Power and persuasion

Power and persuasion

by digby


Ezra Klein subbed for Martin Bashir today and is very unimpressed with President Obama's spirited rhetoric today saying that fiery speeches are a waste of time and that what he wants to see is action. Robert Reich then made the point that the only way to get any action in a gridlocked congress is for the President to rally the people to support it. I don't know if Ezra agreed with that (the segment ended) but I doubt it. He seems to believe that Democrats need to be smarter about leveraging their power, but if it's not the power of their constituency, then I'm not sure what power he's talking about. (Money maybe?)

Earlier, Ezra had asserted that the people had said over and over again that what they wanted was "a balanced approach to dealing with the deficit" and that's not what they got. And he's right. That's what the people said. But the question is why did they say that?

Could this be a clue?

4/13/11:

But I also know that we've come together before and met big challenges. Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill came together to save Social Security for future generations. The first President Bush and a Democratic Congress came together to reduce the deficit. President Clinton and a Republican Congress battled each other ferociously, disagreed on just about everything, but they still found a way to balance the budget. And in the last few months, both parties have come together to pass historic tax relief and spending cuts.

And I know there are Republicans and Democrats in Congress who want to see a balanced approach to deficit reduction. And even those Republicans I disagree with most strongly I believe are sincere about wanting to do right by their country. We may disagree on our visions, but I truly believe they want to do the right thing.
4/16/11

This week, I laid out my plan for our fiscal future. It's a balanced plan that reduces spending and brings down the deficit, putting America back on track toward paying down our debt.

We know why this challenge is so critical. If we don't act, a rising tide of borrowing will damage our economy, costing us jobs and risking our future prosperity by sticking our children with the bill.

At the same time, we have to take a balanced approach to reducing our deficit -- an approach that protects the middle class, our commitments to seniors, and job-creating investments in things like education and clean energy. What's required is an approach that draws support from both parties, and one that's based on the values of shared responsibility and shared prosperity.

5/25/11

But the one thing that I'm absolutely clear about is David[Cameron] and I want to arrive at the same point; a point in which we're making sure that our governments are doing what they need to do to ensure broad-based prosperity, but doing so in a responsible way that doesn't mortgage our futures and leave a mountain of debt to future generations.

And the other point I think David and I would agree on is that this is going to be a constant process of trying some things, making adjustments. There are going to be opportunities for us to make investments. There are going to be other areas where we think those were good ideas at the time, programs that were started with the best of intentions and it turns out they're not working as well as they should. If a program is not working well, we should get rid of it and put that money into programs that are working well. It means that we've got to make sure that we take a balanced approach and that there's a mix of cuts, but also thinking about how do we generate revenue so that there's a match between money going out and money coming in.

6/29/11

Look, I think that what we've seen in negotiations here in Washington is a lot of people say a lot of things to satisfy their base or to get on cable news, but that hopefully, leaders at a certain point rise to the occasion and they do the right thing for the American people. And that's what I expect to happen this time. Call me naïve, but my expectation is that leaders are going to lead.

Now, I just want to be clear about what's at stake here. The Republicans say they want to reduce the deficit. Every single observer who's not an elected official, who's not a politician, says we can't reduce our deficit in the scale and scope that we need to without having a balanced approach that looks at everything.


7/5/11

I believe that right now we've got a unique opportunity to do something big -- to tackle our deficit in a way that forces our government to live within its means, that puts our economy on a stronger footing for the future, and still allows us to invest in that future.

Most of us already agree that to truly solve our deficit problem, we need to find trillions in savings over the next decade, and significantly more in the decades that follow. That's what the bipartisan fiscal commission said, that's the amount that I put forward in the framework I announced a few months ago, and that's around the same amount that Republicans have put forward in their own plans. And that's the kind of substantial progress that we should be aiming for here.

To get there, I believe we need a balanced approach. We need to take on spending in domestic programs, in defense programs, in entitlement programs, and we need to take on spending in the tax code -- spending on certain tax breaks and deductions for the wealthiest of Americans. This will require both parties to get out of our comfort zones, and both parties to agree on real compromise.

8/2/11

This is, however, just the first step. This compromise requires that both parties work together on a larger plan to cut the deficit, which is important for the long-term health of our economy. And since you can't close the deficit with just spending cuts, we'll need a balanced approach where everything is on the table. Yes, that means making some adjustments to protect health care programs like Medicare so they're there for future generations. It also means reforming our tax code so that the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations pay their fair share. And it means getting rid of taxpayer subsidies to oil and gas companies, and tax loopholes that help billionaires pay a lower tax rate than teachers and nurses.

These are just a few examples of the many times the president used that phrase in his speeches and press conferences talking about the deficit, going back to the beginning of the most recent negotiations. The question is whether or not his rhetoric had any effect on public opinion.

Most experts seem to think that presidential speeches are completely useless and have absolutely no effect on public perceptions (which leads to the obvious question of what purpose there is to politics, as we define it, at all.) But my sense is that the president's framing of the issue was influential. Certainly the polls came around after he started saying it. People bought into the balanced approach formulation because the president was persuasive. Sadly (from my perspective at least) he persuaded the American people to adopt a self-defeating, centrist position and then lost that position, which is the worst of all possible worlds. But never let it be said that his words had no impact.

The problem was that he was unable to translate his mandate for "a balanced approach" into action. In a parliamentary democracy that debt ceiling debacle probably would have led to calls for elections. In ours, that means he has to take it to the people in 2012. And it seems to me that someone who can persuade a majority to buy into something as formless and opaque as "a balanced approach" could at least try to persuade the people to give him a real mandate to fix the economy instead of this:
Administration officials, frustrated by the intransigence of House Republicans, have increasingly concluded that the best thing Mr. Obama can do for the economy may be winning a second term, with a mandate to advance his ideas on deficit reduction, entitlement changes, housing policy and other issues.
That sounds like someone who thinks that his patented "balanced approach" will win him a second term --- and it might. But it's fairly clear how well that works as a governing principle, isn't it? It's a mandate for hostage taking and gridlock. So why not try to rally the public for something real, as Reich says?

I don't suppose we will ever resolve the argument around whether or not the President of the United States has any power to leverage the people, the executive branch and the Party he leads to back his program while in office. I find the position that he doesn't to be absurd, but we'll leave it at that. However, the idea that a politician has no power to persuade the electorate to back a real mandate through the skillful use of political rhetoric during election campaigns argues for the abandonment of democracy itself.

If all the President wants is a second term to do more of the same then I suppose that's a reasonable strategy. The question is if the people think that this first term has been such a rousing success that they are looking for more of the same. If so, then arguing for another chance to enact "a balanced approach" could be a big winner. But I'm guessing they are looking for something a little bit sharper.

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