Going Big: It’s A Presidential Thing
But Hope for Some Compromise Soon (The Way Things Happen in Politics and in Life)
Going Big: It’s A Presidential Thing
But Expect Some Compromise Soon (The Way Things Happen in Politics and in Life)
Remember sometime back in early in the 2020 presidential race when now President Joe Biden said he expected to be a “transitional” President who just would get us back to experiencing a “normal” presidency? But then he became President and suddenly he said he said he was “going big,” embracing calls for the most sweeping expansion of federal programs since FDR. Many talking heads accused him of looking into the mirror and seeing FDR, implying pejoratively that the power had gone to his head, that this is not what he originally promised when he ran, and so forth.
This narrative is not quite right. Biden began embracing a “go big” domestic agenda well before the general election, so his presidential proposals could hardly have been a surprise. More fundamentally, however, the knock on him for “going big” since he became President is more than naïve.
Imagine for a moment any of you, dear readers, have decided to run for President. Humor me and yourselves, assume you are sane. And that you have some qualifications – success in the private sector or in politics – that would make you a serious candidate.
The first, middle and last thing you would need to make that come presidential ambition a reality is money, money, money. And ideally an army of volunteers. And some great ad people and some political advisers you could trust.
Then you spend more than a year, well before the Iowa caucus or New Hampshire primary, camping out in small towns in both states, knocking on doors, going to county fairs, speaking to local Rotaries and Lyons, and talking to just about anyone who will listen to you – in all kinds of weather. And then after all that, if you have some luck, you make it out of both Iowa and New Hampshire with some momentum that carries you all the way to the Convention. As a total fallback, you have what Joe Biden did, large support within a major voting block – African-American voters in the South – and a big-time endorser (Rep. James Clyburn) who can rescue you even if you had a poor showing in the first two states.
After the convention at which you’re nominated, you then have to endure a four-month sprint to early November, concentrating on all the swing states, campaigning until you and your family are totally exhausted. Having to weather all kinds of political and personal attacks on your past, your character, your life along the way.
We all know the drill. Running for President takes the kind of super-human perseverance – and ambition – that very (and I mean very) few people have.
So, with all that, if by some chance, you become President, and if you know anything about American history over the past several decades (if not longer), you walk into the Oval Office knowing that your first year is critical. If you want anything major done, it better happen that first year, because after the glow of victory wears off, your political capital, more than likely, dwindles like sand in an hourglass. Oftentimes, Presidents don’t have a choice. They walk into office in the middle of a crisis they inherited, and they must do something to deal with it: Ronald Reagan with his big tax cut in 1981, Bush 41 with the savings and loan crisis, Barack Obama with the financial crisis in 2008, and of course, FDR with his New Deal experiment. Even when there wasn’t a crisis, other Presidents have “gone big” in their first years, too: Bush 43 with the 2001 tax cut and Donald Trump with the 2017 tax cut. All of these were “big” – whatever you might think of their merits.
(Jimmy Carter walked into the presidency with a laundry list of “big things” he wanted to do – many of which he accomplished, such as ground-breaking energy legislation, the deregulation of prices and entry into the transportation industry, bringing some semblance of peace to the Middle East, and convincing Congress and the country to grant sovereign rights over the Panama Canal to Panama, which Jonathan Alter in his recent Carter biography, His Very Best:Jimmy Carter: A Life, describes as Carter’ greatest uphill “big thing” challenge. Carter’s problem, in addition of course to the Iranian hostage crisis, a bad hand he and the country were dealt, was that he tried to do too many big things).
President Biden, of course, has all that knowledge under his belt. Having reached the pinnacle of American politics, after the hell he and his family had to put up with, with the hopes of his supporters and at least a little more than half the country hoping his administration would be successful, imagine if one of his advisers in one of the memos that all presidents get with three options in it, one of those options recommended that he play “Small ball” during his term because that was probably the most he was ever going to get out of Congress, with bare Democratic control. I’m not saying that he did get presented with such an option, but suppose he did, knowing all this too:
--That the country’s infrastructure is falling apart and no one else has been able to do anything about it.
--That climate change is causing more severe weather events and that the longer the country postpones doing something to address the problem, and to help make the country more resilient in the face of these aggravated disasters, things will only get worse (as they have this summer)
--That a long-term increase in income and wealth inequality has killed off the American dream for far too many – which, as George Packer shows in his latest compelling book, Last Best Hope, lies at heart of our deep social, political and racial divisions.
Add all this a thought Biden almost surely has in the back (maybe front) of his head, which he can’t verbalize without immediately making himself a lame duck president with no power, that he may not be able or willing to run for reelection in 2024, given his age then at 82. So, he’s got one shot, one term of office to make a difference, and probably only this year.
What would you expect him, or anyone else in his shoes that has gone through the sequence of events laid out earlier just to get to the Presidency, to do then? Actually play small ball? You’ve got to be kidding. You say, let’s swing for the fences, this is my shot, this is my one chance I will never get again.
His main problem, of course, is and has been from the day in January that Jon Ossoff and Ralph Warnock won their Senate seats in Georgia (the day before the January 6th insurrection), that with a 50-50 split in the Senate, one Senator, Joe Manchin (who probably is providing political cover for one or a couple more of his Democratic colleagues), is the make-or-break vote on virtually anything of consequence that Biden proposes. Manchin has been getting a lot of shade from progressive Democrats for taking centrist positions and attempting to seek bipartisan consensus in a Senate, and a country that is hugely divided. I get that, but sometimes (more accurately too often), Manchin’s critics overlook or forget that he comes from a state that voted overwhelmingly -- by a 40-point margin – for Donald Trump over Joe Biden.
But now it is a crunch time, when Biden’s Build Back Better plan, voting rights legislation, and a slew of other issues must be decided in the next several weeks. Much depends, as readers here surely know, not only on what Manchin thinks about each of these issues, but about whether he will stick to his long-time stance against abolishing the filibuster (a stance that Biden had before he became president, but according to public reports seems willing to modify).
The only way out of all this is through compromise, the multi-lettered word that might as well be a four-letter word in today’s political environment, when compromise is looked on as weakness by all sides – even though everyone of us knows that in life, at work, and in our personal relationships, without compromise nothing would get done, nor would society work.
In that spirt, I offered for Brookings on Friday the following compromise for Manchin, Democrats, and the nation: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2021/09/17/manchin-and-the-democrats-last-chance/.
I hope someone is listening. Much hangs in balance.