Friday, April 8, 2011
Was President Obama's Role in Budget Negotiations Undercutting his Role in Presiding?
0 comments Posted by Find Insurance Online at 10:51 AM
However, even as the president was referring to the two sides sorting the budget out as “they,” he himself was on one of the sides. That is, even though he “sought to position himself above the nitty-gritty haggling going on in Congress, which . . . limited his influence on the process” yet distanced him from any blame, his taking a side in the dispute subtly worked against his attempt to preside to hold the process as a whole together. (3)
Michael Shear of The New York Times claims that Obama had "assumed the role of mediator in chief" in part to avoid a government shutdown. (4) Attempting to distance himself from both sides, the president told reporters after a negotiation session on April 7th, “What I’ve said to the speaker and what I’ve said to Harry Reid is, because the machinery of the shutdown is necessarily starting to move, I expect an answer in the morning.” (5) Shear maintains that Obama's language here "suggests that he sees himself more as a bridge between the warring political parties than an active participant in the high-stakes discussions." (6) Crucially, the president's motivation may have enabled him to unwittingly compromise his own credibility, and therefore his situs from which to preside.
Shear suggests that Obama was taking on the mediator-in-chief role not only as a means to avoid a shutdown, but also, and perhaps more saliently, "to try to show that a government shutdown, if it happens, would be the result of a disagreement between the two sets of lawmakers — not a failure of his own. But there is a long-term goal as well: to convey to a restless public, and especially to moderate voters, that Mr. Obama is above the petty Washington bickering that many Americans say turns them off. That will be especially important for Mr. Obama as his re-election campaign tries to woo back independents who had become disillusioned with him." (7) Jeff Zeleny reports that at times the president even referred "to Democrats in the third person, as though he is not the leader of the party. . . . 'Republicans and Democrats both start making a lot of speeches,' Mr. Obama said. 'Usually the Democrats blame the Republicans, the Republicans blame the Democrats.'" (8) "It remains an open question," Zeleny observes, "whether the distance he seeks to place between himself and Democrats on Capitol Hill — his own version of triangulation — will attract independent voters or antagonize members of his party." (9) Were the president's motivation more oriented all along to presiding so negotiations would have a buffer or safeguard of last resort, Obama would not have staked out a position in line with Harry Reid.
Aside from trying to distance himself from blame, a president alone can hold “the process” itself from falling off the ship of state by speaking to the encompassing interests of the country, thereby having credibility to both sides in holding them to the table. I contend that being a party to a dispute works against this presiding role that only a president can fulfill. In other words, a partisan president is an oxymoron even if the forced combination has become the bromidic default in practice. All too often, presidents have tried to have it both ways. In so doing, they have undercut their own presidencies and deprived the country of the function that only the president is in a position to accomplish. President Obama was not immune from the temptation.
Even though The New York Times reports that "Obama sought to present himself . . . as the man of reason and compromise, a disappointed father figure having to mediate a dispute between two squabbling siblings,"
The presider having become the one of the combatants, he could not exactly turn around and save the process. To accomplish that, he would have needed to have been in a position of credibility to both sides. When the partisans get to "what do we do now?" partisanship trumps the public good. Lest the partisans be left to stare at each other, twiddle their thumbs, and finally leave the room, this is precisely the point at which the presider is of such value--meaning that role alone. Wading into a pool only to step out should the water get too hot in order to rescue both sides simply doesn't work; the combatants whom the "presider" had confronted will be hesitant to take the outstreached hand even as the water begins to burn. Neutrality and the resultant credibility is absolutely essential to presiding at times when the partisans have reached a dead end and the greater good is threatened because of the paralysis. A partisan president trying to have it both ways doesn't cut it.
At one point during the days of negotiations on the stop-gap budget during the second week of April, the president took sides even as he was trying to come off as presiding in the interest of the union itself. While evincing political skill, the feat tacitly undercut his presiding credibility. Specifically, the president took a swipe at the Tea Party influence on the House Speaker keeping him from compromising. “The only question is whether politics or ideology are going to get in the way of preventing a government shutdown.” (12) Of course, this line could be interpreted as presidential, or presiding, because politics or ideology could apply to either party. However, given Reid’s charges two days later in the U.S. Senate chamber that the Tea Party’s ideology was keeping Speaker Boehner from compromising, the president had probably been maintaining a partisan script. That is, he had most likely been trying to have it both ways: seeming to preside while actually trying to further one of the sides.
