Well, I’m happy to report a very prominent convert to the theory that President Obama is engaging in a strategy of “grassroots bipartisanship” whose success is best measured by public opinion trends, not near-term support from Republicans in Congress. Mike Tomasky of the Guardian has a post up today that not only embraces the much-derided B-word, but cites TDS and New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg as the only folks who seem to completely “get it.”
I believe that Barack Obama is right to talk about bipartisanship, and I do not think that he should drop it because of the congressional voting pattern on one piece of legislation. I think his critics – and on the broadly construed left, among bloggers and pundits and whatnot, they are legion to the point of near unanimity, with only two exceptions I can think of – are missing an important point.
The standard criticism of Obama’s bipartisan outreach goes like this. He met with Republicans on Capitol Hill. They stiffed him. They showed that they’re impossibly troglodytic. Why should he waste any more time on these people? Just crush them.
But here’s the thing. This criticism, and this entire debate about the efficacy of his bipartisan overtures, presumes that Obama’s audience for his bipartisan talk is the Republicans in Congress and the conservatives in Washington.
But that is not his intended audience. His audience is the country.
You should read the whole thing. And you should also check out Hertzberg’s typically fine column, which coins a wonderful phrase for Obama’s political strategy: “Gandhian hardball.”
One comment on “Tomasky on “Grassroots Bipartisanship””
Excellent article by Tomasky. “In other words: bipartisanship is a strategy. It’s a strategy aimed at isolating the right, and isolating the obstructionists in Congress.” Indeed.
And kudos to you and TDS for being on the leading edge of this … as Mike says “way back in December” 🙂
This year’s big media narrative has been the confirmation saga of Neera Tanden, Biden’s nominee for director of the Office of Management and Budget. At New York I wrote about how over-heated the talk surrounding Tanden has become.
Okay, folks, this is getting ridiculous. When a vote in the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on the nomination of Neera Tanden was postponed earlier this week, you would have thought it presented an existential threat to the Biden presidency. “Scrutiny over Tanden’s selection has continued to build as the story over her uneven reception on Capitol Hill stretched through the week,” said one Washington Post story. Politico Playbook suggested that if Tanden didn’t recover, the brouhaha “has the potential to be what Biden might call a BFD.” There’sbeen all sorts of unintentionally funny speculation about whether the White House is playing some sort of “three-dimensional chess” in its handling of the confirmation, disguising a nefarious plan B or C.
Perhaps it reflects the law of supply and demand, which requires the inflation of any bit of trouble for Biden into a crisis. After all, his Cabinet nominees have been approved by the Senate with a minimum of 56 votes; the second-lowest level of support was 64 votes. One nominee who was the subject of all sorts of initial shrieking, Tom Vilsack, was confirmed with 92 Senate votes. Meanwhile, Congress is on track to approve the largest package of legislation moved by any president since at least the Reagan budget of 1981, with a lot of the work on it being conducted quietly in both chambers. Maybe if the bill hits some sort of roadblock, or if Republican fury at HHS nominee Xavier Becerra (whose confirmation has predictably become the big fundraising and mobilization vehicle for the GOP’s very loud anti-abortion constituency) reaches a certain decibel level, Tanden can get out of the spotlight for a bit.
But what’s really unfair — and beyond that, surreal — is the extent to which this confirmation is being treated as more important than all the others combined, or indeed, as a make-or-break moment for a presidency that has barely begun. It’s not. If Tanden cannot get confirmed, the Biden administration won’t miss a beat, and I am reasonably sure she will still have a distinguished future in public affairs (though perhaps one without much of a social-media presence). And if she is confirmed, we’ll all forget about the brouhaha and begin focusing on how she does the job, which she is, by all accounts, qualified to perform.
Excellent article by Tomasky. “In other words: bipartisanship is a strategy. It’s a strategy aimed at isolating the right, and isolating the obstructionists in Congress.” Indeed.
And kudos to you and TDS for being on the leading edge of this … as Mike says “way back in December” 🙂