If this is success, what does failure look like?
By: Noemie Emery
Examiner Columnist
September 7, 2010
"Seen from the inside, the administration is an astonishing success," says E.J. Dionne of the beleaguered regime of his president. "Inside of what?" one is tempted to ask, but by some lights, it's true.
President Obama has pushed through a whole lot of bills, and people hate all of them, a historic result accomplished by no other president. Of course, no other has tried.
"It's a losing-by-winning dynamic," says Michael Goodwin, as most presidents suffer when their agenda is stifled. He is the first to be in really deep trouble because his agenda has passed.
Inside the bubble (the bunker? the madhouse?) the celebration, and the confusion, go on.
"No good deed goes unpunished," says Jonathan Alter, who agrees with Dionne, who agrees with Joe Klein this has all been historic, and who all urged Obama to be still more heroic by dissing the voters to follow their dream.
When his polls tanked, when swing voters fled, when Virginia, New Jersey, and then Massachusetts all smacked him upside, they told him to ignore them, and the New Yorker, the New Republic, and the liberal bloggers all urged him on. Health care would emerge as his passport to greatness.
"Pass. The. Damn. Bill." They urged on their Web sites. He did.
He passed the damn bill, and the People. Abhorred. It.
They said people would like it once it was passed, and it would help them keep Congress. "Health reform has been a political dud for Democrats," Mike Allen wrote April 1. "Registered voters say they prefer Republican to Democratic candidates in their district by 47 to 44."
They said it would become popular, and help the president. "53 percent disapprove, 41 percent approve, 6 percent unsure," said a Marist poll, noting that nothing had changed since December, "53 percent say their opinion of the president has not changed in the wake of the passage," while 29 percent said their opinion of him had grown worse.
Jonathan Chait of the New Republic said if the bill wasn't passed, the party's base would be demoralized and it "would be a recipe not just to lose the House, but to lose 50, 60, 80 seats." The base right now is extremely demoralized, and the loss of "50, 60, 80 seats" in the House is exactly what pundits are talking of now.
"It's a process argument of murky merits that will be long forgotten by November," Chait wrote in January of the roundabout moves used by the Democrats to Pass The Damn Bill once Scott Brown was elected. But a USA Today/Gallup poll taken March 26-28 found that 53 percent of adults and 58 percent of independents considered these tactics an "abuse of power" and 50 percent of independents (and 49 percent of all respondents) blamed them for the ugliness that surrounded its passage.
"Because of the way it was passed ... the country has simply not accepted it," Pat Caddell would say later.
The main reason given to "Pass. The. Damn. Bill." was to give Democrats something to run on, but Democrats who voted "no" are now running against it, while others don't dare bring it up. "Being perceived as wrong, as opposed to ... wrong and incompetent is not much progress," political pollster Charles Cook noted.
As Tom Bevan wrote when Chait had his brainstorm, they "seem to have no comprehension of the political consequences of pursuing action that treats the public -- not just in Massaschusetts, but across the country -- with such utter contempt."
Examiner Columnist Noemie Emery is contributing editor to the Weekly Standard and author of "Great Expectations: The Troubled Lives of Political Families."
washingtonexaminer.com |
