The media should instead focus greater attention on Congress, which writes the tax and budget legislation that determines how the federal government spends its money. Obama has relatively little leverage over the Republicans who control the House of Representatives, almost all of whom represent districts he lost in 2012. And while the sequester was designed to be so onerous that it would force both parties to compromise, avoiding the the sequester would still require substantial political pain, making it difficult for the administration to herd legislators toward a deal.
Don’t feel too sorry for Obama, though. The President and his staff made dubious claims during the fall campaign that his re-election would “break the fever” among Congressional Republicans, so they shouldn’t be surprised that the media are now looking to him to miraculously cure what ails Washington.
President Obama's failing isn't the inadequacy of his rhetoric or that he's not trying hard enough to advance his positions, it's the positions themselves. In that respect, the Washington Post is correct that he's not leading the way to a solution.
Obama has been adamant in insisting on "balancing" nugatory spending reductions with significant revenue increases. In the ridiculous "fiscal cliff" can-down-the-road-kicking exercise, tax rates on the top two brackets were raised and spending reductions were put off to another day. Now the President wants more revenue increases from the wealthy, and he's still unserious about cutting expenditures.
Democrats in Congress wouldn't be happy if the Administration sought to trim expenditures, but most of them would go along. Professor Nyhan dismisses this kind of actual leadership as "simply yielding to GOP demands," but that's a pathetic way to characterize what the President so stubbornly resists: a genuine commitment to getting the deficit under control, stop treating every desired spending program as an "investment" and determine how the needed cuts can be accomplished with as little pain for the American people as possible rather than looking for ways to dramatize the effect of the cuts by limiting services in ways most easily presented on the evening news (e.g., long TSA lines).
Eldridge Cleaver said, "You either have to be part of the solution, or you're going to be part of the problem." Barack Obama is a very big part of the problem. To change that, he doesn't need to become the Green Lantern, just stop dragging his feet on spending reductions.
#1 Posted by RobC, CJR on Wed 27 Feb 2013 at 01:52 PM
Excellent piece by Brendan Nyhan on the pervasive problem of media false equivalence. Reporters and editors are just terrified of stating the obvious about Republican obstructionism and getting some people mad at them --and perhaps jeopardizing their precious access to the corridors of Republican power. You'd think these American journalists were facing life-and-death peril as journalists do in Russia, China, Mexico, and other countries.
#2 Posted by Harris Meyer, CJR on Wed 27 Feb 2013 at 06:26 PM
D'accord on the overall point that talking cant do the trick, However, it seems to be the case since talking, giving good rhetorik got the guy in office, ctd the same there would be productively convincing. The diff is that congress people aren't sheeple who devour dream afalfa!
The President had a choice early on. Follow Stiglitz and nationnalize the bankrupt banks, instead the first thing he ctd. to do, following
Geithner, like Bush, was commit socialism for the banksters. His national security team was also exactly the same as Bush's. So that is where the problem lies.
#3 Posted by MICHAEL ROLOFF, CJR on Thu 28 Feb 2013 at 02:57 PM
RobC, you said it better than I could have. Well done!
Inistead of telling the nation that we don't have to do anything about SS and Medicare, Obama should be telling us that these programs are unsustainable and that benefit cuts are essential. Winston Churchill said, "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat." Neville Chamberlain supported kicking the can down the road. Unforutunately, Obama is more like Chamberlain than Churchill
#4 Posted by David in Cal, CJR on Thu 28 Feb 2013 at 06:53 PM
First, as I began relentlessly pointing out in blog comments in 2010, it was my fellow ultra-liberals who subscribed to what I call The President Is King Fallacy. This cohort was epitomized by Drew Westen, a professor of psychology at Emory University, in a New York Times op-ed on August 6, 2011.
Now it is the "centrists."
All ignore the Constitution, the history of the Constitutional Convention through which ran an abhorrence of concentrated power, the Senate filibuster, and, now, the keen analysis of Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein.
#5 Posted by Fred Brack, CJR on Sat 2 Mar 2013 at 12:30 AM
Ryan Lizza at the New Yorker offers Obama the same excuse Brendan does:
The tendency of many Washington pundits, especially those who cover the White House, is to invest the Presidency with far more power that the Constitution gives it. The idea that the Presidency and Congress are co-equal branches of government is the most basic fact of our system, and yet it is often absent from political coverage of standoffs between the two branches. If only Obama would lead, this fiscal mess would be solved! If only he would socialize more with legislators the way L.B.J. did, his agenda would pass!
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/03/the-powerless-presidency.html#ixzz2Mne6FCWT
Funny, I don't remember Ryan and Brendan offering this excuse when George Bush was running "enormous" deficits less than half as large as Obama's
#6 Posted by David in Cal, CJR on Wed 6 Mar 2013 at 05:06 PM
The view of a Republican Senator who dined with the President is that he could and should do more to lead the way to a budget agreement. See http://blogs.wsj.com/peggynoonan/2013/03/09/two-senators/
Reporter Peggy Noonan writes, e.g.
At certain points in the conversation the president, according to the senator, said that even if he wanted to agree with the Republicans on certain specific questions there would be a rebellion in his own party: “He said that a few times. But that’s an abdication. You have to lead! You have to educate as only a president can with a bully pulpit, you have to bring your party along.”
I asked if anyone brought up the unhelpfulness of the president’s demonizing of Republicans on the stump and in interviews. “Tom Coburn really went after him.” It was “forthright and earnest.”
Did the president receive the message? “He certainly heard it.”
The senator thought “the American people watching the conversation would be buoyed by it.” He was “grateful” for the meeting and found it “inspiring” that everyone was talking. But “with eyes wide, I don’t really see this going anywhere.”
Another Republican Senator who attended that dinner was more optimistic, However, both in effect disagreed with Brendan's point. Both thought the President had the power to substantially affect the negotiations.
#7 Posted by David in Cal, CJR on Mon 11 Mar 2013 at 10:08 AM