Mark Schmitt writes:
The president's popularity dipped into the low 40s, and they passed the energy bill anyway -- what more proof do you need that the president's poll numbers hardly matter, if you control the instutions?
At least a bit more. The President won reelection but couldn't pass privatization -- what more proof do you need that control of the institutions hardly matter?
I've been seeing the occasional emergence of some strange conservative checklist wherein CAFTA, energy bill and highway bill means he's been an effective second term president, poll numbers and ideological failures be damned!
Well, maybe. But I think not. When you control the institutions of government, I think it's basically assumed that you'll be able to ram your way to success in the more basic responsibilities of the presidency. The highway and energy bills fit that -- they're basically infrastructure adjustment acts larded with pork to attract legislator support. They're bad, sure, but not bad in the way that attracts powerful interest group and partisan opposition. And they're not bad in some way that threatens Democratic objectives or programs. Indeed, by their very nature, they do things that many Senators basically support (build highways, modernize the grid, subsidize alternative fuels). With Bush in charge, they also do things we don't support, like offer massive giveaways to corporations, But the real sins aren't in the bills, they're in what's left out of the bills. The energy bill was short-sighted and largely useless, the highway bill porky, focused on the wrong things, and overpriced for what it delivered.
But pushing them through was no great feat, it just meant the Administration wasn't so paralyzed that it couldn't make good on the most basic responsibilities of governance. And considering how much bribery was needed, even the passage showed weakness -- remember Bush's threat to veto anything over 284 billion? And did you notice that the MTBE regulation was dropped from the energy bill?
It seems to me that the serious measure of his popularity is to enact social change. Social Security privatization would've fit the, as would deficit reduction or entitlement cuts. Something painful or controversial that cut against Congress's natural inclinations or the public's basic principles -- that would show his control of the institutions was negating his poll numbers. As it is, he's indulging Congress's appetite for pork and the public's appetite for more spending -- what's so impressive about that?
