Some Republicans want Obama to be a successful president, and others want him to be a failure.
The most important Republican in the success column is Newt Gingrich. This is what he said last month, effectively daring other national leaders of the Republican Party to disagree:
“I think the country is so tired right now of a style of Republican attack politics that has become a caricature of itself, they instinctively go, ‘I’m tired of that,’ ” said Newt Gingrich, a Republican and former speaker of the House. “It’s ineffective against Barack Obama right now. The country is faced with serious problems and is about to have a brand new president. You’d have to be irrational not to want the new president to succeed.”
Saul Anuzis, chairman of the Michigan Republican Party and a leading candidate to become the next leader of the Republican National Committee, offered a similar message on his blog. “Where necessary,” Mr. Anuzis wrote, “we should stand for what is right and forcefully be the loyal opposition. But partisan politics in times like these for the sake of politics is not healthy. “
The most important Republican (so far) who wants to see failure is Rush Limbaugh. Here is what he recently said in comments that were clearly intended to criticize Gingrich, Anuzis, and others like them:
On his radio show last week, Rush Limbaugh railed against “people on our side of the aisle who have caved and who say, ‘Well, I hope he succeeds. We have to give him a chance.’”
“Why?” Limbaugh demanded. “They didn’t give Bush a chance in 2000. Before he was inaugurated, the search-and-destroy mission had begun. I’m not talking about search-and-destroy, but I’ve been listening to Barack Obama for a year and a half. I know what his politics are. I know what his plans are, as he has stated them. I don’t want them to succeed.”
It’s noteworthy, I think, that Limbaugh’s first argument for wanting to see Obama fail is that so many Americans wanted Bush to fail in January 2001. In other words, Limbaugh sets aside the issue of what is best for the country, and focuses instead on the competition between the parties. (Limbaugh’s attitude is “partisan politics … for the sake of politics,” as Anuzis put it.) This attitude – that anything that’s good for Democrats is bad for Republicans, and what’s best for the country is merely an afterthought – is what enables Gingrich to pretend there is no difference between Obama’s overall success and Obama’s success at making progressive change.
Of course, this country is chock full of Republicans who don’t like the idea of universal health care, who believe it’s dangerous for Barack Obama to speak with our enemies, who think talk about the threat of global warming is a bunch of hoo-haw, and oppose Obama’s efforts to stimulate the economy through government spending. I disagree with these people, but I certainly recognize their right as free people to express their resistance to progressive ideas.
But Obama’s overall goals include keeping the American people safe, rescuing the American economy so people can find work to support themselves and their families, and working to bring about a more peaceful, healthy, prosperous world. After all, Obama’s “politics” — in other words, Obama’s progressive agenda — reflect these overall goals.
In wanting Obama to fail, Limbaugh might as well be saying he hopes Obama fails to keep us safe, fails to help people provide for their families, fails to improve the education of our children, etc. If Obama does fail, it will certainly damage the Democratic Party and help the Republicans. But it will also damage the country.
For some reason, it doesn’t matter that Obama has given every indication that he intends to include Republicans in his governance.
Consider the following from a recent Politico article:
It’s no secret Barack Obama is trying to seduce Republicans these days. But his conservative courting runs much deeper and wider than is publicly known.
Obama has had meetings with his former opponent John McCain, GOP congressional leaders and some of the country’s leading conservative commentators. He’s also honoring McCain and Colin Powell in high-profile pre-inaugural dinners, where Obama is expected to toast the Republicans.
Behind the scenes, Obama and his team are working just as hard, courting prominent Republicans and conservatives through frequent phone calls, e-mails and private sit-downs.
The selection of evangelical pastor Rick Warren for the inaugural invocation and Obama’s dinner with right-of-center writers at George F. Will’s home drew significant buzz. But the transition also has quietly reached out to other prominent figures atop the Southern Baptist Church, Charles Colson’s Prison Fellowship Ministry and the Jewish Orthodox Union.
