The Grown Ups


by digby

David Shuster interviewed  two old lions, Trent Lott and John Breaux about  how the president should be leading:

Breaux: I think it's time for the president to call the leaders of both parties down to the White House and talk about those thousands of pages of the budget and say, "look, neither one of us are going to win by ourselves and if we don't get a bipartisan agreement, we're not going to get an agreement." I think it was a good day when he met with the House Republicans and I think he's going to do the same thing with the Senate Republican caucus.  He's going to have to bring them both into the oval office and say, "look, it's time we start working together." That's what the American people want, it's the only way you're going to get a document out of it."
Right, absolutely.  If only the president would just tell the Republicans and Democrats that they need to work together.  Why on earth didn't he think of that before?  And if it doesn't happen, well I guess that just proves that Obama is a failure as a leader. Excellent plan.

Meanwhile, here's Trent Lott hilariously explaining how "bipartisanship" works for both sides:

Lott: Talking about the Bush tax cuts.  As a matter of fact when we got those tax cuts, we really wanted like 1.2 or 1.3 trillion dollars. But John Breaux and some of the moderate Republicans and Democrats said "that's really more than we can do" and we wound up cutting it back by about 300 billion dollars and we actually got it done.


See, they compromised and only gave their mutual benefactors a trilliion dollar gift! Yes we can!

Shuster points out that the political environment isn't exactly friendly right now but Breaux insists that the president can fix that:

Breaux: Well you have to help create it. A leader and a president can do this.  Bring them in and say "look, we're not going to leave this room until we get some type of a framework about how we're going to do this budget.  If we just want to beat each other up fine, but everybody loses if we do that.  The country loses."

I don't know why he keeps saying  "they both lose."   Whether the country loses is one thing. But the fact is that one party will win and one party will lose and the Republicans have made it crystal clear that they believe that by obstructing Obama's agenda they don't think it will be them. I guess they could change their minds,  but I've seen nothing to indicate that.  What they see as advantageous is having the president put it all on the line for bipartisanship and then saying, "see, he can't deliver on  his promises" when they fail to meet him halfway.  It's a suckers play.  If they can get him to compromise on something that's of great importance to his supporters (the very best kind of compromise from their perspective) they get what they want and he loses the base. If they simply obstruct, it makes him look like he can't lead at all.  In other words, they hold all the cards.  And they only have 41 votes in the Senate. 

Meanwhile, Lott explains that Obama has no choice but to clean up the mess he and his cohorts left behind:

Lott: The president did take a step in the right direction by freezing discretionary spending.  The problem is that it's a very small part of the spending. ... you've got a problem.  Some of it was caused by the spending things that were put in place by the previous president and the previous congress.

And now it's on this congress's watch. And you've got to deal with it now or five years from now it will be a lot worse.
And when it's all nice and cleaned up (our way) we'll come roaring back into power and mess it all up again. The circle of life.


Update: It seems the White House agrees with Breaux:

GIBBS: One party is not going to solve these — not going to solve all these problems. One party is not going to make –
QUESTION: Why not? Why is one party not capable –
GIBBS: Because of the –
QUESTION: — when one party controls the House, Senate and the White House?
GIBBS: No, no, no, no, no — welcome to Washington. One party is not going to get — one party is not going to be able to solve all these. The American people want both parties to work together to solve these.
 
Gregg Sargent writes: "This is the emerging talking point from the White House and Congessional leadership: It is a mathematical impossiblity that Dems will ever be able to get anything done without cooperation from Republicans."

Perhaps voters will buy the idea that we have a Republican congress even though the Democrats have a huge mathematical majority in both houses, and blame them for failing to get anything done. (Do they have an agreement that the GOP won't run against the "Democrat Congress?")  

If that's their plan then Obama  going before the congressional Republicans and answering their questions makes much more sense to me.  They are elevating them on purpose. It's a very complicated strategy, but maybe it will work. 

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