Heath Haussamen
The president promised in 2008 to lead Washington into becoming a functional government. It’s time for him to keep that promise.
President Barack Obama’s top advisers have concluded that their party’s losses on Election Day were caused “in large part by their own failure to live up to expectations set during the 2008 campaign,” the Washington Post reported recently.
That’s an understatement. Obama didn’t just set the bar high for himself high during the campaign – he nearly set himself up as the messiah.
In his 2008 victory speech, Obama said his election was “the answer that led those who’ve been told for so long by so many to be cynical and fearful and doubtful about what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.”
“It’s been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America,” Obama said.
Two years later, the change he promised hasn’t come.
Sure, Obama has signed some high-profile legislation into law, including the controversial health-care reform, a massive bailout, and Wall Street reform. But that’s not the change he promised in 2008.
The promise was that, rather than being red and blue states, Obama would lead us to being simply the United States of America.
In my mind, that never meant that a moderately liberal man wouldn’t fight for what he believed in if he was elected. But it meant that he understood that our Founding Fathers intended to create a deliberative process in which our leaders fought for what they believed should happen, and – this is the critical part – worked to overcome differences and find compromise.
Obama promised to change the process in Washington, to make it more transparent and less beholden to special interests and cut through the partisan divisions and politics as usual. It hasn’t happened.
Many share blame for dysfunction
I didn’t expect Obama to solve fundamental, structural problems in Washington in two years. But, based on his promise, I expected progress. Today, we don’t have structural reform. Obama has taken some steps forward on transparency, but only minor steps, and he has not kept his promise to reduce lobbyist influence.
Most importantly, Obama hasn’t fought to cut through the red-versus-blue division perpetuated by the powers-that-be in both parties and the media.
There are plenty of people to blame for the federal government’s dysfunction over the last two years:
- Republicans who obstructed the Democrats’ agenda for political reasons. Shame on them for putting their desire to grab power ahead of the needs of the American people, especially in such a critical time.
- Democrats who refused to consider urgent legislation including immigration reform because they were worried about losing re-election. Shame on them for putting their own jobs ahead of doing what’s right and necessary, even when it may not be popular.
- The president, who promised to teach Washington a new way of doing business and lead it into becoming a functional government. He allowed Washington to fall into partisan divisions and politics as usual.
This isn’t a criticism of every individual Democrat and Republican in Congress. There are good members of both parties who desire the same sort of change Obama promised. It’s more a criticism of the leaders in both parties than of most other individual members.
But no single member of Congress can change this system. It’s the president who has the potential to really shake things up – and it’s the president who promised to do that.
Assign blame, and take some, too
Obama needs to stand up to Washington. All of it – Democrats and Republicans and lobbyists and the media. He needs to be forceful about doing things differently. And then he needs to offer a hand to those who are willing to help him.
He needs to start by calling out Republicans for obstructing the agenda for the last two years instead of working for compromise. He needs to very publicly tell them they’re part of the problem and that he will no longer tolerate it.
He should single out Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell by name. McConnell says his top goal in the next two years is defeating Obama in 2012. Obama needs to tell him that the time of putting politics above governance has passed.
Similarly, Obama needs to call out Democrats who were too politically afraid to tackle important reforms. He needs to tell them the time of putting re-election above solving the nation’s problems has passed.
He should call out Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for taking important legislation off the table.
Obama also needs to take some blame for not reaching out to Republicans as genuinely as he could have done. And he needs to apologize for letting Reid and Pelosi dictate his party’s agenda instead of leading them.
Last, he needs to tell Congress he’s moving forward with important and urgent legislation, and invite those in both parties who are serious about solving America’s problems to join him. Those who aren’t, he needs to say, should get out of the way.
Use the bully pulpit
Then it will be time to get to work. Obama is a Democrat, and he should unveil legislative proposals that are exactly what he wants them to be. After all, voters elected him to be president.
Then he needs to sit down with Democrats and Republicans who want to find compromise and work toward that end. If he can’t find the votes to pass important legislation, he needs to publicly call out the Mitch McConnells and Nancy Pelosis in Congress who are stalling for political reasons. He needs to use the bully pulpit to cut through the partisan divisions and politics as usual to get things done.
That’s what Obama promised to do in 2008. That’s what the majority of Americans elected him to do. Obama was naive to think he could change the way Washington operates without fighting everyone – his party, the other party, and the lobbyists.
This nation remains on the brink. It’s time for Obama to stand up and fight.