Barack Obama, just a couple of weeks into his presidency, has already squeezed one person too many into his big tent, Judd Gregg, his new Commerce Secretary, a right-wing Republican who once wanted to dismantle the department he is about to run. Now if Obama's intention was in fact to get rid of the Commerce Department because it serves no purpose, the appointment would perhaps have made sense, but it appears that is not the plan, and so Gregg is just a redundant clown in Obama's circus.
There are two other Republicans in the Cabinet, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, a remnant of the Bush administration, and Ray LaHood, the Transportation Secretary. Time will tell whether keeping Gates was a good idea, but LaHood, a man from a party whose strategy for improving transportation involves more cars, more roads and more gas? Surely, the Democratic Party is not lacking in far more visionary people on this issue than the moderately interesting LaHood.
Perhaps the current national crisis is at the root of Obama's persistence in reaching out to Republicans, a sort of multi-party War Cabinet focused on the economy. But that misses the point: the country is not under attack from outside forces, at least as far as the economy goes; it is under attack from within, and more specifically from the Republicans themselves, who are intent on sabotaging any effort at stanching the bleeding. There is room to disagree on the nature of and even the need for a stimulus package, or a banking bailout, but the alternatives need to be both realistic and not destined to repeat the country's most recent failures. On that count, Republicans have made themselves irrelevant, and there should simply be no room at the table for them.
As it is, even without adding redundant Republicans to the Cabinet and otherwise reaching out to the GOP, Obama and the Democratic Party have a struggle ahead of them. They are remarkably unified at this point, but that's what happens when your leader has a 70% approval rating: it's kind of hard to dissent too strongly. At most you throw a tiff here and a tiff there, Dianne Feinstein-style, but really you try your best to toe the line. Sooner or later, though, Obama will be less popular and, at that point, he will be dealing with a party that is very large and very diverse, and whose many voices will want to be heard, especially at election time.
The Democrats' size and range are both the cause and the result of their recent electoral successes. Their candidates are by and large well suited to their constituencies and far more pragmatic than their Republican counterparts, a narrow band of increasingly hard-line conservative extremists. The new Democratic Senator from New York, Kirsten Gillibrand, is a perfect example of this. She was sent to Congress by a conservative upstate district, favoring a range of positions that are anathema to progressives, perhaps most injuriously her preposterous support for the English Only movement. Now a Senator running for statewide election next year, she has already switched radically on the issue of same-sex marriage (which she now favors) and she will also "evolve" on guns and immigration, or go down to defeat in New York's Democratic primary. Gillibrand's neck-twisting conversions are distasteful and not particularly convincing, but they are indicative of a Democratic Party intent on surviving and on thriving in power. They also demonstrate the wide ideological gaps in a party that has seen gains across nearly all demographics and geographies.
In fact, many of the party's new members of Congress are precisely from districts and states that were not particularly friendly territory until recently, in rural and exurban districts, and in the interior West and the South. That they find common ground with their urban and suburban elders on the Coasts is remarkable, and is fraught with risk in the long run. For that reason, it would seem like a much better idea to focus on those potential stray centrist Blue Dog Democrats than on wildly untrustworthy Republicans whose every instinct is understandably to regain power at the expense of the current President. Perhaps more to the point, shouldn't Obama be focusing on what he was elected, actually mandated, to do, which is to change things, and to do so in a progressive manner? It is hard to imagine that the independents, crossover Republicans and moderate Democrats who voted for Obama would be stunned if the man named the most liberal Senator set out to implement policies that are, well, liberal.
Of course, all of the bipartisan posturing by Obama may well simply be a way for him to be able to say that he tried and the Republicans did not cooperate, but it all seems like a dreadful waste of time and energy. The Republican Party needs to find its way back to some kind of even vaguely mainstream place, at which point it may be a more useful partner for Obama, but now is not the time (nor will it be soon judging by the rhetoric from the party's new leader.) The moment will also come when the Democratic cats of many stripes will need to be herded, and we know Obama will be up to the task. But for now, if the President believes the United States is in a crisis that threatens its very foundation, as he has intimated, then surely he should not worry about losing the Ben Nelsons and Susan Collins of the world. Time will tell if Obama is right about his plan to save the US economy, but hopefully he would rather be blamed for having acted decisively in a crisis and been wrong than for wasting time seducing one more reluctant politician into a tent that is already feeling way too cramped.
