

Fish migration barriers are anything in the stream that significantly interferes with the upstream movement of fish. Unimpeded fish passage is especially important for anadromous fish which live much of their lives in tidal waters but must move into non-tidal rivers and streams to spawn.

…With a fish blockage present and no natural way for a fish to repopulate the isolated stream section, the diversity of the fish community in an area will be reduced and the remaining biological community may be out of natural balance.

If you see a fish barrier you can call Department of Natural Resources at 1-877-620-8DNR and ask for the Fish Passage Program.

In fact, the Ehrlich administration touted the success of its Chesapeake Bay fish passage restoration program. Ron Franks, the Secretary of Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources, testified before Congress on May 4, 2006 that “The original migratory fish passage restoration goal of 1,357 miles has been surpassed by nearly 500 miles and a new goal of over 2,800 miles has been established.” Now, however, the issue is being used to score political points.

Of course, people will have different views about the pros and cons of a fish passage barrier removal program as both environmental policy and economic stimulus. But hopefully we can all agree that this sort of pie-throwing is not a serious contribution to the national debate.

I’ve repeatedly mocked Barack Obama’s previous suggestions that he would eliminate division and partisanship in Washington, so it was great to see him prioritizing good policy over “bipartisanship for bipartisanship’s sake” in an interview with ABC’s Charlie Gibson yesterday (key quote in bold, my emphasis):

CHARLES GIBSON: And talking of politics, you have said you want bipartisanship in this bill, you want Republican support. You didn’t get any in the House, and the leader of the House, the speaker of the House, said, well, yes, we wrote the bill and, yes, we won the election.

Is that kind of an in-your-face trash-talking to the Republicans?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, I think what Speaker Pelosi also said was that she wanted to sit down with them and talk to them and, in fact, included some of their ideas in the package. I mean, keep in mind, when I first released the framework for our plan, we were complimented by the Republicans for the fact that about $300 billion of the package was in the form of tax cuts. I was criticized by members of my own party.

Now, that hasn’t changed much. The only thing that’s changed is the politics of it. And I’m less concerned about bipartisanship for bipartisanship’s sake. I’m interested in solving the problem for the American people as quickly as possible. And I think that we have an obligation to make sure this money is spent wisely. I want this thing to move through the Senate. I want the House and the Senate bills to be reconciled.

The problem Obama has, however, is that he previously put such a focus on “bipartisanship for bipartisanship’s sake” that the Washington press is predictably holding him to an impossible standard in which he fails if the stimulus package passes without a substantial number of GOP votes. As Eric Boehlert of Media Matters pointed out, NBC’s Chuck Todd even asked if Obama would veto his own stimulus bill “if it didn’t have Republican support.”

The pattern here is disturbingly familiar. The Washington press focuses on political tactics rather than substance because tactics are both more entertaining and easier to cover. In this case, rather than questioning Obama about how to make the stimulus bill more effective, they are berating him for failing to get enough Republican support — a trivial issue given the severity of the economic crisis.

How football-crazy is Pittsburgh? I mocked Pittsburgh mayor Luke Ravenstahl for holding a news conference to pretend to change his name to “Luke Steelerstahl” before the AFC championship game between the Ravens and the Steelers, but that’s nothing compared to the fact that the local schools opened two hours late yesterday to try to reduce expected high rates of absenteeism among students and employees. Who needs snow days anyway?

It was amusing to see Today’s Matt Lauer suggesting on Thursday that Barack Obama had failed to achieve change in Washington (nine days into his presidency!) because the House GOP voted against the stimulus bill:

You say it’s the third inning, but let me say that sentence over again. The bill passes the House, but not one Republican votes yes. If you were one of those two million people standing out in the cold on the Mall last Tuesday listening to the president’s inaugural address, or one of the tens of millions watching it at home, how could you not be waking up this morning thinking there’s no change, this is Washington as usual?

That said, however, I’m sympathetic to the idea that Obama’s claims to transcend partisanship are as hollow and unlikely to succeed as those of George W. Bush.

Ironically, the response to Lauer’s question from White House spokesman Robert Gibbs echoed the White House’s “changing the tone” rhetoric almost precisely:

Mr. GIBBS: Well, look, Matt, the president knows that it’s going to take longer than a few days to change the way Washington works. You saw pictures of the president going up to Capitol Hill, and his hand will continue to be extended to any and all people that want to work with him. I’ll tell you, what I worry about most of all are the people that have heard over the past few days, that work for Boeing or Home Depot or Microsoft or Starbucks, that they’re going to be losing their job this year. That’s what the president thinks about every day when he works with Democrats and Republicans to get a plan that will help put them back to work. That’s what he’ll continue to do today.

