Where the Obama presidency goes next has been a subject of intense fascination on the blog. Some commenters think that a primary challenge to Obama from the left will make Obama move left. That will be very difficult considering the hard right turn of Congress and the anticipated gridlock that will occur. Eugene Robinson lays out what he thinks Obama can do despite Congress.
For what it’s worth, my advice for Obama is to forget the Republicans. Not literally, of course – the new House leadership is going to make itself hard to ignore. But ultimately, it’s the president who sets the agenda and who ultimately is held accountable for America’s successes and failures. Obama’s focus should be on using all the tools at his disposal to move the country in the direction he believes it must go.
A new report by the Center for American Progress – a think tank headed by John Podesta, former chief of staff to Bill Clinton – seeks to remind Obama that shepherding legislation through Congress is only one of the ways a president can get things done.
Presidents can issue executive orders, the report notes. They can use their rulemaking powers, working through federal agencies that already have broad mandates under law. They can forge public-private partnerships. They can shape world events through diplomacy and command of the armed forces.
From the CAP report:
Concentrating on executive powers presents a real opportunity for the Obama administration to turn its focus away from a divided Congress and the unappetizing process of making legislative sausage. Instead, the administration can focus on the president’s ability to deliver results for the American people on the things that matter most to them:
• Job creation and economic competitiveness
• Educational excellence
• A clean energy future and energy independence
• Quality affordable health care
• Consumer protection
• The home foreclosure crisis
• Accountable government delivering results at lower cost
• Sustainable security for the nationIn addition, the key legislative accomplishments of President Obama’s first two years in office, most notably health care and financial reform, now need to be implemented effectively. Both the Affordable Care Act and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act require hundreds of separate rulemakings and other agency actions to implement the legislative framework.
As both Robinson and Podesta point out, the president was deeply engaged with Congress in his first two years because he had a legislative agenda that he wanted to pass. Now he knows that he won’t be able to get much of that agenda through and can concentrate on other issues. We’ll have to wait and see if he has the political skills to out-play Republicans in Congress, who have the media on their side. Obama still has a big advantage – he is the president and he’s much more popular than John Boehner or Mitch McConnell.