April 9, 2015--Running Against Washington

It is tempting to do so. Pretty much everyone thinks that "Washington" is broken and that to run against it as a presidential aspirant is a smart political idea.

Ronald Reagan did so successfully ("Government is not the solution to our problem; it is the problem") as did Jimmy Carter, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. And now we have Scott Walker, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and other Republicans proclaiming that they are outsiders (though at least two thus far are government employees, U.S. senators) and will either get the government to work, get it off our backs, or promise to do a combination of both.

I was reminded of this when reading, in The New York Review of Books, about David Axelrod's political memoir, Believer: My Forty Years in Politics.

In 2008, in a debate before the New Hampshire primary Axelrod recalls Hillary Clinton, by implication criticizing Barack Obama, declaring that she had been fighting for change all her life and "We don't need to be raising the false hopes of our country about what can be delivered."

Axelrod, and through him his candidate, seeing the political opening, jumped on her claim that it is difficult to bring about real change. He writes--

I recognized the opportunity that Hillary handed us. She was too much a part of the system in Washington ever to change it--and without changing the politics in Washington, real solutions to big problems would never come.

This may be a good way to win nominations and even get elected but it is a terrible approach to governing.

Like it or not, if we are to have a government (and even Tea Party people want some government--their Medicare, their Social Security, their military, their border police, their courts, their jails, their tax cuts) the only way for it to function is through various forms of bipartisan deal making. Deals between the President, his (or her) administration, and Congress, whichever party controls it.

Hillary was right--you have to be part of our system to get anything done. Forget changing it. And maybe she'll get a chance to try to function the old fashioned way. She may be boring, less than likable, and past her prime, but when she was a senator she did work this way and was able to get quite a lot accomplished.

The three presidents who got more of their agenda approved than any of their successors (whether or not you like their policies) were able to figure out ways to work with Congress. Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, Ronald Reagan. Privately, very privately, for the most part they expressed little respect for specific members much less the system itself. But they held their noses and figured out ways to work with Congress, including, if they could, through intimidation.

To get things done, the lessons of history suggest, those willing and adept at working the system do better than those who claim to be outsiders. It's not sexy but it works.