Noemie Emery: Neither Roosevelt nor Reagan
[Noemie Emery is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard.]
When he signed the health care reform bill earlier this year, Barack Obama gave progressives the prize they had aimed at for seven-plus decades, an event they compared to the passage of civil rights and of Social Security. At the same time, he destroyed the best chance the Democrats had for enduring center-left governance since the mid 20th-century, shattered the coalition that brought him to power, and dealt his party and faction a political setback from which they may not recover for years.
Only a year ago, to hear the press tell it, Obama was that rare bird, a transformational figure, the new FDR or the left’s Ronald Reagan. He was no mere presider—like the Bushes or Clinton—but a deliverer of major-league change. The alignments and mores of the past 30 years had been shattered; all that remained was to pick up the pieces and fashion them into a whole new mosaic that would run things for decades. Few doubted that this would be done....
What happened? Obama may have begun believing there was a coalition in place for the changes he wanted, but, for at least six different reasons, he and his friends were wrong. First, bad as it was, 2009 was no 1933, a perilous time when the country was not only strapped, but teetering on the raw edge of a social implosion. Second, Obama was no FDR, a political master who with one major exception—his court-packing plan after his 1936 landslide—had near-perfect pitch for what the country could take at each given moment, and seldom moved past these parameters. Third, when FDR became president, the crisis had already gone on for three years with no improvement; Obama’s crisis had gone on for just four months, and the first steps to check it had already been taken. Fourth, this crash had been caused largely by leverage and debate, which made people averse to more borrowing and spending. Fifth, when FDR came on the scene, the country arguably was undergoverned, with few regulations, and no safety nets. In 2009, this was hardly the case. Sixth and last, FDR and his voters hadn’t lived through a sorry decade like the 1970s, which had shown that while no regulation and no safety nets did not work well, too much of both didn’t work either. If trust in markets was no longer unbounded, neither was trust in the state. Those 60-plus years of experience made a very big difference. The era of big government being over was a whole lot more durable than Obama had thought.
Had Obama really been FDR, this would not have surprised him, as transformative leaders are always in touch with their times. They also understand the basic rules of politics, which involve uniting your side while dividing the enemy, and bringing part of the enemy into your camp. They know that survival depends on keeping your base and swing voters in harness together, or so little dissatisfied that neither feels tempted or driven to leave. They know keeping independents on their side is the highest priority, as the votes of this bloc are on loan, not a given; and that while members of your base may stay home and sulk if you make them unhappy, independents will get out and vote for the opposite party, and you will lose two votes, and not one.
If a transformative leader had tried for health care—and FDR did not go for Social Security until his third year in office—he would have built the bill out from the center, in a way that held on to the unhappy left, appealed to the center, and became a wedge issue that split Republicans. As it was, Obama presented a bill drawn up by the left that became a wedge issue inside his own party, pitted the progressives against the Blue Dogs and centrists, set the moderates up for electoral slaughter, and forced several out in despair and exhaustion. His party is much weaker now than when he launched his agenda. And Republicans and the conservative movement have a whole new lease on life....
Transformative leaders, it goes without saying, seldom do things in this way. FDR passed Social Security in 1935 by a 372-33 vote margin in the House and 77-6 in the Senate; Reagan passed his tax cuts in 1981 by votes of 323-107 in the House, and 89-11 in the Senate. They not only passed their most ambitious bills, they built firm coalitions around and beneath them: Roosevelt aligned southern Bourbons with crypto-Communists, the segregationists with the civil rights movement, and dust bowl farmers with the children of ethnic urban immigrants. Reagan aligned fiscal conservatives with social conservatives and both with defense hawks who had been thrown out by the Democrats, aligned the country club Republicans with the movement conservatives, and pried the Reagan Democrats away from the party of Roosevelt. Obama came in with a coalition in embryo, handed to him by events not of his making, and threw it away in record time....
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When he signed the health care reform bill earlier this year, Barack Obama gave progressives the prize they had aimed at for seven-plus decades, an event they compared to the passage of civil rights and of Social Security. At the same time, he destroyed the best chance the Democrats had for enduring center-left governance since the mid 20th-century, shattered the coalition that brought him to power, and dealt his party and faction a political setback from which they may not recover for years.
Only a year ago, to hear the press tell it, Obama was that rare bird, a transformational figure, the new FDR or the left’s Ronald Reagan. He was no mere presider—like the Bushes or Clinton—but a deliverer of major-league change. The alignments and mores of the past 30 years had been shattered; all that remained was to pick up the pieces and fashion them into a whole new mosaic that would run things for decades. Few doubted that this would be done....
What happened? Obama may have begun believing there was a coalition in place for the changes he wanted, but, for at least six different reasons, he and his friends were wrong. First, bad as it was, 2009 was no 1933, a perilous time when the country was not only strapped, but teetering on the raw edge of a social implosion. Second, Obama was no FDR, a political master who with one major exception—his court-packing plan after his 1936 landslide—had near-perfect pitch for what the country could take at each given moment, and seldom moved past these parameters. Third, when FDR became president, the crisis had already gone on for three years with no improvement; Obama’s crisis had gone on for just four months, and the first steps to check it had already been taken. Fourth, this crash had been caused largely by leverage and debate, which made people averse to more borrowing and spending. Fifth, when FDR came on the scene, the country arguably was undergoverned, with few regulations, and no safety nets. In 2009, this was hardly the case. Sixth and last, FDR and his voters hadn’t lived through a sorry decade like the 1970s, which had shown that while no regulation and no safety nets did not work well, too much of both didn’t work either. If trust in markets was no longer unbounded, neither was trust in the state. Those 60-plus years of experience made a very big difference. The era of big government being over was a whole lot more durable than Obama had thought.
Had Obama really been FDR, this would not have surprised him, as transformative leaders are always in touch with their times. They also understand the basic rules of politics, which involve uniting your side while dividing the enemy, and bringing part of the enemy into your camp. They know that survival depends on keeping your base and swing voters in harness together, or so little dissatisfied that neither feels tempted or driven to leave. They know keeping independents on their side is the highest priority, as the votes of this bloc are on loan, not a given; and that while members of your base may stay home and sulk if you make them unhappy, independents will get out and vote for the opposite party, and you will lose two votes, and not one.
If a transformative leader had tried for health care—and FDR did not go for Social Security until his third year in office—he would have built the bill out from the center, in a way that held on to the unhappy left, appealed to the center, and became a wedge issue that split Republicans. As it was, Obama presented a bill drawn up by the left that became a wedge issue inside his own party, pitted the progressives against the Blue Dogs and centrists, set the moderates up for electoral slaughter, and forced several out in despair and exhaustion. His party is much weaker now than when he launched his agenda. And Republicans and the conservative movement have a whole new lease on life....
Transformative leaders, it goes without saying, seldom do things in this way. FDR passed Social Security in 1935 by a 372-33 vote margin in the House and 77-6 in the Senate; Reagan passed his tax cuts in 1981 by votes of 323-107 in the House, and 89-11 in the Senate. They not only passed their most ambitious bills, they built firm coalitions around and beneath them: Roosevelt aligned southern Bourbons with crypto-Communists, the segregationists with the civil rights movement, and dust bowl farmers with the children of ethnic urban immigrants. Reagan aligned fiscal conservatives with social conservatives and both with defense hawks who had been thrown out by the Democrats, aligned the country club Republicans with the movement conservatives, and pried the Reagan Democrats away from the party of Roosevelt. Obama came in with a coalition in embryo, handed to him by events not of his making, and threw it away in record time....