Nate Silver’s fivethirtyeight.com post “Obama: More Political Capital Than Reagan?” compares President Obama’s approval and disapprovall ratings with those of other recent Presidents shortly after their respective inaugurations. Obama tops all but JFK, as Silver explains:

Obama’s initial approval rating, indeed, is the highest of any president since Kennedy. His initial disapproval rating, meanwhile, is about half that of his two most recent predecessors, although higher than that of Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, Carter, and G.H.W. Bush, all of whom began with disapproval in the single digits.

Silver goes on to favorably compare Obama’s numbers with those of President Reagan, including a 68 percent initial approval rating for Obama, compared to 51 percent for Reagan. He notes also that Obama’s political capital is strengthened by his 65 seat advantage in US House seats “controlled” over Reagan, and a six seat advantage in the Senate, even though Reagan had a slightly larger margin of victory (Reagan’s 9.7 percent, and 7.3 percent for Obama). Silver adds:

Reagan won considerably more electoral votes in 1980 than Obama did in 2008. As measured in percentage terms, his margin of victory over Jimmy Carter was larger than that of Obama over John McCain. On the other hand, Obama won a lot more popular votes than Reagan did. He also won a higher percentage of the popular vote, and his margin of victory was larger than Reagan’s in absolute (rather than percentage) terms.

It’s an interesting comparison, especially for Dems who can remember how Reagan steamrolled Congress and cut the legs off the trade union movement. Silver wonders whether Obama’s “post-partisan rhetoric” is a factor in his high approval numbers, and if the debate over the stimulus will undercut Obama’s leverage in the polls. No doubt many progressives are wondering if the comparison suggests that Obama’s tax cut proposals are conceding more than necessary, and if he could invest substantially more in job-creating infrastructure upgrades.
At the same time, Obama’s advisors, many of them Clinton Administration veterans, remember the political debacle that ocurred when the First Lady led the campaign for a big package of health care reforms. Overreaching can be as damaging as timidity.
But I would contend that Obama also has a potent secret weapon that argues for a more aggressive reform agenda: the “movement” that elected him. More than any President, perhaps ever, Obama has awakened a genuine grassroots movement, with record numbers of citizens involved in his campaign at the street level. But can he convert these campaign workers into lobbyists for a strong reform agenda? It’s never really been tried on the massive scale I’m envisioning here.
Certainly the Obama campaign has mastered the new tools of political organizing to an unprecedented extent, and he can reconnect with his activist base within minutes of launching a lobbying campaign. Think of FDR’s fireside chats, in streaming video on millions of monitors across the nation, 24-7. Think of TR’s bully pulpit on electronic steroids. Think of MLK’s call to his troops to “make politics a crusade” answered en masse by a new generation of citizen lobbyists. Sure, it would take a lot of commitment and energy to make it work. But given all that is at stake, the real shame would be in not trying.

I’m liking the latest fund-raising email I got from the DSCC. (See full text after the jump) Instead of a dreary old politician begging for money, it comes from a top actor, Morgan Freeman, with a thoughtful appeal, based on a sober recognition that,

…We’ve only taken the first step. As President Obama said on election night, “This victory alone is not the change we seek – it is only the chance for us to make that change.” In many ways, our work didn’t end at the ballot box, it began there….That is precisely why we need your support – not just on the eve of an election, not just when the airwaves are crammed with negativity, and not just when the sense of urgency is palpable.
We also need your support now, at the beginning of a long journey together to reclaim and rebuild the American dream. It will be a difficult slog measured in months and years — but the journey will be worth it if, in the end, we are able to say that we have left a better country and a safer world for our children.