Here’s White House spokesman Ari Fleischer doing the same rap in a January 2001 briefing:

QUESTION: Let me ask it another way then. Is the president-elect surprised that the Ashcroft nomination has created such a stir, or whatever label you want to put on it?

FLEISCHER: I’d be hard pressed to say that he’s surprised. I think he understands how Washington can get sometimes. It’s one of the reasons he wants to change the tone in Washington.

QUESTION: Wouldn’t you say that it’s good for you?

(CROSSTALK)

FLEISCHER: I’m sorry?

QUESTION: Wouldn’t you say that it’s good for you, energizing your conservative base? And it allows some people to deplore the partisanship.

FLEISCHER: No. I think one of the things that President-elect Bush is going to do when he comes here and is sworn in is, not look at things with the usual prism that Washington looks at things–is it good for me, is it good for the other guys, will this help gin up the base, will this help somebody raise money.

He said that one of the lessons of this election, the close election that we’ve had, is that people need to put the national interest ahead of the partisan interest. And he’s going to endeavor to contribute to that in the things he does and says, and we hope that others will follow.

And I think we also–also, it’s going to take time. He can’t just come here overnight and change Washington. That is never going to happen. But he will endeavor to do so over the course of time.

Like Bush, Obama’s efforts to “change the way Washington works” will fail. Indeed, as I wrote back in March 2007, Obama’s rhetoric is not only unrealistic but potentially offensive to democratic norms:

Instead, most of Obama’s appeal comes down to his call for a new politics that is less cynical and polarized — a vain hope. Bill Clinton and many other politicians have called for such a change, and none have succeeded. The underlying structural forces that promote polarization are unlikely to relent. And more importantly, polarization is a two-sided phenomenon. Calling for depolarization once you are president is, in practice, a call for the opposition to go along with your initiatives — as in President Bush’s call to “change the tone” (see All the President’s Spin for more). It’s an absurd promise that no candidate can deliver on (though Bush briefly claimed victory at “changing the tone” when his sky-high post-9/11 approval ratings silenced the Democratic opposition).

Let’s hope Obama doesn’t use this rhetoric as a cudgel against the opposition like Bush did after 9/11.

Can you believe Karl Rove and Lawrence Lindsey are offering advice on how to run the White House? Remember, these guys were leaders of the Mayberry Machiavellis whose attempts to “create [their] own reality” led to an almost unparalleled string of policy failures. What’s next — memos from Donald Rumsfeld on improving civilian-military relations in the Defense Department?

Question: Why does the lede of an AP story state that “Jennifer Hudson returned to the spotlight Sunday with a flawless performance of the national anthem” when the very same story reports that she lip-synced? Under those circumstances, how could it not be a “flawless performance”?

NPR’s Andrea Seabrook makes English teachers cry during a story on the rumor about GOP senator Judd Gregg being appointed Commerce Secretary:

You could almost feel the pipe dreams wafting through the Capitol today.

From The Durham News, a free paper distributed by the News and Observer here:

Call us the ‘City of Butter,’ because we’re on a roll

Um, no.

Richard Skinner, a visiting assistant professor of political science at Bowdoin College, sent me his new Political Science Quarterly piece “George W. Bush and the Partisan Presidency” (sub. req.), which does a nice job of synthesizing the evidence that the relationship of presidents to the party system has changed in the contemporary era. The traditional literature on the presidency saw the “modern presidency” as standing somewhat apart from the party system, a description that applies reasonably well to the period of the 1950s-1970s. However, Skinner argues that the model has changed since Ronald Reagan. “Partisan presidents,” including especially George W. Bush, are closely aligned with their party in Congress, tend to face a relatively unified opposition, and take a partisan approach to staffing the executive branch.

It’s easy to see this shift as a turn for the worse; David Broder and other establishment pundits frequently bemoan the decline of Congressional and executive bipartisanship. But it’s worth noting (again) that the politics of that era were less polarized as a result of the suppression of the issue of race, which kept southern conservatives in the Democratic party while splitting it along regional lines. Once the parties diverged on racial issues during the civil rights era, the political system returned to a more normal state of affairs.

Understanding the change in this way reveals a paradox — the civil rights movement that made Barack Obama’s ascension to the presidency possible also set in motion a change in party alignment that will make it impossible for him to fulfill his promise to bring the parties together (as in the House stimulus vote today).