Bob Woodward Raises the Green Lantern
By I forgot to get to this when I first read it, and fortunately Pareene did the job so I mostly don’t have to. I’ll just focus on this particular howler:
“The Price of Politics” ends with similar editorializing. Mr. Woodward writes that “the debt-limit crisis was a time of peril for the United States, its economy and its place in the global financial order” and that “neither President Obama nor Speaker Boehner handled it particularly well,” unable to transcend “their fixed partisan convictions and dogmas.”
His harshest words are reserved for Mr. Obama: “It is a fact that President Obama was handed a miserable, faltering economy and faced a recalcitrant Republican opposition.
“But presidents work their will — or should work their will — on the important matters of national business. There is occasional discussion in this book about Presidents Reagan and Clinton, what they did or would have done. Open as both are to serious criticism, they nonetheless largely worked their will.
Um, excuse me? Clinton “worked his will” to a greater degree than Obama? Gee, that constitutional challenge to the comprehensive health care reform bill that passed in 1994 was a little late in coming, don’t you think? And the gays and lesbians who were discharged from the military between 1993 and 2010 will be furious to know that DADT had secretly been repealed without anyone knowing.
This idea that Clinton was able to impose his will on Republicans on a way that Obama couldn’t is absolutely bizarre. With the exception of the 1993 budget deal — where Clinton compromised entirely with conservative Democrats — here are the circumstances under which major legislation was passed under the Clinton administration:
- The bill had substantial a priori support among congressional Republicans.
- There is no #2.
When Clinton was advancing his own agenda before 1995, he was spectacularly unable to “work his will.” Reagan fared a little better, because selling tax cuts and increased defense spending to Republcian and conservative Democrats is about as difficult as selling giving away free wine and food to grad students. Nonetheless, on a number of issues where the a priori support wasn’t there — aid to the contras, the Bork nomination, eight overriden vetoes. The idea that Clinton or Reagan could have imposed their will on recalcitrant members of Congress in similar circumstances is nonsense.