Ezra Klein has written a column that I think perfectly capitalizes why the left is disappointed in Obama:
But the big news is that Barack Obama is finally threatening some recess appointments. Unlike on legislation, the president is not powerless before obstruction of his nominees. He, like most every president before him, can invoke his constitutional right to appoint during a congressional recess. By this point in his term, George W. Bush had recess appointed 10 nominees, including one to the National Labor Relations Board in August of his first year. We’re in February of Obama’s second, he has more than twice as many nominees held up as Bush did, and he’s only threatening his first recess appointment.
Bush had this right. In his first year in office, he was using recess appointments and running major legislation through the reconciliation process. That normalized those moves for the rest of his administration. Using those tools wasn’t a story. The Obama White House, by contrast, is holding those moves in reserve, which has allowed Republicans to paint them as extraordinary measures. But they’re not extraordinary measures. They’re basic elements of governance in an era of polarization and procedural obstructionism, and the White House should treat them that way.
As Big Tent Democrat (formerly the infamous hotheaded Armando at Daily Kos) says: “Now he tells us.” Ezra is half right about recess appointments in that they have been used in the past in extraordinary circumstances (and unprecedented and baseless obstruction would be a requisite extraordinary circumstance), but he is wrong in suggesting recess appointments should become standard operating procedure now in our partisan polarized politics just because President Bush did.
But therein lies the problem. We liberals railed against Bush’s and his fellow congressional Republicans’ abuse of power during the last eight years, from Republicans suggesting the use of the nuclear option for killing the filibuster, to his using reconciliation, to pass his tax cuts to the GOP holding the prescription drug bill’s vote open for hours to make sure it passed against the rules of the House, to his recess appointments, to his signing statements on legislation he did not particularly like. But for conservatives, those same actions allowed a large portion of their agenda to be passed and allowed the overwhelming majority of their nominees to be confirmed.
And now, faced with the slow to nonexistent progress on Obama’s agenda, many liberals are upset that their agenda is not being passed with the same ease as Bush’s was. And now we are suggesting using the very same methods we railed against. It is irony and hypocrisy on our part, just as it is irony and hypocrisy on the GOP to be using the very same obstruction they almost went nuclear against in 2005.
And now some hypocrisy on my part….
Congress is broken, brought down not only by lobbyist and corporate influence but also by the obstruction of the Party of No. The supreme irony of our times is that only George W. Bush seems to be the savior, in that perhaps his methods described above are the only way to fix Washington.
How is that for bipartisanship?
The GOP has finally gotten us liberals to see Bush in a good light.