Freeman goes on to ask for a “click here” contribution to the DSCC. The wise oracle of many a good film, Freeman has to be the perfect choice to make the pitch for long-haul party-building. You can almost hear his mellifluous baritone working the room.
Freeman’s letter got me thinking that now, while hopes are at an all-time high, really is the time for the Democratic Party to aggressively recruit celebrities for fund-raising promos. And it’s not just about money. It’s also a great time to get celebrities and other public figures on record as supporting the Democrats as the party of hope. Despite all of the GOP whining about Democrats and Hollywood, I’m struck by how little we have used performing artists to raise consciousness and funds directly for party-building, as opposed to supporting candidates. There’s never been a better time, while Obama rides the high tide of popular good will. No doubt many celebrities who may have been a little reluctant to “out” themselves as partisan Democrats are more comfortable with the idea now.
Freeman may be in a minority in his profession, in that he gets it that Obama isn’t going to be able to pass much legislation without a few more Democratic Senators, or at least that a couple more senators could make a huge difference in America’s future. But there must be others. Let’s not miss the opportunity for a full court press in recruiting them. It’s not likely that we will see a better time.
And speaking of a full-court press, think about how limp the Democratic effort to tap the appeal of professional athletes has been. Obama’s cred ought to provide unprecedented leverage for promos from the top NBA super-stars, with professional football all-pros and baseball all-stars not far behind. Who better to get the attention — and support — of millions of young people?
I’m not saying here that celebrities are the key to success in long-haul political organizing. But in this culture particularly, they do command a lot of attention, and Dems would be negligent if they don’t make the most of it.
In The Shawshank Redemption, Freeman’s character, Red, tells Andy (Tim Robbins), “Hope? Let me tell you something, my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing.” Very true. But when it is backed up by organized action, hope can also be a powerful force for positive change.

Read more…

It was just a little joke. But it also lead to a teachable moment for those seeking insights into Obama’s style of presidential leadership.
Asked by the President to administer the oath of office to incomming senior staff members yesterday, Vice President Biden cracked wise “Am I doing this again? Oh! For the senior staff. My memory’s not as good as Justice Roberts’ … Chief Justice Roberts.”
Most politicians would have responded with a collegial chuckle or at least a little grin. President Obama’s reaction, however, could fairly be described as chilly (see here) . No smile, just a pat on the back urging his wayward veep to get back on point. Obama’s unspoken message was “this is the peoples’ business, Joe. Put a lid on it.”
Suffice it to say that the era of frat boy humor in the white house is over. It was a little incident, but what impressed me about it was how it revealed Obama’s sense of propriety. He is always alert to what is going on around him, and smartly avoids unnecessary controversy. Had he responded in a more typical way, yukking it up with Biden, some reporter might have twisted it into a ‘President Disses Chief Justice’ distraction du jour.
Obama is not a stiff. He knows when to relax and have a little fun, as was indicated by his question to the crowd at one of the inaugural parties, “Have I got a good-lookin’ wife?”
It’s not a put-down of Biden, who has impressive qualifications to assume the presidency if need be, a major reason why Obama chose him as his running mate. The other being that President Obama clearly values his expertise, particularly on foreign policy and wants him near. It’s just a very different style of leadership. The incident suggests that our new president has a seriousness about his responsibilities, large and small, that hasn’t been seen in the white house for many a year, which should be a great asset for getting things done.

State of the Union speeches are too often glorified laundry lists, topped off with sober warnings and peppered with soaring riffs of inspiration. The best of them offer a coherent vision, JFK’s inaugural address being a frequently-cited example. Obama’s first inaugural address, however, breaks the mold a little, according to the interpretation of various columnists and writers
Peggy Noonan’s column, “Meet President Obama” in today’s Wall St. Journal, for example, says Obama “used language with which traditional Republicans would be thoroughly at home.” Noonan called it “Low-key and sober” and “not an especially-rousing speech.” But she adds “This is not all bad. When a speech is so calm and cool that you have to read it to absorb it fully, the speech just may get read.”

This was not the sound of candidate Barack Obama but President Obama, not the sound of the man who appealed to the left wing of his party but one attempting to appeal to the center of the nation. It was not a joyous, audacious document, not a call to arms, but a reasoned statement by a Young Sobersides.

