For President Obama, the death of Osama bin Laden could mean renewed power on Capitol Hill at a critical time — just as both parties prepare to tangle over the 2012 budget and debate whether to raise the nation’s $14.3 trillion debt ceiling. The poll numbers aren’t out yet, but most political observers predict the president will get a significant bounce out of bin Laden’s death, enough to perhaps propel him from his mediocre, mid-40s approval rating to more than 50 percent.
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An increase in Obama’s popularity could make it harder for the GOP in Congress to win the big spending cuts they seek as a condition for raising the debt ceiling this summer.
“The president’s popularity in one area does help in others,” Democratic strategist Peter Fenn told The Washington Examiner. “On something like this, where he’s been intimately involved in the whole thing, boy, you do have to give the president credit on it and I think most folks, the public, get that.”
At the very least, said Doug Schoen, another Democratic strategist, bin Laden’s elimination at the hands of the Obama administration “should provoke and promote a short-term jolt of bipartisanship” where there has been nothing but a gaping political divide in recent months.
If there is a thaw in the partisan rancor that has dominated Congress this year, it’s happening cautiously as the GOP grapples with the potential political fallout from bin Laden’s death.
Republicans on Monday celebrated the news but tempered their praise for Obama, with many GOP leaders pointing out that the groundwork for finding the al Qaeda leader was set under Obama’s Republican predecessor, President George W. Bush.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., dedicated a long Senate floor speech to the decade-long hunt for bin Laden, but spared just one line to thank Obama. House GOP leaders heaped praise on the military and intelligence community, and almost as an aside, added that congratulations are in order “all the way to the commander in chief, President Obama.”
Some political strategists said it’s not clear whether Obama’s success in eliminating bin Laden will translate into victory in the upcoming budget battle with the GOP, but it could help.
“President Obama’s political standing has clearly been strengthened because of his success in killing Osama bin Laden, but a bounce in his poll ratings will not necessarily prove decisive in negotiations with Republicans over the budget, taxes and the debt ceiling,” said Brendan Daly, a former top aide to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who is now the House minority leader. “Still, he is unquestionably in better shape today than he was last month, and the Republicans are in weaker shape, given the hammering their members faced in town halls over the Easter recess over their plan to cut Medicare benefits.”
One top GOP aide nixed the notion that Obama’s bin Laden victory will give him the upper hand on budget and spending cuts.
“I think members see those as vastly different issues,” the aide said. “Plus I don’t think the American people would support such a connection. ‘We killed Osama bin Laden, now let’s raise the debt ceiling with no strings attached,’ just doesn’t jibe.”
