What will the president do if he loses the Congress? I think the parallels with Wilson are interesting, but not compelling.
14 thoughts on “Woodrow Wilson Redux?”
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What will the president do if he loses the Congress? I think the parallels with Wilson are interesting, but not compelling.
Comments are closed.
My worry is that having taken the losses, the Dem majority will decide to simply go for the gold and pass everything (amnesty, cap and trade, you name it) with a Lame Duck Congress, knowing that the Republicans will be unable (even if they were willing to do so) over Obama’s veto.
er, unable to repeal it, over Obama’s veto. Note to self…doublecheck before posting.
The House can (and even might) engage in such ‘death ride’ tactics, but it would still need to pass the Senate, and thats where the party would end. There are 41 GOP votes for a filibuster, and a significant number of Dems who aren’t completely insane, and who haven’t been voted out of office. 2012 isn’t that far off, and 1/3 of the Senate will be up for reelection then as well…
I don’t doubt that true believers (or simply bitter-enders like Pelosi and company) wouldn’t mind going out in a blaze of glory, but there are a large number of others who aren’t quite willing to walk off the cliff just yet…
Scott, Pelosi’s seat could not be any safer. The question House Dems face is, “do I want to take the fall for Pelosi’s agenda?” With Obamacare, she’s proven herself the greatest arm-twister in a generation, but Dems facing hostility at home over that one might be more concerned about assuring their own political deaths.
I mean, Amnesty? Seriously? If you thought the summer-time town halls riots over Obamacare were bad, you have no idea how much more visceral it will get out there once Congress picks that issue up. Forget anything happening now that summer is almost here, and they’ll have to go back to their districts and kiss babies for 3 months.
Titus,
Pelosi doesn’t have to worry, but there aren’t enough ‘safe’ Democratic SENATE seats to overcome a GOP filibuster of the worst excesses of the Donks. Hence I dont’ worry too much about a Democratic death-ride following their losses this November. Nancy may want to go out in a blaze of glory (her seat is safe, but she won’t be Speaker come January), but she isn’t going to be able to get enough other Reps to go along with her on that trip.
Regarding Immigration, I would be surprised (fair warning, I have been GROSSLY wrong in my predictions here before) if it is even taken up, much less seriously pushed. Unless the administration is even more delusional than I think that they are, this is a sure-fire political loser for them, and for the Dems in general. Yes, it will give the GOP fits as well, but ultimately the problem for the Dems is much worse. The Dems have far, far more vulnerable seats (the consequence of winning just about every close election in 2006 and 2008), and thus have much bigger potential issues within their caucuses.
We shall see…
Scott, we’re in total agreement. I would just add that I don’t think that the Dems are smart enough to actually “solve” the immigration problem in a satisfactory way, certainly not this Congress. I’d probably say the same thing about the current GOP, but they’ve been put on the back-burner for a while, so I’ve less feeling for their capabilities.
McCain-Kennedy may be the closest thing we ever had to a legislative resolution before WWIII/CWII breaks out. :p
Won’t happen. (The original linked-to post, that is.) In Wilson’s day a big chunk of America was recent immigrants from Central Europe, and they had a strong interest in what was going on there, in many cases because they were fresh off the boat, or because they still had family there. Wilson could readily parlay his stature on the world stage to domestic political advantage because of this.
Not at all true for Obama and near Asia. Almost no Americans give a rat’s ass about Iran, so long as they aren’t too visibly threatening. Even if Obama “saved” the Middle East through some high-level bombing of Iran, it wouldn’t do much for him at home.
Wow, just like that! That is why Carl is the Great One — he probably didn’t even have to Google that one…
I don’t think Congress is any longer the fawning, drooling Obama rubber-stamp it was after “health” “care” “reform” passed. His New Space Enterprise seems to have turned his own party AND the Republicans against him in ways I would never have expected — from either side. Yet in the grand scheme of things, it is utterly trivial.
If he sticks to his decision on this one, Obama may find his space policy to be his Waterloo. Will he stick to it? His self-righteousness says would say yes, his “political savvy” would say no. However, this whole issue is SO minor, in his mind and in fact, that he may be completely unable to make it real enough in his mind to deal with before it’s too late.
Clinton recovered from losing Congress because he was bright enough, and an experienced enough officeholder before becoming president, to read the writing on the wall and adopt his “triangulation” strategy.
I would expect Obama to become more stridently partisan, not less. He doesn’t have the chops or the wit to do otherwise.
Lots of parallels, but I’m not quite convinced. One of the unmentioned (in the linked article) reasons for the US entry into WWI and our acceptance of the reparations was our financial interests. France and the UK’s governments were on the verge of bankrupcy due to war debts, much of this was owed to US banks. Had Wilson not reversed his anti-war stance, a default was likely which would have caused bank failures in the US. Similarly, without the reparations, default was again the likely outcome.
I’m with ak4mc.
Any “triangulation” will be completely in “tone only” while exactly the opposite actual policy will be enacted. The man thinks “I won” is a serious compromise, and couldn’t form an -engineering- panel for this oil-spill given the complete internal phone directories of the Fortune 5000, direct command of the Army Corp of Engineers and a ring of three wishes.
TItus, you big meanie, are you being sarcastic? In 1910 almost 13% of Americans were actually born in Europe. The total foreign-born population of about 15% in 1910 is about the highest fraction of foreign-born Americans in the past 150 years, according to the Census. So there. Demographics are important. (I’ve heard the argument that the Civil War is in part a result of the massive influx of immigrants in the 1850s, people who had no stake in or good understanding of the existing compromises, and who were willing to bet the American experiment on the iffy wager of being able to use force of arms to enforce the One Revealed Truth on those fuckpig Yankees/Slavocrats.)
Really, one might argue that Obama’s real “Wilsonian” opportunity is in immigration reform. Because this is a subject about which a big recent influx of foreign-born citizens cares strongly, and he could, perhaps, parlay some kind of “victory” there into domestic power. For example, if he could come up with some “comprehensive” reform that (1) delights the Hispanics and the white liberal Democratic middle class, (2) wins over the live-and-let-live but fiscally conservative Independents, and (3) splits and demoralizes the conservative Republican opposition — well, that would significantly enhance his domestic power, wouldn’t it?
It don’t think it’s accidental that both sides have been maneuvering for a while on immigration. They can both smell the opportunity — and the danger. I think it’s this that bears the closest resemblance to the role in US domestic politics of the European phase of the First World War. Not Iran, about which, as I say, hardly any J. Q. Public cares much.
I use no art, Carl.
Interesting input on the Civil War — if there’s anything we know about the cause of that war it’s this: there were many causes.