[caption id=”attachment_116230″ align=”aligncenter” width=”1024″] President Barack Obama pauses during his State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2015. Vice President Joe Biden and House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio listen. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
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The gist of a New York Times story published Friday about President Obama’s “free” community college proposal is that he didn’t consult anyone about it.
Not Republicans on Congress’ education committees, nor Democrats. Not a member of Congress who served as chancellor of a state’s community college system before coming to Washington. Not even community college advocacy groups themselves, bucking a frequent gesture of soliciting feedback from industry before unveiling a proposal affecting that industry.
No, as the Times reports — the president and his team instead made some “courtesy calls” that amounted to FYIs.
But even as they invited Mr. Alexander to ride with Mr. Obama aboard Air Force One for the announcement in Knoxville, Tenn., last month, White House aides made it clear that they were informing the senator about the plan, not consulting him. In return, Mr. Alexander was uncompromising: He would not support the president’s big idea.
“They let us know what they were planning; they didn’t ask for advice on developing a proposal,” Mr. Alexander said in an interview. “I would have suggested a different approach.”
Alexander is widely considered a legislative pragmatist, not known for overt displays of partisanship or political grandstanding. He is the chairman of the Senate HELP Committee — Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.
Rep. Bradley Byrne was chancellor of the Alabama Community College System. “You would think that he would have reached out by now to people like me who have a background on it,” he told the Times.
And here’s the real kicker:
Community college advocacy groups in Washington that would need to be on the front lines of a lobbying effort received a similar courtesy call. Officials for the groups said the president’s aides had spent little, if any, time working out the details of the proposal with their experts.
“I am not aware of any outreach,” said a member of one advocacy group, who asked for anonymity to avoid antagonizing the White House. “I’m not aware that they have even tried.”
There are two sides to this. One, at least the White House has sent to Congress a proposal for it to consider. This is preferable to the White House berating Congress without actually putting an idea to paper, something that has happened frequently the last six years. (As a former veteran colleague of mine on Capitol Hill frequently put it, “If you’re so upset, then do what every other president has done and send us a bill!” Members of Congress often introduce a president’s plans as legislation.)
The other side, though, is that the administration can’t expect its policies to go much of anywhere if it doesn’t take the time to discuss and massage them with the people responsible for passing them — especially in a divided government. The White House’s consistent treatment of Congress as a pestilent (at best) or subordinate (at worst) body the last six years has been a root cause of the political system’s “gridlock,” or whatever negative term is appropriate. It’s never been fair to say that President Obama simply should be more like LBJ and engage lawmakers to push his agenda by mere force of will; partisanship in Johnson’s time wasn’t what it is today, and he had significant Congressional majorities to boot. It’s always been fair to say, however, that the president and his aides should be better salesmen and not ignore, disparage or overrun Congress. Their failures have sewn discord between the legislative and executive branches. And with politics being so public and polarizing, it doesn’t take even that severe of a misstep to doom a relationship.
If the White House’s strategy on its community college proposal — or any item, for that matter — is to operate alone and keep touring the country to “put pressure on Washington,” then it has learned nothing since last November, just as it learned little from 2010. What makes its case even more difficult this time is that it seemingly didn’t make an effort to build allies in the advocacy world to help them apply the pressure.
It’s tough enough to enact laws when you don’t count among your friends the lawmakers.
