President Barack Obama, fresh from having his lunch money taken away from him by Vladimir Putin, is trying unsuccessfully to find someone to bring to public attention.
He chose House Speaker John Boehner (R-Oh) as his persona, and the impending September 30 end of the U.S. government’s fiscal year as his verbal weapon.
I think it’s the wrong fight with the wrong guy.
The last time we headed towards a virtual shutdown of the federal government was in behind schedule 1995 and early 1996. The two main players – and this is crucial – were President Bill Clinton and Speaker Newt Gingrich.
Gingrich was the brilliant but divisive architect of the Republican Party’s takeover of the House of Representatives in the 1994 election. According to Gallup:
“In January 1996, 57% of Americans said their image of Gingrich was unfavorable, compared with 37% who had a favorable image of him.”
Only six percent had no opinion.
Clinton’s numbers weren’t much better: In January 1996, his job approval rating was barely above the 47-44 mark – but still a full 13 percentage points higher than Gingrich’s.
Ultimately, Congress did force the government to shut down operations – twice – and this was unpopular with citizens, even though the impact was actually negligible – mainly due to the length of 21 days and the time of year from December 16 to January 6 when much of the country and so it is effectively closed for the holidays. Obama’s attempt to replicate Clinton’s victory over Gingrich will fail on many fronts. First, Obama v. Boehner does not have the same scope as Clinton v. Gingrich.
Gingrich was the perfect foil for Clinton. Largely because of the thousands of ads Democrats ran against Gingrich, he was like the Golden Arches. Clinton only had to say “Gingrich”, and most people thought he knew everything they needed to know about him.
Boehner, for better or worse, is no Gingrich. The other leaders of the House and Senate do not behave similarly. According to the Rasmussen poll, the House and Senate leaders’ favorite and unfavorable numbers are as follows:
House:
Boehner 30 – 53 Pelosi 33-56
Senate:
McConnell 26-46 Reid 28-49
At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, Clinton had a very sturdy team, reminiscent of Woody Hayes’ Ohio State Buckeyes: three yards and a cloud of dust. Their mantra was (as I recall):
“Medicare, Medicaid, Education, and the Environment.”
You can ask Paul Begala if he’s had lunch yet and he’ll say, “Medicare, Medicaid, education and the environment.”
Gingrich was accused of wanting to cut Medicare and Medicaid. He wanted to limit the growth rate, which after about 17 years was the right thing to do.
The maypole around which everyone is dancing in this era is, of course, ObamaCare. When people say Boehner has no control over Republicans in the House, I ask them if Nancy Pelosi was better.
“Of course,” they say. “She passed ObamaCare.”
The vote on the Affordable Care Act was 219-212. No Republicans voted for this decision; 34 Democrats voted against.
She twisted her arms, intimidated her colleagues, promised them who knows what, and in March 2010 she smuggled out the bill.
If you define “controlling her caucus” as pushing them off a political cliff by losing 63 seats in the elections later this year, then Boehner should be bragging about his inability to control House Republicans.
Nancy Pelosi has handed the House back to the GOP, which will likely hold it until at least the 2020 elections.
Harry Reid wants no part of the bill to avoid a government shutdown, which includes defunding ObamaCare. He doesn’t want his defenseless Democratic senators to have to vote on it.
As AP’s Dave Espo wrote:
For their part, the White House and the Democratic majority in the Senate will seek to protect the health care law, Obama’s major domestic achievement, without complicating senators’ 2014 re-election chances in swing states.
ObamaCare, of course, wasn’t popular in 2010, and stories about universities and hospitals and retailers and manufacturers cutting hours and laying off workers to prevent skyrocketing health care costs haven’t made it any more popular today.
Obama cannot hope to repeat the checkered pattern of 1995-96. After the 1996 suspension, I said that a skilled White House aggressively delivering the message was an unstoppable political force in America.
The Obama White House is incompetent (as it has proven to the world over the last three weeks) and has no message to stick to.
And finally, there is no Newt Gingrich, who was Bill Clinton’s strongest weapon.