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Judd Gregg's Replacement Has Democrats Worried
Democrats in Washington are concerned that should Sen. Judd Gregg be chosen as Commerce Secretary, New Hampshire's Democratic governor, John Lynch, will pass on the...
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Gregg Issues Conditions For Joining Obama Cabinet
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama plans to nominate Sen. Judd Gregg as commerce secretary on Tuesday, the White House confirmed on the eve of the...
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Gregg Voted To Kill Commerce Before Agreeing To Lead It
President Obama's new candidate to run the Commerce Department voted in favor of abolishing the agency as a member of the Budget Committee and...
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Judd Gregg: Obama Takes Page From The Godfather
The appointment of Judd Gregg as the Secretary of Commerce has prompted a fair amount of head-scratching among Democrats. The New Hampshire Republican is viewed...
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Democrats, Minority Groups Relieved That Gregg Won't Oversee Census
News that Commerce Secretary nominee Judd Gregg will relinquish his responsibilities to oversee the Census Bureau is being greeted with a sigh of relief by...
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The Latest Pay to Play Scandal in the Senate
Judd Gregg apparently demanded a Republican Senate appointment in return for a Cabinet post. That's just as bad as Blagojevich.
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Senator Gregg's Nomination Requires Close Scrutiny
Gregg's record of previously voting to abolish the Commerce Department and his attempts to block President Clinton's efforts to secure adequate funding for the 2000 census raise troubling concerns.
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Each point makes sense. I do really hope that our country can come closer together.
If we can get some votes here and there from the other side of the isle. perhaps we can form a more perfect union.
I do not really expect much as I believe this was a way for the republican party to violently obstruct the recovery of our country and get off when we pass our new laws.
But perhaps we can have some tricle across activity from our republican brothers and sisters.
One can hope.
Am I the only one wishing for Ralph Nader and Ron Paul to also be represented, or have all the populists been sidelined?
He very much needs to seek out people such as Nader, Paul, Kucinich, Paul Krugman for some imput.
The bunch of Washington centrists currently holding sway is very disheartening.
Republican politicians are on the ropes because they haven't truly represented anyone's interests but their own.
We have a two-party system. It was pretty clear cut where the parties stood on the issues before G.W. Bush:
Republicans wanted to reduce the size of government and reduce taxes. Democrats wanted to expand government to strengthen the social "safety-net", and if necessary, increase taxes to cover a larger budget.
Republicans used to stand for fiscal responsibility, a stronger military, and a dominant foreign policy. Democrats have traditionally been willing to trade off a balanced budget to achieve a better social order. Democrats generally (in recent decades) have wanted a smaller footprint in our relations with the world, and have valued talking over fighting to a greater extent than Republicans.
Generally, Republicans were pro-life, and Democrats were pro-choice.
Bush's fiscal irresponsibility, bloated budgets, and disregard for the Constitution, and Congressional Republican cooperation with his agenda have decimated the GOP's image as the grownups in Washington.
Why would you be a Republican in a Democratic White House? If you fit in to a Liberal administration you should really be a Democrat anyway.
How incredibly smart and coherent are your thoughts.
I am truly impressed.
What the heck are you doing here lol! :)
I, too, am puzzled by Mr. Obama's reaching out to the right wing. As Rachel Maddow on MSNBC says, maybe it's time for our president to realize that "they're just not that into you" and move on, because all of this wooing is so one-sided.
BTW, he's not a liberal. He's a centrist who admires Reagan, for Pete's sake. Personally, I prefer Dennis Kucinich, but Obama is what we've got, and since the left did help him get elected, why is he taking us for granted and being spineless like a typical Democrat?
(1) This is the beginning of his administration and he may well need Republican votes for future legislation. (Think Bush allowing Teddy Kennedy to draft the "No Child Left Behind" bill at the beginning of his administration. Or Johnson needing the Republicans to pass the "Civil Rights Act".)
