Obama…A Leftist Partisan Right Out Of The Gate
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Can the president ever govern in a bipartisan fashion if Republicans feel alienated already?
Obama the centrist?
Today’s topic: Congressional Democrats have insisted on passing the $819-billion stimulus package despite Republicans’ objections, even though Obama has called for bipartisanship on this issue. Can Obama really govern from the center if fulfilling one of his major promises means alienating the GOP right from the start? Previously, Hewitt and Estrich debated closing the Guantanamo Bay prison, whether Obama should investigate the Bush administration, the president’s stance on abortion and stem cell research and the White House’s relationship with the GOP minority in Congress.
Our back-and-forth has been fun as they always are, Susan (to readers: professor Estrich and I have debated in a variety of college and other public settings, and she once rose to my defense in front of an angry crowd of very lefty senior citizens with canes at the Palm Springs Book Festival who seemed intent on mumbling me down). But I think we both know that President Obama doesn’t intend to “govern from the center,” though he’d love to have the reputation for doing that.
The pick of Marine Gen. James Jones for the National Security Council and the decision to keep Secretary Robert Gates at the Department of Defense were indeed very wise appointments that reassured many national security hawks that the new president wouldn’t leave Iraq in a sudden lurch, but Obama’s obvious intention to appeal to the mullahs of Iran in a renewal of the failed policies of many past presidents is deeply worrisome. On the domestic front, we have seen the president’s fierce partisanship break out into open view with his “I won” reply to objections the Republican leadership laid out during its visit to the White House. The stimulus package becomes more obscene with every additional bit of scrutiny, and Obama’s embrace of this porkapalooza that not one Republican and even 11 Democrats couldn’t vote for tells us he is far from any “center” in American politics.
But he did indeed win, and any reader of his two autobiographies ought to expect him to try and push through his long and deeply held convictions, which are from the left side of the Democratic Party’s spectrum of opinions. His first round of judicial nominees will be extremely interesting and also very telling. If he’s truly a centrist, he’ll nominate at least one of George W. Bush’s wrongfully stalled Circuit Court nominees, as Bush did with a Clinton nominee when Bush took office. If Obama is truly a centrist, he’ll avoid our colleagues at USC and Chapman law schools as well as other law schools in the country and select practitioners and sitting state and federal jurists for federal court appointments. If he’s truly a centrist, he’ll insist that the carbon management plans being developed in California work as a national model and genuinely embrace market principles, and he’ll move to make sure that the Endangered Species Act and Clean Water Act don’t operate to crush private property rights.
The first tenth of the first 100 days has telegraphed an activist, very left domestic agenda and a return to Carter-era foreign policy adventures heavy on symbolism and tolerance for the deeply repressive regimes of the Middle East. Perhaps that will change in the next 90 days. But we’ll know soon enough, because if the Senate passes anything remotely like the House stimulus package, I think we can agree that President Obama’s opening act will best be remembered for, first, his enormous personal charm and the wonderful nature of his family and, second, his decision to kill the new era of bipartisanship in less time than it takes Jack Bauer to solve any national security mess.
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Tags: bipartisan fashion, bipartisanship, bush administration, gop, gop minority, Guantanamo Bay prison, james jones, Marine Gen. James Jones, mullahs, national security council, obama, professor estrich, republican leadership, Secretary Robert Gates, senior citizens, stem cell research, stimulus package, white house
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