The Post Partisan Unity Schtick Revisited

By Big Tent Democrat, Section Other Politics
Posted on Tue Sep 07, 2010 at 01:38:36 PM EST
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Mark Schmitt, November 17, 2008:

The massive resistance Republicans posed to Clinton in 1993 is impossible to imagine today. The Republican coalition is utterly shattered, and the angry white Palin wing of the party, for all its visibility, is a minority even within a minority. [. . .] Obama, like other reconstructive leaders, will have to challenge some of the assumptions and institutions that come from the old era, just as FDR couldn't make lasting change until he had broken the Supreme Court's prevailing beliefs about the limits to government involvement in the economy. In one of the first articles about Obama's political career, from when he was first running for the Illinois Senate in 1995, he is quoted as telling the crowd that "it's time for politicians and other leaders to ... see voters, residents, or citizens as producers of change. ... What if a politician were to see his job as that of an organizer, as part teacher and part advocate, one who does not sell voters short but who educates them about the real choices before them?"

Fast forward to September 7, 2010, Steve Benen complaining about the WaPo:

This Washington Post headline features one of the most annoying words in politics: "Early on, Obama was more polarizing than we knew." [. . .] I suppose the point is that Obama wasn't supposed to be polarizing, and Balz's piece seems to suggest that it's the president's fault he ended up this way. That strikes me as deeply misguided[. . . .] The article suggests Obama, before getting elected, was more committed to putting partisan divisions behind us. As far as I can tell, though, Obama was equally committed to this after getting elected, but ran into a Republican Party more intent on destroying Obama than working with him. [. . .] The result was a president willing to compromise on just about every possible issue, and a GOP that refused to even consider a constructive role in policymaking.

Noonecouldhaveknown it would work out this way.

Speaking for me only

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The Post Partisan Unity Schtick Revisited | 15 comments (15 topical)

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Interesting thing said in that WaPo (5.00 / 11) (#1)
by Anne on Tue Sep 07, 2010 at 02:20:28 PM EST

article, near the end, by Richard Skinner of Rollins College:

"We need to move beyond outdated notions of presidents above party politics and instead understand presidents who are passionately engaged in them and seek to use their parties as tools of governance," he writes.

I'm trying to think...was Bush above party politics? How about Clinton? Bush 41? Reagan?

I'm sorry, I guess I'm not seeing a long line of presidents engaged in post-partisan unity - but I am seeing one who thought he was so much smarter and so much wiser in the ways of the political world that he - and maybe only he - could do post-partisanship right.

To some extent, he has used his party - the Congressional kind - as a tool of governance, just not to deliver the kind Democrats - the outside-the-Beltway, inside-the-real-world kind - expected to get from a Democratic president. He didn't use the power of the people as a force behind his governance, because he either wasn't interested in what the people had to say, or didn't agree with them and decided he knew better what was best - and in the process, he created areas of polarization within the party - or maybe I should say, he fueled divisions that had already started to form, both post-2006 election and post-2008 primaries.

The only people shocked that anyone could call Obama "polarizing" are those who went all-in for Obama; the rest of us could see trouble on the horizon, and it didn't take long before trouble arrived.

Benen seems more than a little plaintive about the way the GOP played Obama, and that Obama's not even getting style points for trying to work with those obstructive Republicans; what bothers me more is that Benen is still a little too stuck on the optics, instead of on the real damage the post-partisan thing has wrought. Which is considerable.

And since I haven't seen any signs that Obama regrets the results of his strategy, or that he has tried to fix any of it, it's hard not to conclude that, whether he is or isn't polarizing, or whether the PPUS worked or it didn't, he still got what he wanted in the form of policy and legislation.

That it isn't what most of the Dems I know wanted is why there's going to be a real problem in November.

: I honestly don't know what (5.00 / 2) (#13)
by gyrfalcon on Tue Sep 07, 2010 at 11:18:55 PM EST

the h*ll he wants. Now he's going out and ragging on the Republicans gleefully for not going along with him. Hello? He only figured out what they were when he thinks they're opposing him for the sake of opposing him? Where has this guy been for the last 20 years?
Arrrrggghhh.
What's excruciating is the Republicans and right-leaning Independents and even nominal Democrats who voted for him, thinking the Dems. had to be better than the Gopers, and are so PO'd and disillusioned, we won't get their votes back for a generation or more.
Thanks, Barack!!

No one could have predicted (5.00 / 5) (#2)
by ruffian on Tue Sep 07, 2010 at 02:45:11 PM EST

"The massive resistance Republicans posed to Clinton in 1993 is impossible to imagine today."

Un-effing believable.

In politics, you make your case to voters, (5.00 / 4) (#3)
by Buckeye on Tue Sep 07, 2010 at 03:17:40 PM EST

win elections, and then leverage your numbers to push an agenda. Anything else will fail.