(2) With such a massive and risky bill, the Democrats need political cover. In case things go horribly wrong, they hope not to be the only ones left holding the bag.
As far as Obama's admiration of Reagan is concerned, he was pretty clear that it was limited to Reagan's ability to connect with the American people, and his (necessary) willingness to work with Tip O'Neil, and cut bipartisan deals (it was necessary because the Democrats controlled the House)
Obama does not admire Reagan's policies. Remember that it was Regan who said that; "Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem.". Obama just won the election by (amongst other things) repudiating that very statement.
I could describe why I classify Obama as a Liberal, but it seems self-evident. Liberal isn't a dirty word, he won the Presidency running as a Liberal. Is he as liberal as Dennis Kucinich? No. But he's decidedly more liberal than Hillary, and that's why he beat her in the Primaries.
Mr. Jenkins, I can't let that statement go unchallenged.
You're saying:
"There should simply be no room..."
1) "...at the table in Congress for Republican Members of Congress" or
2) "...at Obama's backroom dealing table for Republican Members of Congress" or
3) Both.
If it's #1, as it seems to be, you are expressing a PROFOUNDLY UNDEMOCRATIC view hostile to genuine, public debate - a view in lockstep with Nancy Pelosi and her undemocratic and unConstitutional view of Party power ("[The Democratic Party] won, we wrote the bill" and "I decree part of the Constitution off the table").
Further, if you meant #1, WHERE exactly is the forum that provides "room to disagree on the nature of and even the need for a stimulus package"?? THAT'S WHAT OUR CONGRESS IS FOR. And yet you seem to believe that the Democratic majority in our federal legislature should SILENCE the Republican minority - which represents millions of American citizens (and "won" too) - by ensuring that the Republicans "simply [have] no room at the table."
A Democratic Congressional majority, if it means anything (an increasingly open question), means having the ability to vote DOWN "unrealistic" politically-motivated ideas offered by a scorned minority. In what kind of self-governing representative democracy are those scorned voices a serious threat, or something to be undemocratically suppressed and silenced??
To get a sense of what the Republican Party is in this context, you would have to go to some of the far right European Parties for a comparison.
The final scary point - how many of these Republicans insisting that only Tax Cuts will work also happen to think the Earth is less that 10,000 years old. Anyone with that world view should not be entrusted with any position of responsibility.
Their agenda is clear to us, of course, but apparently he's more idealistic than that.
I hope this has been a useful education, but I don't think he'll EVER stop trying. Unlike many of us who are far more cynical about these people---our President actually BELIEVES in bipartisanship as a tool of solving problems.
He. Believes. In. It. Even if 99% of the Republicans (and their supporters in the press), DON'T.
He may be too nice some say and that may be true, but he is also a man who after trying his damndest will step in and say enough. He wants to at least say that he tried. This works to his advantage in the long run. And the long run is not something that is in America's DNA. We want it now like cryin babies in a nursery.
What you are describing is also my notion of fatherhood and God. (Okay, ridicule me everyone.)
The time and energy that is being invested in debating the bill is called the democratic process, and it should be no less than what it is. The problem is that the Republicans have chosen to abuse this process ... but that's THEIR problem. I'd rather see this time and energy than to have the bill crammed down the throats of the American people like it would have been done under the Bush administration. President Obama will have the bill he wants in the end, and he will have gotten in the right way ... the democratic way.
I had hoped that triat might work well in his governing abilities. I was WRONG! . . . it has turned out that he is so HORRIBLY CONCILIATING - (or lacking wisdom and cojones) - that he has just recycled Clinton and Bush people for all the jobs. . . . His campaign statement about giving us change - - - WAS A BOLD FACED LIE.
Gregg is the last straw. The admiration and respect I had for the guy is gone.
I live in Mass., but have relatives in New Hampshire, and they tell me Gregg has been a damn good public servant. But you've already prejudged him, sounds like. I thought we left that kind of narrow thinking and refusal to consider other viewpoints behind with the Bush administration. Guess I was wrong.