January 14, 2010--Bag It

What follows is strictly political. It has nothing to do what’s right to do or wrong to do. It has to do with what Barack Obama has to do right now to save his presidency.

You might say that it’s just a week short of one year since he was inaugurated so what’s the political crisis. Hasn’t he accomplished a lot? The economy, though still badly wounded is off life support; both houses of Congress have passed versions of a health care bill—his top legislative priority; unemployment, though still intolerably high, has at least leveled off; holiday shopping blipped up; and there are signs of progress with a few of the world’s seemingly intractable problems.

Yes, but again politically, by this time next week there is the real possibility that the voters in Massachusetts will have elected a Republican to replace Ted Kennedy in the Senate. This in a state where three-quarters of registered voters are Democrats.

And even if Martha Coakley wins it is likely to be by a slim and, from an Obama way of looking at things, very scary margin. If Scott Brown manages to triumph, there goes the Democrats’ 60-vote majority in the Senate and, politically once more, this for all intents and purposes will represent the end of the Obama presidency.

With just 59 votes, and with then all 41 Republicans marching in lockstep to bring down the Obama legislative agenda as well as his presidency (for the past year they’ve been up front about saying that this is their goal), the Senate rules are such that the do-nothing GOP will filibuster his presidency to a dead stop.

So here’s what he has to do:

Of course pray that Coakley wins. If she does (and I expect that she will eke out a 5-point victory), call a primetime press conference. At it announce that he is ending his support for both the House or Senate versions of the health care bill. Neither one, he should say, represents real reform. They both reflect sell-outs to the health insurance industry; they both cost too much and will not be paid for except by taxing the very people he said during the campaign are already taxed too much; there are too many wild cards in both pieces of legislation—he no longer, for example, can say that either will assure that people who have insurance and like it will be able to retain what they have. And there were many too many deals that had to be stuck to line up sufficient support to pass it, and those special deals are embedded unacceptably in the legislation. This is not the way to change things in Washington. He should remind people that he was elected to work to end business as usual, and sadly the bill is turning out to represent that very thing. Thus, he cannot support it.

Instead, he should say, let’s pull the bill back for reconceptualization and turn our domestic attention to two things—

First, second, and third we must devote our energy to strengthening the economy.

About that we need to do two things: we must do everything possible to create jobs, including passing various tax and other incentives to help small and mid-size businesses grow and expand; and second, we should do all we can to help people keep their homes. This includes putting pressure on the banks not just to make loans but to reduce the amount of principal outstanding in existing mortgage, which would help keep more people than at present from slipping underwater.

Obama’s other domestic priority should focus on children—their health and their education. If we can’t tend to both we will be more at peril than from anything terrorists can inflict. Without better-educated children we will for not much longer be able to retain our dominant place in the world.

Of course, Democrats in Congress who have gone out on a political limb for him in supporting health care legislation will feel undercut, so he would have to preview and sell all of this to them.

I suspect most will be happy to be let off the hook. They too can read to polls, the political tealeaves. They know that only 14 percent of the people say health care reform is a priority (see the recent CBS poll linked below) and as a result, if things continue as at present, by this November they will not only lose a working majority in the Senate but Democrats are also in danger of losing their majority in the House.

Of course this will not happen. Health care reform was and remains Obama’s leading priority; but if anything in fact is approved by both houses of Congress and signed into law by him, it will be a pyrrhic victory. They will have their Rose Garden signing ceremony but any resemblance to real reform will be visible only via smoke-shrouded mirrors.

And since the public by then will be tired of the whole thing and justifiably worried about what the legislation will mean to them, he will get only a minor bounce in his approval ratings. But for many—me included—it will serve to remind us that he choose a politically inappropriate policy priority and for its sake used up most of his political capital and devoted his first and potentially most powerful year in office to this while too many continued to suffer the consequences of the fallen economy that he inherited, but which is now fully his.

The Obama presidency needs a restart and there is still time to do that. Not much, but enough.