The weak, helpess, impotent Presidency

[Jefferson23]

Monday, Jun 21, 2010 17:22 ET

By Glenn Greenwald


As I noted earlier today, there is a newly minted Obama apologist meme that has been created and is being disseminated by Obama-defending pundits far and wide: namely, liberals are blaming Obama for too much because the Presidency is actually quite a weak and powerless office, and he's powerless to do most of what liberals advocate. This claim was articulated by Jonathan Bernstein in response to my post documenting how Barack Obama -- by supporting Blanche Lincoln rather than remaining neutral or supporting her primary challenger -- likely swung the election in her favor. I argued that the central role Obama played in Lincoln's race illustrates that Presidents possess substantial means for influencing members of Congress. In describing my argument as "ignorant nonsense that betrays a deep lack of understanding of how the government of the United States works," Bernstein did not bother to address, let alone refute, that extremely formidable presidential leverage that Obama just used to help Lincoln win in Arkansas.


Instead, he broadly asserted that "the idea of an 'Impotent, Helpless President' . . . basic American politics," that "the presidency is a very weak office," and that Obama has no real leverage to influence Democratic members of Congress to support legislation he wants. Since then, a whole slew of Obama defenders have cited Bernstein's "Impotent Helpless Presidency" excuse to argue that progressives expect too much of Obama and that their criticisms of him are unfair, irrational and unwarranted. Today, Jonathan Chait complains that I have only derided and mocked but not responded in detail to this argument. That's basically true, as I find the argument self-refuting, but permit me to change that by responding in detail now.

Initially, this issue originally arose in the context of the health care debate, when progressive critics were complaining that the Obama White House was doing nothing to ensure passage of the public option. In response, Obama defenders insisted that the fault lay not with Obama, but with Democratic members of Congress over whom Obama had no leverage. All year long, they told their readers not to blame Obama for the lack of a public option because there was just nothing the helpless, powerless leader could do. Except now it is conclusively clear that Obama never wanted the public option from the start -- Russ Feingold said as much, and The New York Times revealed that Obama secretly negotiated away the public option in deals with industry representatives very early on in the process. Thus, critics who were complaining that Obama was publicly claiming to want to the public option while ensuring it would not be enacted were correct, while those who kept telling their readers that the fault lay with Democratic members of Congress -- not Obama -- were engaged in pure apologia.

More broadly, after 8 years of Bush/Cheney, the very idea that the Presidency is a weak and largely powerless office is laughable on its face. It's Barack Obama -- not the U.S. Congress -- that is detaining innocent people without trials, targeting U.S. citizens for due-process-free assassinations, secretly ordering covert wars via Special Forces, ordering a "surge" in the nine-year-old war in Afghanistan, and launching cruise missile strikes with cluster bombs in Yemen. The more honest commentators who are invoking this "weak presidency" defense on behalf of Obama -- such as Matt Ygleisas, Ezra Klein, and Scott Lemieux -- acknowledge its basic inapplicability to Terrorism and foreign policy, which accounts for a substantial part of the liberal critique of the Obama presidency. And, for that matter, many of the positive steps Obama has taken -- changes in drug policy, an improvement in tone with the Muslim world, release of the OLC torture memos -- were also actions taken unilaterally using the power of the Presidency.

remainder in full: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/06/21/obama/index.html

[DJ13]

1. The corporate friendly establishment spend millions every 4 years

..... to elect a President that will do what they want, then when that President begins losing the support of those who voted for him because he's favoring those same corporations the establishment then tries to excuse his lack of following through on doing what the voters thought they elected him for by claiming his office is too weak to do anything?

Its funny, they spend millions and what they want gets done, so the only time the office is weak is when its something to benefit the rest of us I guess.

[chimpymustgo]

2. It's kind of a game. Heads they win. Tails we lose.

[Hydra]

3. *Laughs*

We're all still in Wonderland...a place I was hoping we were leaving when Governor Bush vacated the WH.

[xocet]

4. K & R n/t

[burning rain]

5. Welcome to the party, Glenn, ya latecomer.

The poor-widdle-helpless-president argument is an old one at DU.

[depakid]

6. That prety well excoriates that knucklehed Bernstein

in addition- this point is undenialble:

Lieberman and Ben Nelson are up for re-election in 2012, and Lincoln is this year. Does anyone actually doubt that an Obama threat to support a primary challenge against any Democratic incumbent, to encourage Democratic fund-raisers to send their money elsewhere, or to refrain from playing any role in their re-election, would influence their votes on matters important to the White House? Again, that's not to say it would guarantee compliance, but the fact that the White House did exactly that on the war-funding vote, but not on the public option, reflected their priorities.

[Demeter]

7. Passive-aggressive Presidency

Versus the berserker Presidency of Bush/Cheney. Neither one is a credit to the office.

[Hawkowl]

8. Well phrased

I think "passive aggressive" is the perfect summation of this presidency. People averse to conflict are often passive aggressive and Obama demonstrates these characteristics in spades.

[Mimosa]

9. Might this commentary get Glenn in trouble at D.U. under the rules? *wink*

I think Glenn broke the new rules.

[NJmaverick]

10. It's a shame the Salon doesn't require honesty from the people that write for them

[Jefferson23]

12. List the inaccuracies. n/t

[NJmaverick]

13. It starts with this statement

"newly minted Obama apologist meme that has been created and is being disseminated by Obama-defending pundits far and wide"


then it goes down hill from that blatantly dishonest statement.

[Jefferson23]

14. And it was supported here:

"This claim was articulated by Jonathan Bernstein in response to my post documenting how Barack Obama -- by supporting Blanche Lincoln rather than remaining neutral or supporting her primary challenger."


