Tuesday, December 7, 2010

What Democrats Got Wrong: 2008-2010

If Democrats wish to win coming elections, and I know I, for one, do, it would be productive to examine what we got wrong during these past two years in power so that we can practice what we preached to President Bush and learn from our mistakes. Here's my shot.

We need to 1) perfect the art of compromise, 2) offer more effective soundbites, 3) take better credit for our accomplishments, 4) focus our agenda more concisely, 5) assign blame where it belongs more frequently, and, finally, 6) we need to pick our heads up ‘cause we ain’t doing so bad.

1) If a compromise is made in Congress but no one knows it's a compromise, does it make a sound?

Dems, and President Obama in particular, made a bad habit of proposing moderate legislation riddled with good Republican ideas. Why is that a problem? Because the Republicans wouldn't support those ideas unless they were publicly able to take credit for them. Negotiation 101: come to the table with your ideal offer knowing it will be whittled down through negotiations. The stimulus, Wall Street reform, even health care reform were largely composed of moderate ideas that Republicans previously supported. When one third of the stimulus was devoted to tax cuts at its inception, what was President Obama expecting the Republicans to do? Be thankful that the President came out with such a moderate proposal?

When compromises were publicly made, Democrats did not highlight them, even when they were major. The public option was far and away the most controversial component of the Democratic health care proposal. Liberals held it up as a holy grail, conservatives pointed to it as a communist government takeover of the health care system. Wouldn't you know it, the public option was not in the final health care bill, but liberal Democrats neglected to even claim credit for conceding this high priority component in the name of bipartisanship. In fact, just about every provision in the health care bill that ultimately passed has been supported by Republicans in the past - even the mandate for Americans to purchase insurance was proposed by Republicans in the Senate in 1993 as an alternative to the Clinton proposal. That is the only provision in the Obama bill that receives less than 50 percent public support in polls, and it was previously proposed by Republicans.

2) Soundbites have cooties.

President Obama and Democrats seem loathe to resort to concise, persuasive statements that can be easily echoed by members across the spectrum in support of their policies. Why? Perhaps they feel that they are above this alleged dumbing down of complex issues, or perhaps they are just disorganized. Either way, the message does not always get out.

For example, the recession could easily have been dubbed "the Bush recession" to lay the blame where it belongs with every mention of the struggling economy, yet Republicans claimed Obama owned the economy after month three in office and Democrats never responded with a consistent message. As for the economic recovery, Clinton adviser James Carville, who coined the phrase "It's the economy, stupid," widely regarded as the most effective message of Clinton's campaign, rightly pointed out that Obama had the wrong message on the economy. Instead of saying, as President Obama does, "What we are doing is working," which could understandably anger the millions of Americans who haven't felt the "working" piece of that statement, Carville rightly suggests the message should be, "We are standing up to the Wall Street CEO's who got us into this mess, and we are fighting for you every day to make this economy better." The unprecedented 24/7 news cycle is having an untold effect on the public debate, and seems to make messaging on complex matters that much more difficult. President Bush was the first President to really be confronted with the ups and downs of that cycle, and President Obama is still experimenting with governing techniques that work in that environment.

3) We won! Unfortunately.

There are a whole host of Democrats in Congress who have decided upon the worst political strategy ever - support legislation, but only after letting it be known far and wide how absolutely terrible they believe that legislation is. Perhaps if Democrats learned to withhold some of their most aggressively angry whining about their fellow Democrats and proposals that they will ultimately end up supporting, they would be better off. Every individual member of the party is stronger when the party as a whole has a unified and clear message. By all means, air concerns and offer critiques, but maybe try to avoid damning legislation to hell before casting a vote for it. I'm looking at you, Mary Landrieu (and tons of House members) during health care reform. And Barney Frank with the Senate Wall Street reform bill. And Mary Landrieu again during the latest tax cut deal between President Obama and top Republicans. If you hadn't heard, she called the deal "almost morally corrupt," before adding, "If I end up voting for this bill..." I'm sorry, after calling it morally corrupt, voting for the deal is still an option?! Great way to build the public's confidence for a vote you are going to have to defend when you're up for reelection.