“I think he’s done an extremely good job so far,” said Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), who received a call from the president-elect last week. “On both the quality of his nominees and the contact that he personally or his skeleton staff have had with members on the Hill — I think they’ve done just an exceptional job at that.”
It’s completely relevant that Gingrich is a professional political leader and Limbaugh is a professional radio talk show host. Limbaugh makes money by entertaining and titillating people with his over-the-top condemnation of liberals — he is an “outrage performance artist,” as Lee put it, and a “comedian,” as Keith Olbermann puts it.
Limbaugh’s industry relies upon hatred of Democrats. Even if Limbaugh believed he had a patriotic duty to hope that Obama will succeed in leading the country through the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, Limbaugh’s obligation to his employer, to his business, would compel him to continue casting Obama as the great Satan.
So thanks to Newt Gingrich for being rational, and for offering an alternative to Republicans who are too smart for Limbaugh’s snake oil. Luckily, it seems like Gingrich’s tack is winning some significant support:
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who just got back from the Middle East with Joe Biden, was with McCain and the president-elect in Chicago at the post-election meeting and met again with Obama Wednesday for about 45 minutes.
“Once the campaign is over, to govern you have to find consensus and I think he understands that,” said Graham, who will introduce McCain at the tribute dinner Monday. “Ronald Reagan understood the value of personal relationships and I think [Obama] understands that that model offers the best hope of sustaining momentum from the election and achieving legislative success. So far, so good.”
Graham, one of McCain’s closest friends and a frequent campaign trail companion, said much of the good will from his party stems from a patriotic desire to turn the country around.
“A lot of people, including Republicans, want us to get back on our feet because we’re on our knees. And he’s the quarterback, he’s the captain – everybody is pulling for him.”
Though Limbaugh is largely a cynical fool and a windbag — as I’ve previously noted — in this case he does have a valid point, in my view. Obama’s policy priorities are relatively clear — they have been all along — and Limbaugh apparently thoroughly dislikes them. To Limbaugh, Obama’s achieving his aims would — according to his priorities and values — be bad for America. He therefore does not want Obama to succeed in acheiving his aims.
If Limbaugh thinks Obama’s policies are bad for America then some might argue — persuasively, I think — that it’s his “patriotic duty” to oppose them vociferously. Limbaugh is under no obligation to pretend that he likes Obama’s agenda. Republican lawmakers, on the other hand, have an obligation to get some part of their constituents’ business done — even if they have to make hard and painful political compromises in order to do so.
Limbaugh’s job is to push the center of gravity of those compromises closer toward his idea of a political Utopia. Ours should be to mobilize the general population, which — quite fortunately — largely agrees with our values and agenda, moving the country toward our alternative vision.
Our job should be theoretically easier than Limbaugh’s — if we take polling seriously — though he and his ilk are almost always better funded, thanks to the “democracy” of the marketplace, where one dollar equals one vote.
Comment by Lee — January 19, 2009 @ 3:00 am
I don’t think it’s worth considering Limbaugh because he’s an entertainer first and and politician second. There must be better examples from real politicians in the Tom Delay mold.
As far as Gingrich it’s ironic because he all but invented these sort of poltics in the 1990’s. I suspect during economic good times and worldwide peace (from an American prospective) the country would tolerate that. But now that there are real problems it just seems petty and silly. It’s good that Gingrich realizes but one wonders if he is doing this for love of country or just sheer political pragmatism.
Comment by John — January 19, 2009 @ 10:29 am
I think there are better examples from the Tom Delay mold — but I disagree with the idea that Rush Limbaugh should be disregarded. The fact that he is an entertainer first and a politician second doesn’t change his influence. There is the world as it is and then there is the world as we would like it to be — in the world as it is, Limbaugh is important. Also, I agree that Gingrich is probably doing this for sheer political pragmatism — but whatever his motivations, his attitude is good for the country right now.