At the link you can read each embedded supported link. He is giving his opinion of Bernstein.

If you like, you can list all the other dishonest statements that you believe are so blatant to support your claim.

[NJmaverick]

16. That in no way supported the dishonest statement

Since you are still stuck on the first one, there is little reason to post anymore.

[Jefferson23]

17. What are you talking about, what is dishonest??

He, Bernstein, did not state what Greenwald said? The link is there to Bernstein's article.


And if you are having a hard time coming up with what else is blatantly dishonest, at least say as much.

[NJmaverick]

18. I suggest you read the truth

here:

http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/75732/beltway-apparatchik-very-serious-person-wankery

[Jefferson23]

19. The truth? So you're saying that Chait was misquoted from his

own article earlier? There was a reply to Chait from Greenwald: "After I fulfilled Jonathan Chait's plea for a substantive response to his and Jonathan Bernstein's argument that the President is weak and impotent when it comes to influencing Congress and thus not to be blamed for what they do or don't do, he "replies" today by ignoring most of the arguments I made and distorting the rest." ( see post#15 for link)

From Greenwald: Thursday, Jul 31, 2008 06:02 ET


Begin with Chait's piece a few weeks ago declaring that a McCain presidency would mark the end of divisive Rovian politics (written literally days before McCain hired a team of Rove's protegees to run his campaign). The article's headlined: "Old Flame: Why I still Kinda Like John McCain."

Chait writes: "McCain's charming, ironic, and self-deprecating." In that piece, he himself acknowledges: "Eight years ago, I was a hard-core liberal McCainiac" and "I still feel some pangs of affinity for the old codger." How irresponsible of me to describe him as a long-time McCain worshiper in light of Chait's own confessions.

Then review his unbelievably sychophantic April 29, 2002 TNR piece ("What's in a Name?; Why John McCain is the Democrats' best hope") where he pratically begs McCain to run for President as a Democrat ("McCain has guts" - "McCain's domestic agenda increasingly consists of bold reforms" - "McCain could redefine the Democratic Party once again as the champion of Wilsonian interventionism" - "Only a handful of politicians per generation capture the public's imagination and channel it toward moral and rational ends. McCain has the opportunity to do this. He can leave his imprint on history"). http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2008/07/31/mccain/index.html


Chait has no truth in his OP, none.

[Dr.Phool]

11. Maybe he needs some Presidential Viagra.

Cures legislative dysfunction.

[Jefferson23]

15. Follow-up on the weak, impotent, helpless presidency

Tuesday, Jun 22, 2010 13:23 ET

(updated below)

After I fulfilled Jonathan Chait's plea for a substantive response to his and Jonathan Bernstein's argument that the President is weak and impotent when it comes to influencing Congress and thus not to be blamed for what they do or don't do, he "replies" today by ignoring most of the arguments I made and distorting the rest. Others have responded to my argument a bit more substantively, but I'm content to let stand the extensive arguments I made yesterday which, in my view, disprove this excuse-making and detail the extensive leverage Obama has over Congress (and which he's used when it was important to him). But since this "weak Presidency" excuse has become so prevalent, I just want to make three brief, additional points about all of this:

First, just read this -- and focus on the last sentence -- from a New York article last month by John Heilemann about the role the Obama administration played in killing numerous progressive provisions in the financial reform bill:


Geithner's team spent much of its time during the debate over the Senate bill helping Senate Banking Committee chair Chris Dodd kill off or modify amendments being offered by more-progressive Democrats. A good example was Bernie Sanders's measure to audit the Fed, which the administration played a key role in getting the senator from Vermont to tone down. Another was the Brown-Kaufman Amendment, which became a cause célèbre among lefty reformers such as former IMF economist Simon Johnson. "If enacted, Brown-Kaufman would have broken up the six biggest banks in America,'' says the senior Treasury official. 'If we'd been for it, it probably would have happened. But we weren't, so it didn't'."


Please read that last quote again. How bizarre that a "senior Treasury official" believes that Brown-Kaufman died because the administration wanted it to, but would have been enacted if the White House wanted that outcome. According to Jonathan Bernstein and Jonathan Chait, anyone who believes that the administration can exert substantial leverage over the domestic policy which Congress enacts is spouting "ignorant nonsense that betrays a deep lack of understanding of how the government of the United States works." How delusional of this senior Treasury official to think that the administration had the power to make the financial reform legislation more progressive than it is if it wanted that. It's almost as though he thinks that the White House exerts influence over members of the President's party with regard to what legislation is and is not enacted. That Treasury official probably just needs to sit in on one of Bernstein's Political Science classes to learn about how the Government really functions: all that super-sophisticated Bernstein analysis about how weak the President is because it's the Congress that introduces legislation and the President has no vote and thus no leverage.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/06/22/impotence/index.html

[maritimus49]

20. Impotent, helpless presidency?

So Obama is in a weak, helpless office? Tell that to FDR and LBJ. I think the weakness is in Obama not the office. I also think that Obama is a very ambitious man who wanted to be president although he had scant accomplishments to justify it. He ran a great campaign (with lots of Goldman Sachs money) and when he took office didn't know what to do with it, certainly not live up to all those hopeful campaign speeches. Joe Bageant calls Americans "Hope Fiends" and I guess the Current Occupant is evidence of that.

[CLANG]

21. I think someone forgot to tell President Obama!

[yurbud]

22. the president is impotent to help the poor and middle class and omnipotent to help the wealthy

checks and balances are for the little people.

When the rich want something, all three branches of government trip over each other to see who can give it to them the fastest.