Keep the infighting to a toned-down minimum as much as possible, and try to stay positive while looking out for the interests of the home district.

4) Lack of focu... oh, oh, oh, something shiny!

A common criticism of the Democrats' recent performance is that the Dems were not focused on the priorities of the American people. In the midst of a fragile recovery, Democrats took on the broken health care system. I understand this concern, but I don't believe that tackling health care was the wrong decision for President Obama to make. Given that health care reform was his most ambitious, and perhaps most important, campaign promise, it would have been nothing short of criminally disastrous were he to avoid this issue while he had historic Democratic majorities in Congress and enough political capital to actually get it accomplished. That being said, politically speaking, there may well be a lesson to be learned here. Following 9/11, George W. Bush devoted several of the ensuing years in office almost exclusively to fighting terrorism, and, for a time, his singular focus worked for him because it was similarly the highest priority on the minds of the American people. There is always something to be said for simplicity and focus.

5) The other guy filibustered and it's all your fault.

One problem is the mindset of some citizen Democrats – we may forget how difficult governing can be in a Democracy, and too often, we have ended up blaming other Democrats for the obstruction by Republicans. This is in part a result of the failure of effective messaging from the Democratic party, but it's also a problem in its own right. We have little patience and at times seem to forget that, when change ultimately does happen in the form of legislation passing through Congress, it is the product of hours, days, months, or years of negotiations and consensus building - and ultimately, agreement.

Case in point, Don't Ask, Don't Tell repeal. President Obama is President, not dictator, and there are 60 Senators and 218 House members who also must support any given bill for it to pass. As for DADT, Republicans in the Senate have so far been intent on filibustering the repeal, going so far as to delay funding our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan to prevent this repeal from taking effect. All of this after President Obama has spoken forcefully in favor of repeal during his campaign, at public rallies, and in his State of the Union address earlier this year, worked with the military leadership to come up with a path to repeal, ordered the largest survey of the military ever to build support, instructed his Republican Secretary of Defense to rally support for the legislation in Congress and in the military, requested hearings be held on the issue, and asked repeatedly that Congress pass the repeal bill. Yet, the frustration among Democrats appears to be aimed at President Obama, of all people, and not at Senator McCain and his fellow filibustering friends.

It is important that we direct our anger at our opposition, our advice and advocacy toward our allies, and try to understand the positions of both. As Middle East envoy George Mitchell said of his experience with the Northern Ireland peace accord he helped broker years ago, "if the objective is to achieve a peace agreement, until you do achieve one, you have failed to do so. In a sense, in Northern Ireland, we had about 700 days of failure and one day of success." Wise words, Mr. Mitchell. Wise words. Let us not call ourselves failures every day we don’t succeed.

6) Last, and most importantly...

Put it all in perspective. Everything listed here as something Democrats at times got wrong is also something we often got right. And governing decisions are made after careful analysis of the realities of the moment – the future is unpredictable, so good decisions of the moment may prove to have been terrible decisions down the road, but what more can we do? These are also issues that every President and Congress wrestle with, some more successfully than others. None of these problems is unique to Democrats, or to President Obama.

The Democrats, led by President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and Majority Leader Reid, have accomplished great things for the American people at a pace unmatched in perhaps seven decades. Without reviewing all of the details of our accomplishments, it is safe to say that the economic stimulus plan, health care reform plan, and the Wall Street reform plan enacted by the Democrats (with the help of a few straggling Republicans) were each historic in their own right, and together are... ultra-historic. After fighting each of these massive battles in the midst of a faltering economy with unprecedented economic anxiety and a national unemployment rate of around 9.8 percent, President Obama maintains an approval rating of 45 percent or higher, depending on the poll - a rating greater than either Clinton or Reagan enjoyed following their first midterm losses in Congress. So chin up! We must be doing something right.

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