Ryan Lizza's narrative of the climate bill's life and death is a superb picture of Washington at work: Sen. John McCain is petulant and politically expedient, Republicans are vulnerable to extreme conservatives in their districts, Sen. John Kerry is diligent but unlucky. And, of course, the White House's usual opening gambit of making concessions before negotiations really begin -- unilaterally opening up offshore drilling without Republican commitment a few months before the BP disaster -- was poorly managed; as Lizza notes, "Obama had now given away what the senators were planning to trade."
This section on the administration's legislative philosophy is worth some discussion:
One camp, led by Phil Schiliro, Obama's top congressional liaison, was composed of former congressional aides who argued that Obama needed to insert himself in the legislative process if he was going to pass the ambitious agenda that he had campaigned on. The other group, led by David Axelrod, believed that being closely associated with the messiness of congressional horse-trading was destroying Obama's reputation.
“We ran as an outsider and then decided to be an insider to get things done,” a senior White House official said. According to the official, Schiliro and the insiders argued, “You've got to own Congress,” while Axelrod and the outsiders argued, “Fuck whatever Congress wants, we're not for them.” The official added, “We probably did lose part of our brand. Obama turned into exactly what we promised ourselves he wasn't going to be, which is the leader of parliament. We became the majority leader of both houses, and we ceded the Presidency.” Schiliro's side won the debate over how the White House should approach health care, but in 2010, when the Senate took up cap-and-trade, Axelrod's side was ascendant. Emanuel, for example, called Reid's office in March and suggested that the Senate abandon cap-and-trade in favor of a modest bill that would simply require utilities to generate more electricity from clean sources.
On this debate, I think Schiliro's strategy is right, but for the reasons that Axelrod cites -- the administration's image was hurt by Congress, but that was inevitable: Separating the Democratic president from the Democratic Congress is a difficult-to-impossible feat of communications strategy. The only feasible solution is to "own Congress," given that Obama will be tarred with its failures regardless. What we've seen from the administration so far has been equivocation between these two strategies: On some issues, the White House intervenes strongly, if too late, in the process; often the administration doesn't give legislators enough guidance.
Progressives, repulsed by deal-making with corporate interests, might initially think the argument associated with Axelrod is right. But Axelrod's strategy is one that would inevitably result in the kind of high-minded, pox-on-both-their-parties posturing -- and a lack of campaign partisanship -- that progressives also find anathema.
But put aside politics: Any president is unable to accomplish his ends without a hefty bit of leadership down the street at the Capitol; it's hard to obtain the sausage you want if you refuse to involve yourself with the meat grinder. If we want a substantive administration, that means facing the messy reality of legislating. If anything, Lizza's article shows how the Obama team should have been more involved in crafting the climate-change bill, not less.
-- Tim Fernholz