Noonan’s most interesting observation is the contrast between Reagan, Clinton and Obama on the role of government: Reagan’s “government is not the answer, government is the problem,” Bill Clinton’s statement that the “the era of big government is over” vs. Obama’s “The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works.”
Noonan spins this as further evidence of Obama’s centrism. I’d say it was a convincing and long-overdue knell for the era of knee-jerk government-bashing. As Harold Meyerson put it in his WaPo column,

We measure the merit of government, he added, not by how wide a berth it gives the market but by “whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified.”…
With those words, the age of Reagan was ceremoniously but unambiguously interred. For 30 years, the widely shared prosperity created and then enjoyed by the Greatest Generation has been eroding. Obama’s speech was the first presidential inaugural to address the narrowing of American prosperity and to announce the intention to broaden it again.

In his contribution to a New York Times round-up of various presidential speechwriters’ analysis of Obama’s address, another Republican, William Safire expresses a view similar to Noonan, calling Obama’s address “solid, respectable, uplifting, suitably short, superbly delivered” and generally themeless, but it “fell short of the anticipated immortality.” In the same round-up Clinton speechwriter Jeff Shesol called it “a display of strength (his) and a summoning of strength (ours)” and saw a clear strategy emerge from the address: “He long ago proved that he could make people weep. Today he seemed determined to make them think and, more important, to act.”
WaPo‘s George Will also detected in his column a note of “cultural traditionalism” and a “theme of responsibility” in Obama’s inaugural address, but Will is more worried than Republican colleagues Noonan and safire about the return of Big Government:

…More than any predecessor except the first, the 44th president enters office with the scope of its powers barely circumscribed by law, and even less by public opinion…Obama’s unprecedented power derives from the astonishing events of the past four months that have made indistinct the line between public and private sectors. Neither the public as currently alarmed, nor Congress as currently constituted, nor the Constitution as currently construed is an impediment to hitherto unimagined executive discretion in allocating vast portions of the nation’s wealth.

The L.A. Times‘ Susan Salter Reynolds had one of the more interesting round-up articles, featuring short comments by a dozen writers on Obama’s address, including this from author Ron Calrson:

What courage to use a complex sentence talking to a million people! By expecting the best of us, he just might get it.

And memoirist Patricia Hampl had this to say about Obama’s choice of words:

I was glad, that he denied himself rhetorical flourishes and gave a speech as refined and restrained in its power so that political language itself was restored to its greatest value — saying what the speaker means.

The American Prospect‘s Mark Schmitt’s “A Farewell to Words” explains Obama’s oration as part of a deliberate shift from the rhetoric of inspiration to the unveiling of a practical agenda:

And yet, the president has moved on. Through the course of the campaign, his words slowly came down to earth, from inspiring and cocky to the mundane and practical. As the “gathering clouds” of the economic crisis became too dark to ignore, he accelerated his move from inspiration to work. His words no longer serve the purpose of pulling us up but of naming and giving order to the work to be done: roads, the electric grid, ending torture, restoring America’s place in the world.

I would say that Obama’s first presidential address was more moderate in style than in the substance of reforms he is advocating — which indicate a very sharp and most welcome departure from the failed policies of his predecessor. President Obama is clearly preparing the nation for a rocky ride in the months ahead, and laying the groundwork for an ambitious reform agenda to return America to peace and prosperity.

For one who can remember what America felt like the day before and the day after JFK was assassinated, this day is a long time coming. Although I was a little too young to have much understanding of the politics of 1963, growing up in Washington, D.C., I did have clear sense just before the assassination that hope and idealism were the order of the day. There was this young attractive couple in the white house challenging the younger generation, along with the rising hopes of the Civil Rights Movement in the wake of the Birmingham demonstrations and MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech.
Then boom, it was gone.
LBJ’s leadership secured substantive domestic reforms, but he got bogged down in the Vietnam quagmire, and the idealism of the young generation was soon replaced by growing rage and alienation. Legions of white youth went Hippie, many, but not all apolitical. The more heroic Black freedom struggle began to spilnter away from the nonviolent consensus forged by MLK. Chicago, Nixon, Watergate, withering idealism and growing cynicism. A brief lift with Carter’s election, then a dozen Reagan and Bush years of unrelenting political bummage. Another lift with Clinton’s election, but despite the good economic times likened to “the golden age of Pericles,” Clinton did not recapture youth idealism on the same scale that JFK generated, even though he was as brilliant a politician as JFK.
Today we conclude 8 years of what more than a few historians consider the worst ever presidency, a low bar indeed. President Obama won’t have to accomplish much to do better than his predecessor, but if he doesn’t do enough, he won’t be re-elected, given the dimensions of the current economic crisis.
The high hopes that attend the inauguration of our 44th President run especially deep for African Americans, the Democrats’ most reliable and alert constituency. While most Black voters realize that Obama’s election is not the fulfillment of MLK’s Dream, it is a powerful step forward and an affirmation that the dream of a multiracial democracy, in which brotherhood can take root, can be realized. In this context, the greatest patriotic poem ever written, “Let America be America Again” penned in 1938 by Langston Hughes fits perfectly on this day:

Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be the pioneer on the plain Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed– Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There’s never been equality for me, Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark? And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart, I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars. I am the red man driven from the land, I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek– And finding only the same old stupid plan Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
I am the young man, full of strength and hope, Tangled in that ancient endless chain Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land! Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need! Of work the men! Of take the pay! Of owning everything for one’s own greed!
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil. I am the worker sold to the machine. I am the Negro, servant to you all. I am the people, humble, hungry, mean– Hungry yet today despite the dream. Beaten yet today–O, Pioneers! I am the man who never got ahead, The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream In the Old World while still a serf of kings, Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true, That even yet its mighty daring sings In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned That’s made America the land it has become. O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas In search of what I meant to be my home– For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore, And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea, And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came To build a “homeland of the free.”
The free?
Who said the free? Not me? Surely not me? The millions on relief today? The millions shot down when we strike? The millions who have nothing for our pay? For all the dreams we’ve dreamed And all the songs we’ve sung And all the hopes we’ve held And all the flags we’ve hung, The millions who have nothing for our pay– Except the dream that’s almost dead today.
O, let America be America again– The land that never has been yet– And yet must be–the land where every man is free. The land that’s mine–the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME– Who made America, Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain, Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain, Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose– The steel of freedom does not stain. From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives, We must take back our land again, America!
O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath– America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies, We, the people, must redeem The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers. The mountains and the endless plain– All, all the stretch of these great green states– And make America again!

Today President-elect Obama will be inaugurated on the crest of a great wave of youth idealism, on a scale not seen since the days of JFK. And tonight a very attractive young couple with two young children will once again take up residence in the white house. No one expects a return to Camelot — we’ve been through too much for that. But something beautiful for America begins anew today. My personal barometer is my two previously apolitical but now rabidly Obamaphile young people. I trust that the inevitable compromises President Obama will have to make won’t diminish their idealism too much. Hope is back in young America and it feels good.

Little Hawaii, not exactly a mighty player on electoral college maps, has nonetheless made an impressively disproportionate contribution to the revitalization of the Democratic Party via the temperament of our leader. According to Philip Rucker’s article in today’s WaPo, “Hawaii’s Still Waters Run Deep for the President-Elect,” Hawaii’s contribution comes from the “aloha spirit,” as a defining element of President-elect Obama’s character. Rucker’s report on Obama’s just-concluded two weeks in his real home state begins with this description of the mellowest President-elect in memory:

In his two weeks in Hawaii, Barack Obama has oozed island cool: the black shades and khaki shorts, the breezy sandaled saunter that suggested he had not a care in the world. Who said anything about the presidency?
He strolled shirtless near the beach, enjoyed a shave ice and a local seaweed-wrapped delicacy called Spam musubi. One day, the president-elect flashed the friendly “shaka” sign, shaking his pinky and thumb in a local surfing gesture.
But for the BlackBerry clipped to his left hip, Obama appeared to be channeling the aloha spirit of his native Hawaii. Far more than a greeting, Hawaiians’ aloha — which has many meanings — often connotes a certain laid-back live-and-let-live attitude. Translated literally, it means the breath of life. But aloha is also sometimes interpreted as an acronym for five words meaning kindness (akahai), unity (lokahi), agreeability (olu’olu), humility (ha’aha’a) and patience (ahonui).

