Legal Commentary

The Political Value Of The PPUS

By Big Tent Democrat

Matt Yglesias writes:

I assume the entire progressive blogosphere will agree with me that trying to pursue a more “bipartisan tone” in Washington is a substantively foolish idea for the White House to pursue. But the fact of the matter is that I think the smart thing for any President to say is that he wants to pursue a bipartisan tone, so it’s hard to know what to make of that remark.

(Emphasis supplied.) Is that really true? I think FDR, Reagan and Bill Clinton during the government shutdown (and the 1993 tax fight) would say it is not true. Does anyone outside of the Beltway care about "wanting to pursue a bipartisan tone?" The evidence seems to the contrary to me. High Broderism is important to the Beltway, but results are what matter to the voters. As Yglesias writes in the same post:

[I]f economic conditions today we good or rapidly improving, then the President would be popular and his anti-recession measures would be seen as vindicated. But conditions aren’t good, they’re not rapidly improving, and the President isn’t popular.

To wit, as Atrios says, Obama's big political problem is that his team got the policy on the economy, jobs and the housing crisis wrong. That's why Dems lost and why Obama is not politically strong today.

So the real question is did the PPUS help Obama achieve good policy? I think the answer is decidedly No, and thus it was bad politics.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on November 16, 2010 (boomark / email).