As the "what do we do now?" question proffered after the president had said "nope, zero" to the speaker demonstrates, a great opportunity cost is entailed in a presider taking sides on every quotidian matter that crosses his or her desk. A president doesn't have to take this bait. Many players are available to dive into a dispute, but only the presider stands for the whole and is therefore in a position to hold the ship itself together when the partisans lose control of the process. Neither fusing partisanship and presiding nor playing mediator-in-chief simply to distance oneself from blame generates credibility sufficient to meet what is necessary for presiding in a crisis. Without a presider credible to both sides, the ship of state in such a case is bound to hit the rocks. Therefore, a truly great presidency resists the temptation to win the day; instead, a true president speaks to the nation as a nation so as to be able to keep it from the abyss when the partisans have tied each other in knots. Lest a president throw an arm or leg into the knot, who is left to untie the self-inflicted ropes? I’m afraid we all have forgotten what a presidential role was designed to do, and this has put the United States at great risk. Sadly, we don't even see it.
Click to listen to the author's podcast commentary on this essay.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Lessons from Jordon: Democracy's Achilles Heel
0 comments Posted by Find Insurance Online at 10:23 AMIn December, 2009, Abdullah II, King of the state of Jordon,dismissed the prime minister and replaced him with a palace aide and loyalist, dissolved Parliament and postponed legislative elections for a year. For all the defects of a representative democratic system, it is far superior to autocratic rule, especially by one. It is natural for people to resist preemption. “The nature of humans is they want democracy,” said Ali Dalain, an independent member of the Parliament that was dissolved. “One person cannot solve all problems and cannot make everyone happy, so people must share in determining their fate.” These quotes are revealing from the standpoint of human nature and political theory. In reading “one person cannot solve all problems,” I thought of the imperial US presidency—not only at the expense of the governments of the republics within the US, but also of the Congress. The health-care insurance reform legislation, for example, is said to be Obama’s, even though he is in the executive rather than the legislative branch (having only a veto, which can be overridden, in the latter). It would seem to me that the Speaker of the US House and the Majority Leader of the US Senate ought to have their own agendas—that the Congress should not simply be led by the president’s agenda. Foreign policy is perhaps the one area where the Congress ought to defer—but only in terms of agreeing to consider what the president has negotiated abroad. Had the UN climate talks in Copenhagen produced a treaty in December, 2009, the US President would have asked the US Senate to consider it. Were the Senate to routinely ignore the President’s negotiations, it would be very difficult for the US to negotiate internationally. In terms of foreign policy, however, one person does not hold a monopoly of wisdom or truth. So in general, we could take a lesson from Jordon, even as we pride ourselves on our having a representative democracy rather than a monarchy. I think perhaps we discount too readily the vestages of one-person rule in the US. A unified long term vision is nice, but stepping back to see and enunciate it is different than deciding what it shall be and imposing it.
In terms of the American presidency, there may even be a bit of hero or idol worship that has held on from ancient king-worship, as if eons of practice etched it in the human genome. It is evinced not just when a president is sworn in, but also when he gives the State of the Union address—should I capitalize this? Honor in the office, it is said, but the president is just a man. The media obsesses on his every move, including what he is doing on vacation. This obession gives us the illusion that we know the person. Who is that behind the curtain anyway? Do we really know, as we watch the screen?
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/23/world/middleeast/23amman.html?ref=world
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Presiding over a Sunken Judiciary: The Plight of the President of Russia
0 comments Posted by Find Insurance Online at 6:20 AMOn Decemer 31, 2010, a Russian judge sentenced Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the Russian tycoon who had been imprisoned in 2003 after defying Vladimir Putin, to an additional six years. According to The New York Times, "It was a politically tinged decision that undermined President Dmitri Medvodev." Leonid Goman of the Right Cause Party in Russia agrees. "It was obviously a political, not a judicial, decision." In general terms, "corruption is endemic, government power is often abused and senior politicians are rarely, if ever, held accountable for misdeeds." The sentence is an indication that Prime Minister Putin was still in control of Russia. His message: wealthy businessmen should not interfere in Russian politics. Khodorkovsky had financed opposition political parties; he was at one time the richest person in Russia, having been one of the oligarchs who bought government assets after the fall of the USSR at a fraction of their worth.
This case points to the importance of separating a judiciary from executive and legislative branches of government. The fragile nature of a judiciary's credibility is also in the mix, as it was undoubtedly diminished by the sentence. While doing the bidding of a powerful government offiical may well be in the short term interest of a judge, such a practice contributes to the downfall of a country's judiciary. The president of a country is charged with presiding over its system of government to protect it as a going concern. Matters such as the credibility of an entire branch of government ought thus to be on a president's radar screen. In the case of Russia, the problem was that the Prime Minister may have been running the show and tacitly undermining the president by expediently abusing the judiciary while keeping the president from acting to safeguard the long term viability of the government. Politics over leadership; short-term over long-term. All too often in many countries, presidents do not attend to the overall viability of their systems of government, preferring instead to engage in partisan politics. The Russian case illustrates the cost.
Source: Clifford Levy, "Russia Extends Prison Sentence of Tycoon 6 Years, The New York Times, December 31, 2010, p. A1.
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