Rucker’s report is accompanied by Alex Brandon’s wonderful photo of Obama body surfing, maybe the coolest pic of any President yet taken. (The New York Times web version has brighter colors) You couldn’t ask for a better visual analogue for a leader riding the high tide of favorable public opinion, or even better, a leader who finds harmony in nature.
How does the aloha spirit inform Obama’s political style? Rucker nails it well:

Friends here say the country’s first island-born president-elect has long carried more than a touch of the aloha spirit in his temperament. During the campaign, many admirers questioned whether Obama was too passive in his battles against Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sen. John McCain.
“That’s Hawaii,” declared Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii), a contemporary of Obama’s parents who has known the president-elect since birth. “You take negative energy and you process it through you and it comes out as positive energy. . . . Every time Obama comes on television now, the collective blood pressure in the United States goes down 10 points. He cools the water. He’s sober and he speaks sensibly in a calm manner that breeds confidence.”
As Obama’s wife, Michelle, has said, “You can’t really understand Barack until you understand Hawaii.”

Or as Obama himself is quoted as saying in the caption of the aforementioned WaPo photo, “What’s best in me, and what’s best in my message, is consistent with the tradition of Hawaii.”
Jeff Zeleny’s earlier New York Times report on Obama’s trip “Obama’s Zen State, Well, It’s Hawaiian,” reaches a similar conclusion:

The mood of Mr. Obama, to many observers here in Hawaii, embodies the Aloha Spirit, a peaceful state of mind and a friendly attitude of acceptance of a variety of ideas and cultures. More than simply a laid-back vibe, many Hawaiians believe in a divine and spiritual power that provides a sustaining life energy.
“When Obama gets on television, the national pulse goes down about 10 points,” said Representative Neil Abercrombie, Democrat of Hawaii, who was close friends with Mr. Obama’s parents. “He has this incredibly calming effect. There’s no question in my mind it comes from Hawaii.”
…“He has more Hawaii in him than Chicago; he’s laid-back, cool and collected,” said Noel Kent, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa who has lived on the island for three decades. “It’s hard to express anger here. It’s a very small, enclosed environment in which you have to live with other people.”

None of which is to argue that there are no racial tensions or other forms of social stress in Hawaii. But just from my visit to Hawaii a couple of years ago, I think Zeleny and Rucker are on to something about the aloha spirit informing Obama’s temperament. Let’s hope it’s contagious.

No doubt you need some good excuses to drink very liberally tonight as we welcome the New Year. So hoist yer tankards, mateys with gratitude to:

John and Jackie Norris, the Iowa power couple who engineered Obama’s winning strategy in the Iowa caucuses;
Will.I.am and Jesse Dylan for their mega-viral video, “Yes We Can,” a rallying cry for the hopes and dreams of millions of young voters;
Nate Silver for charting a more creative course for data-driven political journalism, as well as for nailing the presidential race outcome for both candidates within two tenths of a percent;
Legions of unheralded pro-Democratic lawyers in dozens of states, most of them volunteers, for doing a heroic job in preventing vote theft on Nov. 4;
The clueless Liddy Dole, for lacking the political acumen to see that attacking an opponent’s religious views is a really bad move;
Millions of Republicans who put America’s future before their party;
McCain strategist Steve Schmidt for first suggesting Sarah Palin as McCain’s running mate and campaign manager Rick Davis for helping seal the deal;
David Axelrod, for designing and implementing the strategy needed to elect a candidate who was a state senator four years ago and for skillfully navigating a course to victory through the myriad snares and traps of racial and class politics in America;
MSNBC, for Maddow and Olbermann, and for emerging as the best alternative to FoxTV we are likely to see for a good while;
Obama wunderkind speechwriter Jon Favreau, for crafting the best political speeches of the 21st century (so far);
Hillary Clinton, for grace in defeat and for proving herself to be a valuable team player;
Tina Fey, no guys, not for being way smokin’ hot, but for using comedy to wake up a lot of Americans to what was at risk;
Michelle Obama, for doing a tough job with grace and class, and making it look easy;
Barack Obama, for artfully channeling a little Lincoln, FDR, JFK and MLK, for remaining calm and steady, for doing his homework and speaking brilliantly, for mastering the tone of a winner and providing a template for future Democratic victories; and
Madelyn Payne Dunham, Obama’s grandmother, who died two days before the election, credited with raising a 10-year-old boy into a man who today provides new hope for millions worldwide.

