Good politicians, like Ike and JFK (and yes, our Bill Clinton), use the landscape around them to shape coalitions that sustain them in power. Great politicians, like Reagan and Franklin D. Roosevelt, refashion the landscape, creating realignments that survive them by decades.
Obama, by contrast, has done something different: He first formed, and then shredded, his own coalition, creating wedge issues that splintered his party, with no help from opponents at all.
In the wake of the collapse of the health care endeavor, rancor has bloomed on all sides. The Associated Press writes of “Democrat-vs.-Democrat anger” in all sorts of venues. Politico mentions “signs of strain” between Harry Reid and the White House, and notes that relations between Democrats in the House and the Senate hover between disdain and hostility.
“We have to wait for the House of Lords to do their contemplating,” says Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., dissing the Senate. “Reid is done, he’s going to lose,” says Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev. Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., tells the press that the Senate is “broken.” To this, Harry Reid answers, “I could give you a few comments on how I feel about the House.”
Much as they all seem to hate one another, members of the House and the Senate are all under siege by the bloggers and activists for putting their careers and constituents over the ideals of the bloggers and activists — by refusing the use of some dubious measures to ram the Senate’s unsavory bill through the House.
“Pass. The. Damn. Bill.” they rail on their Web sites, saying the politicians are in trouble already, and things can’t get worse. “Yes, they can,” say people who have run in or worked for campaigns.
“To ask House Democrats to vote for the Senate bill … would be political suicide,” says Mark Shields, noting the public clearly has spoken, and that Republicans already are drooling at the prospect of hanging the Cornhusker Kickback around Democrats’ necks.
What unites them is growing disdain for Obama, by the activists, who believe he betrayed them, and by the moderates, who think his Big Bang has blown up in their faces, and that they have been sacrificed to push an agenda that they and their voters don’t like.
When Blanche Lincoln complained, Charles Lane noted Obama’s indifference: “Conceding nothing, he implied that her defeat was not only a foregone conclusion, but an acceptable price to pay.”
But if centrists blame him for his agenda itself, liberals blame him for not pushing it harder: “Pelosi and her allies blame the collapsing health care negotiations in part on Obama’s reluctance to sacrifice political capital to seal a final deal in mid-2009,” says Politico, noting that all are confused by the lack of direction:
Members have no idea which is the real strategy, or if a real strategy even exists.
Activists say not passing the bill will depress the base and prove the party unable to govern, having wasted a year and a supermajority. On the other hand, passing the bill by dubious measures will prove it can govern: by giving people what they have shown they don’t want.
Depress the base, or enrage independents: the ideal lose-lose situation. And somehow the Democrats have contrived to do both.
Remember the old days, when wedge issues were something you outsourced to the enemy, and didn’t inflict on yourself?
In 1988, Lee Atwater found out that people didn’t like giving furloughs to killers, and converted the Democrats’ 17-point lead in the summer to a 7-point victory by George Bush 41. In 2009, Democrats found a way to invent their own wedge issues and turn them against their own party, electing Sen. Scott Brown 41, R-Mass.: the 41st seat that ended their supermajority.
This is the genius of Barack Obama. One can’t exactly say it’s too hopeful. But you can certainly call it a change.
Examiner Columnist Noemie Emery is contributing editor to the Weekly Standard and author of “Great Expectations: The Troubled Lives of Political Families.”
