“We have the votes. F—k ’em.” White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel thus outlined the new administration’s realpolitik in 2009, and President Obama has maintained this attitude toward Congress for eight years.
Emanuel and by extension Obama were talking about congressional Republicans and the $800 billion stimulus bill. Rather than working with the GOP to pass bipartisan legislation, the White House went with Chicago tactics and shut out the political opposition. When the votes were counted, not a single Republican had supported the bill.
Obama’s relationship with Congress has thus always been dysfunctional. It’s his own fault. He rammed Obamacare through without GOP support, and in consequence lost control of Congress to Republicans for the last three-fourths of his presidency.
Had the administration worked with Republicans on bipartisan health legislation, or even just tried to do something more mainstream and limited in scope, Obama’s signature achievement might not have become a political lightning rod and might not now be falling apart.
Obama got his comeuppance in 2010, when his party suffered historic losses in congressional elections. Just to illustrate how bad Obama’s relationship with congressional Republicans was at that point, nobody in the White House even had John Boehner’s phone number when Obama needed it to make the obligatory call to congratulate him on election night.
That didn’t humble the president. In 2013, Obama hired a new director of legislative affairs to work with Congress on his behalf. The problem? Six weeks into the job, nobody in Congress knew who the liaison was. As a Senate GOP leadership aide told the Washington Post at the time, “NOBODY knows who the hell he is.”
With this sort of political malpractice, it’s surprising it took almost eight years for Obama to suffer his first veto override.
After the Senate voted to ignore the president on the subject of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest threw a temper tantrum, comparing lawmakers to kindergarteners. He claimed it was “the single most embarrassing thing the United States Senate has done possibly since 1983.”
Even Democrats were saying the White House was overreacting. “I thought all Democrats could agree that Republicans’ failure to confirm Merrick Garland was the most embarrassing thing the Senate had done,” one senior Democratic aide told Politico. “But if the White House wants to blow this out of proportion, that’s their choice.”
The veto override was not a partisan battle that occurred only because Republicans control Congress. Only one senator voted against it. Ninety-seven senators voted for it and against Obama, as did a bipartisan supermajority in the House.
Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., said he attempted to work with the White House to make a deal to address their concerns. But the administration never responded to his requests. “There’s been zero involvement from the White House,” Corker said.
A little bit of cooperation goes a long way on Capitol Hill. Imagine what our politics would be like if Obama had operated on that principle for eight years. Our politics would be less polarized today as a result.
Whichever candidate wins the 2016 election would be wise to learn from Obama’s failures. Working with both parties in Congress makes the duties of the executive branch a lot easier. Bipartisan legislation endures much longer and is less controversial than laws rammed through Congress. The public also approves of both Congress and the president a lot more.
An executive working with Congress is what the Constitution envisages. It’s at the heart of how the federal government is meant to work. Our nation would be better off today if President Obama knew that. It will, one hopes, be better off in four months’ time.