I hope the President-elect, and all Democratic members of congress for that matter, read Tom Friedman’s latest op-ed, “Time to Reboot America” in The New York Times. No one is better than Friedman in describing the general cheesiness and state of disrepair the U.S. infrastructure has fallen into, in stark contrast to the Far East cities of the future. Friedman’s entire article commands a thoughtful read from policy-makers, but I’ll just quote from a couple of nut graphs here:

….If we’re so smart, why are other people living so much better than us? What has become of our infrastructure, which is so crucial to productivity?…we can’t continue in this mode of “Dumb as we wanna be.” We’ve indulged ourselves for too long with tax cuts that we can’t afford, bailouts of auto companies that have become giant wealth-destruction machines, energy prices that do not encourage investment in 21st-century renewable power systems or efficient cars, public schools with no national standards to prevent illiterates from graduating and immigration policies that have our colleges educating the world’s best scientists and engineers and then, when these foreigners graduate, instead of stapling green cards to their diplomas, we order them to go home and start companies to compete against ours.
…That’s why we don’t just need a bailout. We need a reboot. We need a build out. We need a buildup. We need a national makeover. That is why the next few months are among the most important in U.S. history. Because of the financial crisis, Barack Obama has the bipartisan support to spend $1 trillion in stimulus. But we must make certain that every bailout dollar, which we’re borrowing from our kids’ future, is spent wisely.

Friedman is stone cold right that Bush’s “dumb as we wanna be” attitude has failed America miserably. And he is equally correct that the worst thing we could do now is to squander Obama’s hard-earned political capital on pork, golden parachutes, unwinnable wars and other non-productive investments. What Friedman is talking about here is making cost-effective investments in America’s future, not just our physical plant — transportation, energy efficiency, public utilities etc. — but also our intellectual capital, most specifically in education and training.
Yes, Obama needs a New Deal 2.0, but with a critical update, making damn sure the educational infrastructure is in place to modernize America to be competitive in the world marketplace for years to come. Without that clear commitment, any economic recovery will be short-lived.
The President-elect reportedly gets a lot of inspiration from President Lincoln and his ability to heal divisions and neutralize adversaries. But now it’s time for him to read up on another masterful leader, one who overcame fierce political opposition at every turn to put millions of Americans to work rebuilding America’s shabby infrastructure. Not to disparage Lincoln’s greatness as a genuine “uniter, not a divider,” but FDR provides the more instructive role model for a new President at this juncture.
FDR understood the power of building bipartisan consensus, where possible. But he also knew that sometimes a leader has to roll the opposition to win the day. Let the ideologues argue about whether Obama’s victory is a conservative or liberal mandate. Whatever it takes, The President-elect and the party he leads must take no prisoners in the struggle to rebuild America. Obama and all Democratic leaders have spoken eloquently about the urgency of rebuilding the infrastructure. What is now needed is a cast-iron Democratic will to get it done. It will be a brutal battle, but the pay-off will be huge — for Democrats, as well as for America.

Bruce Raynor, president of Unite Here, one of America’s largest trade unions, has a L.A. Times article, “UAW Busting, Southern Style,” that sheds light on the opposition of southern Republican Senators to the Auto industry bailout and really, unions in general. As Raynor explains:

Last week, Senate Republicans from some Southern states went to work trying to do just that, on the foreign car companies’ behalf. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Sen. Bob Corker ( R-Tenn.) and Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) — representatives from states that subsidize companies such as Honda, Volkswagen, Toyota and Nissan — first tried to force the UAW to take reductions in wages and benefits as a condition for supporting the auto industry bailout bill. When the UAW refused, those senators torpedoed the bill.
They claimed that they couldn’t support the bill without specifics about how wages would be “restructured.” They didn’t, however, require such specificity when it came to bailing out the financial sector. Their grandstanding, and the government’s generally lackluster response to the auto crisis, highlight many of the problems that have caused our current economic mess: the lack of concern about manufacturing, the privileged way our government treats the financial sector, and political support given to companies that attempt to slash worker’s wages.