The whole concept of post partisan is nonsense anyway - naive narcissism from politicians who think they are smarter than the electorate and too damn likeable to be opposed.

Why do we even have two parties and elections to begin with??? Because the United State (like all countries) is a nation of partisans (liberals and conservatives).

: Really! (none / 0) (#14)
by gyrfalcon on Tue Sep 07, 2010 at 11:19:28 PM EST

"......one who does not (5.00 / 2) (#4)
by NYShooter on Tue Sep 07, 2010 at 03:50:10 PM EST

sell voters short but who educates them about the real choices before them?"

Now that's the part I just don't get. Why hasn't he been a teacher? We keep saying, "why would they (the wingers) vote against their own interests?" Why indeed! Maybe because the Republicans are telling them how good they are and how stupid we are. And us? We just tell the voters they're stupid.

Yeah, that'll get their vote.

To me possibly the best couple of hours (5.00 / 4) (#5)
by ruffian on Tue Sep 07, 2010 at 04:34:30 PM EST

of Obama's term so far was the televised meeting about HCR with the Republican leadership. Putting aside for the moment the inadequacies of HCR, in that meeting he let the Republicans make their points or ask questions and then explained why he disagreed or where they were flat-out wrong. Understandably the Republicans did not sign on for any more of those sessions, but he could do the same type of thing with stand-ins making the arguments.

The Republican talking points have to be confronted and taken apart, by someone besides Stewart and Colbert.


P. S. (none / 0) (#6)
by ruffian on Tue Sep 07, 2010 at 04:50:24 PM EST

People have to be told when they are being lied to and when what they believe is just plain wrong. If the PPUS is learning how to do it without calling them stupid, I'm all for it. But to Obama it too often seems to mean not doing it at all.


Sure (none / 0) (#7)
by NYShooter on Tue Sep 07, 2010 at 05:01:44 PM EST

Instead of getting our jollies by thinking up new derogatory terms for the Beck/Palin followers we should try and befriend them by letting them know how mad we are that the Becks and Palins are playing them for fools.

Vanity fair's article said that Palin made over 13 million dollars in the year following her resignation as Alaska's Governor. It also said that she tips the wait-staffs miserly, or in some cases, not at all. Now how hard would it be for a great orator, and political genius, like Obama to make political hay out of these tid-bits?

It just pi$$es me off watching those charlatans on tv and thinking up a million come-backs the D's could use to turn the tables on those transparent hustlers.


personally (5.00 / 2) (#8)
by Left of the Left on Tue Sep 07, 2010 at 06:00:35 PM EST

I dont think what is needed right now is watching one millionaire talk trash about another, knowing the (for lack of a better word) poorer of the two is not going to be hurting anytime soon, especially once they leave office. But that's probably just me.


: Agreed (none / 0) (#16)
by gyrfalcon on Tue Sep 07, 2010 at 11:24:14 PM EST

particularly on the basis of a gossipy, anonymously-sourced hit piece in a largely frivolous magazine.

Because he and Rahm et al (5.00 / 2) (#15)
by gyrfalcon on Tue Sep 07, 2010 at 11:22:09 PM EST

have totally convinced themselves that the public doesn't want to know the details, they just want the broad goals and objectives.

You know, because we're too busy clinging to our guns and our religion to be bothered with details of what health care reform, for example, is going to do to our lives and our pocketbooks.

Contempt for the people is not the way to govern effectively, especially in a disastrous economic climate.


What was that Theory of Change, again? (5.00 / 1) (#17)
by RonK Seattle on Wed Sep 08, 2010 at 04:25:42 PM EST

Whether he had a Theory or not, he never stated one ... just laid out a too-good-to-be-true tableau of expected benefits.

We signed up and handed over our political life savings, and borrowed to the hilt on top of that.

Madoff is in jail.

Obama is in the White House.

And we are where we are.

ShorterObie: Can we all agree that SHE'S divisive (none / 0) (#9)
by Ellie on Tue Sep 07, 2010 at 06:22:19 PM EST

... and make that the start of a beautiful DemPuglican friendship, the likes of which has never been seen before there was moi?

Yes! We! Can!

Excepting those throwing up in their mouths a little while noticing that the quiet before the post-election storm was essentially Deep Throat's famous revelation redux: They (CREEP) ran against the candidate they wanted to run against.

who's astonished that the old-school, ugly, in-your=face bigotries aren't even being parsed, dog-whistled, veiled or "inartfully put"?

He's giving up the whole store, hand over fist, in the name of post-partisanship.

The man can talk... (none / 0) (#10)
by weltec2 on Tue Sep 07, 2010 at 06:32:16 PM EST

as HRC pointed out during the primaries. I mean, where has this person been for the last two years? He hasn't done much of anything, and he's not going to do much of anything. He is just not a doer.