A Democratic president trying to become more centrist after a calamitous midterm elections. The biggest incoming Republican class in decades promising to return America to its small-government principles, led by a young and charismatic Speaker of the House. Hyperpartisan gridlock threatening to shut down government operations. Rush Limbaugh trashing everyone more liberal than the KKK. 2011 feels so much like déjà vu mid-90s, Michelle Obama should start vetting her husband’s female interns.
Let’s start with the President. After what he described as a “shellacking” in the polls last November, he has decided to take on a more conciliatory approach to governing. He compromised with Republicans to pass a tax cut and unemployment benefit extension bill. He scarcely talks about his transformative, liberal ideas such as health care and financial regulation anymore. And his new chief of staff, William Daley, was a centrist Democrat Secretary of Commerce under Clinton. And to top it off, he’s a banker- 7 years as a senior executive at J.P. Morgan. These decisions reflect a Clintonesque desire to govern from the center and position himself as a beacon of bipartisanship.
He’ll find centrism quite lonely as a new wave of Republicans goes up against the surviving Democrats. While it’s in Congress’ best interest to hammer out compromises to stimulate the economy, deal-making isn’t exactly the juiciest campaign accomplishment these days. Just as in 1994, politicians found that using heated rhetoric to play to their base is the best way of staying elected. Therefore, the chasm between right and left increases to historic levels, and political theatrics rather than substantive debate becomes the norm. Case in point: new Speaker of the House John Boehner thought that the first thing Congress should do is to recite word for word the Constitution- minus, of course, touchy subjects such as the 3/5ths rule counting slaves. Let’s not let ugly reality get in the way of our holy worship of our view of the Constitution. The jobs bills can wait in the meantime.
Unfortunately, we can recite the Constitution every day, and that’s not going to automatically create jobs and make money fall out of the sky. For instance, just look at how the 1994 “Contract with America” stuff worked out- Republicans’ partisan warfare back then cost them the 1996 presidential election.
But don’t we want to see a repeat of 1994? After all, that era produced a spectacular, booming economy where tax cuts flowed aplenty and the budget was actually in surplus for a few years. However, be careful in assuming that conditions of the past can be automatically applied to the future. There are several indications that a divided government won’t necessarily work this time around.
For one, the federal budget wasn’t reaching crisis levels back then. This time around, there’s less money to throw around in order to grease the wheels on compromise, and the general sentiment against earmarks will magnify that trend. In addition, there is a significant movement within the Republican ranks- the Tea Party- that doesn’t like to compromise, bucks party convention, and pursues ideology rather than rationality as a source of wisdom. Finally, the public mood is much sourer than it was in 1994. Add these together and you’ll find that 2011 is a much tougher political climate than in the mid-90s that will make bipartisanship near impossible.
This is where Obama needs to come in with a stronger focus on reviving the economy. With Congress seemingly pursuing a vision of gridlocked dystopia, Obama, much more than Clinton, needs a clear, focused vision on how he can get America out of the recession in order to spur the legislature into action. He needs to inspire like it’s 2008, but instead of vague, meaningless buzzwords like “hope” and “change”, he should focus on one word: “jobs.”