Raynor also cites a “staggering” double standard in the way southern Republicans treat workers in the auto industry, compared to employees in the financial sector, and notes,

In the financial sector, employee compensation makes up a huge percentage of costs. According to the New York state comptroller, it accounted for more than 60% of 2007 revenues for the seven largest financial firms in New York.
At Goldman Sachs, for example, employee compensation made up 71% of total operating expenses in 2007. In the auto industry, by contrast, autoworker compensation makes up less than 10% of the cost of manufacturing a car. Hundreds of billions were given to the financial-services industry with barely a question about compensation; the auto bailout, however, was sunk on this issue alone.

He explains that the UAW has already made major concessions:

Its 2007 contract introduced a two-tier contract to pay new hires $15 an hour (instead of $28) with no defined pension plan and dramatic cuts to their health insurance. In addition, the UAW agreed that healthcare benefits for existing retirees would be transferred from the auto companies to an independent trust. With the transferring of the healthcare costs, the labor cost gap between the Big Three and the foreign transplants will be almost eliminated by the end of the current contracts.
These concessions go some distance toward leveling the playing field (retiree costs are still a factor for the Big Three). But what the foreign car companies want is to level — which is to say, wipe out — the union. They currently discourage their workforce from organizing by paying wages comparable to the Big Three’s UAW contracts. In fact, Toyota’s per-hour wages are actually above UAW wages.
However, an internal Toyota report, leaked to the Detroit Free Press last year, reveals that the company wants to slash $300 million out of its rising labor costs by 2011. The report indicated that Toyota no longer wants to “tie [itself] so closely to the U.S. auto industry.” Instead, the company intends to benchmark the prevailing manufacturing wage in the state in which a plant is located. The Free Press reported that in Kentucky, where the company is headquartered, this wage is $12.64 an hour, according to federal labor statistics, less than half Toyota’s $30-an-hour wage.
If the companies, with the support of their senators, can wipe out or greatly weaken the UAW, they will be free to implement their plan.

The southern Republicans have long parroted the meme that the wage and benefits gains won by the UAW over the years have somehow “artificially” inflated wages of union workers, while non-union southern auto workers receive “fair” compensation. It’s all about blaming the workers, instead of Big Auto’s crappy management. They would like to keep millions of Americans ignorant of the UAW’s historic role as the nation’s cutting edge union in terms of wages, benefits and working conditions, which did more to expand the middle class than has any other institution in American life. As Harold Meyerson explaned in his recent WaPo op-ed, “Destroying What the UAW Built“:

In 1949, a pamphlet was published that argued that the American auto industry should pursue a different direction. Titled “A Small Car Named Desire,” the pamphlet suggested that Detroit not put all its bets on bigness, that a substantial share of American consumers would welcome smaller cars that cost less and burned fuel more efficiently.
The pamphlet’s author was the research department of the United Auto Workers.
By the standards of the postwar UAW, there was nothing exceptional about “A Small Car Named Desire.” In its glory days, under the leadership of Walter Reuther, the UAW was the most farsighted institution – not just the most farsighted union – in America. “We are the architects of America’s future,” Reuther told the delegates at the union’s 1947 convention, where his supporters won control of what was already the nation’s leading union.
Even before he became UAW president, Reuther and a team of brilliant lieutenants would drive the Big Three’s top executives crazy by producing a steady stream of proposals for management. In the immediate aftermath of Pearl Harbor, Reuther, then head of the union’s General Motors division, came up with a detailed plan for converting auto plants to defense factories more quickly than the industry’s leaders did. At the end of the war, he led a strike at GM with a set of demands that included putting union and public representatives on GM’s board….by the early 1950s, the UAW had secured a number of contractual innovations – annual cost-of-living adjustments, for instance – that set a pattern for the rest of American industry and created the broadly shared prosperity enjoyed by the nation in the 30 years after World War II….The UAW not only built the American middle class but helped engender every movement at the center of American liberalism today – which is one reason that conservatives have always held the union in particular disdain.

