Could Obama Be Another Clinton?

From Paul Krug­man:

Despite all this, the midterms prob­a­bly won’t give Repub­li­cans the major­ity in the House. But the losses will be big enough to deny Obama a work­ing major­ity for any major ini­tia­tives in the rest of his first term. (My guess is that he’ll be reelected thanks to the true awful­ness of the Repub­li­can nom­i­nee). Since Repub­li­cans are dead set against any of the things I think could help pull the econ­omy out of its rut, this means more eco­nomic stagnation.

I cer­tainly don’t think 2010 will be the rout that 1994 was; Democ­rats will pass some form of health care at any cost, and that accom­plish­ment ought to suf­fice for many rep­re­sen­ta­tives. On top of that, there’s a stim­u­lus (and pos­si­bly another on the way) to tout back in the dis­trict, and if all goes well we may even see a climate/​energy bill before next sum­mer. Pile on the fact that there are just two McCain-​​o-​​Crats up in 2010, and we have a fairly safe year for Democrats.

My fear is not 2010; it’s 2012. Democ­rats will almost surely face losses in 2010, but bar­ring elec­toral apoc­a­lypse, they’ll hold on to both Houses. The prob­lem is that such a dual major­ity means vir­tu­ally noth­ing if Democ­rats get trapped at the 57–59 range in the Sen­ate. That’s an enor­mous man­date for action with­out the accom­pa­ny­ing abil­ity to actu­ally pass any­thing sub­stan­tive. At that point, the next two years are Clinton’s 1992–1994: 258 Democ­rats in the House is a strong major­ity, but  hav­ing only 56 Democ­rats in the Sen­ate breeds leg­isla­tive failure.

At that point, Democ­rats might just get kicked out of Con­gress. Like Krug­man, I doubt that Repub­li­cans can field a win­ning can­di­date against Obama as long as the gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to func­tion through Elec­tion Day. I might just like to see what Repub­li­cans do with Con­gress at that point. Could they pass any­thing? No — at best they’d have 51 or 52 Sen­a­tors and 230-​​odd Con­gress­men. That’s barely enough to pass a bill, much less vote for clo­ture or over­ride a veto. Such real weak­ness, cou­pled with the P.R. mir­a­cle that is an oppo­si­tion party in con­trol of the leg­is­la­ture, and Obama could have the field day that Clin­ton (in ret­ro­spect) had through­out his sec­ond term, pro­vided he (Obama) is an astute enough politician.

A weak Con­gress trans­lates to a pow­er­ful exec­u­tive, and since the rise of the fil­i­buster over the last two decades we have had exactly that. A uni­fied 60-​​vote major­ity makes Con­gress much stronger, and that’s the sit­u­a­tion we’re wit­ness­ing right now. Per­haps it’s been so long since Con­gress has called the shots that they don’t know what to do with the power any­more. A return to a weak oppo­si­tion Con­gress, then, might truly empower Pres­i­dent Obama in the way it did Clinton.

1 December 2009 – 1:02 am | By Benjamin Daniels | Posted in 2010, 2012, Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (727)