Meyerson concludes,

In a narrow sense, what the Republicans are proposing would gut the benefits of roughly a million retirees. In a broad sense, they want to destroy the institution that did more than any other to raise American living standards, and they want to do it by using the power of government to lower American living standards – in the middle of the most severe recession since the 1930s. The auto workers deserve better, and so does the nation they did so much to build.

With the nomination of Hilda Solis to head the Department of Labor, the incoming Obama Administration has sent a clear signal to the southern Republicans that their plan to gut the UAW and weaken trade unions will be blocked. Solis is a strong champion of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) needed to get more workers union representation and an unflinching advocate of trade union growth. If the Obama Administration — along with a coalition of congressional Democrats and a few moderate Republicans — give Solis the support she needs, a strengthened trade union movement could serve as the engine that drives economic recovery and expanded prosperity.
American progressives and the blogosphere in particular have a critical role in building this coalition. It starts with more effectively debunking, in simple, cogent terms, the GOP’s bogus meme that EFCA is a threat to our national tradition of “secret ballots.” With that accomplished, we can help revitalize the trade union movement and light the path forward to a new era of hope and broadly-shared opportunities.

In the midst of Blagogate, it seems a smidge unseemly to be encouraging deal-making in political appointments. But Democrats are clearly not getting a filibuster-proof majority through the ’08 elections, so perhaps it’s time to turn our attention to other measures to get to 60 Senators. Toward that end, Jonathan Singer’s MyDD post “Make Olympia Snowe Cabinet-Level SBA Chief,” and the comments following his post explore ensuing ramifications, should Snowe accept a cabinet post, and Maine’s Democratic Governor John Baldacci appoint Snowe’s Democratic replacement.
Singer riffs on a post in Politico‘s The Crypt, noting Snowe’s advocacy of making the Small Business Administration a cabinet-level post, as it was during the Clinton Administration. The idea is to do so, and make her the Secretary. It’s unclear whether she would be interested, but it’s certainly worth a try
It seems like a fairly plausible scenario. Snowe has been a Senator since 1994. She always shows up atop the list of liberal Republicans. She is hugely popular in her state and influential in the Senate as a swing vote on progressive legislative reforms. She is consistently rated one of the better U.S. Senators.
There has been talk over the years of Snowe switching parties, but it just hasn’t happened. Perhaps it has been an unappealing prospect, with the Democrats’ tendency to form circular firing squads during many of her 14 years in the Senate. True, she will have additional leverage in the new Senate. Now, however, she has to look at her career ahead in light of a strong possibility that she may never be in a Republican majority again, which means no committee chairmanships. She can continue as a swing voter, deciding the fate of bills here and there, but with dimmer prospects for sponsoring and enacting major legislation, especially given her party’s knee-jerk obstruction of meaningful reforms. You couldn’t blame her for thinking it’s time for a change. Possible solutions might include switching parties or accepting an appointment in the Obama Administration.
Other “liberal” Senate Republicans in states with Democratic governors, like Collins (ME) and Voinovich (OH) could also be approached. Specter (PA) is occasionally mentioned as a switch-or-cabinet worthy Rino. If they can’t be enticed by the remaining cabinet-level positions, perhaps committee chairmanships as Democrats, where possible, would have some appeal. If we could get one or two Republicans to cross over, it could make a great difference for the better in enacting a progressive agenda, although even if they don’t switch and just vote with Dems, it will help a great deal. No doubt Sens. Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer have thought about it, and perhaps under-the-radar overtures have been made.
Most of the high-level Party-switching in recent decades has been in the wrong direction, from the Democratic point of view. (Wikipedia has a fascinating chronology on the topic). But the pendulum has swung to the left now, and it is time for Democrats to take more vigorous advantage, recruiting Republicans who are tiring of their party’s shrinking tent. Granted, the list of acceptable Republicans for Obama’s cabinet-level posts is a short one, as is the list of remaining positions that have appeal for political horse-trading. They include the Departments of Labor, Interior, Education and Transportation, CIA Director, Director of National Intelligence. Call it a long shot, but maybe it would be good if a Senate Republican who fills the bill is approached before all the positions are gone.