Lee, what about the distinction I was trying to draw above between one’s overall goals and one’s strategy? Are you saying that because you have ideological differences with Bush, you’re actually HAPPY that Bush’s presidency was a failure? Tell that to the million-plus Americans who lost their jobs in the last quarter. Tell that to the parents of soldiers who lost their lives fighting in an unnecessary, counterproductive war. You may want Bush to fail at privatizing social security or some other specific agenda item, but saying that you want Bush to fail as a president is like saying you want you want our political leaders to be misguided and ineffectual. As I said in my post, Limbaugh is entitled to his opinion about Obama’s policies. But is it responsible for any American to want their president to fail?
Comment by Ian — January 19, 2009 @ 11:31 am
I think it depends what you mean by success and failure. In a sense, Bush was quite successful — in implementing his desired policies. By that standard, we might judge him one of the most successful and bipartisan presents in recent American history. The failure of Bush is not a fluke but is a result of his ideological/policy successes. His only “failure,” relative to his goals, was his inability to privatize Social Security. Thanks to that failure, millions of Americans are a little bit more secure now than they would have been. I am pleased that Bush was not successful in this drive.
I would argue that there is no such thing as “failing as a president” in some overall sense. Bush did not fail as a president because of bad luck or Democratic opposition, but because he lived in a conservative fantasy world and ideological bubble that made him think he could do anything he wanted without consequences. I do wish Bush had been more “successful,” in a sense: by not pursuing his destructive agenda or by being a “failure” at implementing his policies.
My preferred alternative to an “unsuccessful” Iraq invasion isn’t a “successful” Iraq invasion, but no Iraq invasion. To the degree that there are elements of our political situation not really related to Bush’s policy preferences, it’s incoherent for me to say that I wish Bush success. If, for example, the state of the economy is genuinely independent of Bush’s policies, then what I’m ‘wishing’ for and working for is the success of the economy in general. I would want to be even more emphatic not to attribute the random situation of the economy to a political leader. I have no particular desire to see someone get credit for something he doesn’t deserve.
What Gingrich is implicitly saying is that he thinks Obama is taking the right approach. When he says he wants Obama to succeed, then he’s also saying that he thinks Obama’s approach might plausibly lead to success. If he thought that Obama’s approach was going to be counterproductive — like those Republicans who incorrectly claim that the New Deal prolonged the depression — then Gingrich should say, “I hope for Obama to succeed by not prolonging this economic crisis with his misguided and destructive stimulus.”
Comment by Lee — January 19, 2009 @ 1:39 pm
Gingrich may agree that Obama is taking the right approach regarding a particular economic policy — but Gingrich doesn’t agree with Obama’s overall approach to governing this country. Neither Gingrich nor Anuzis expect to spend the next eight years sitting contentedly and nodding approvingly as Obama pushes for universal health care, a more progressive tax structure, etc.
I certainly take your point that you may believe a president’s approach is wrong, and so you hope the president will “fail” to enact policies that will be bad for the country. But that’s not what Gingrich was getting at when he said, “You’d have to be irrational not to want the new president to succeed.” Gingrich didn’t mean you’d have to be irrational not to support bank bailouts and auto bailouts and massive government spending. Gingrich didn’t mean you’d have to be irrational not to want more government regulation, more government involvement in health care, a repeal of the Bush tax cuts. Gingrich meant you’d have to be irrational not to want Obama to be a more successful president than Bush was, by the most basic measures we think of: are people’s lives better off or worse? Are we moving in the right direction, or the wrong direction?
To describe Bush as a successful president is to suggest that Bush’s goal was to create the situation we have now — where unemployment is likely to hit double digits, where our military is stretched to the breaking point in a war that most Americans believe is unnecessary and most humans think is immoral, to be so unpopular that the most devestating attack you can level at your political opponent is to compare them to Bush.
A distinction can be made between fighting for what you think is best for the country — which means expressing your views forcefully even when the president disagrees with them — and fighting to politically destroy the president because you want him to be an overall failure.
Comment by Ian — January 19, 2009 @ 2:27 pm
The distinction between policy and overall success or failure makes sense initially but collapses upon closer scrutiny for me.
(I hate treating him as a real political actor but) Limbaugh would claim that he would love to see people’s lives better off but that Obama’s policies will lead to people being worse off. Anyone who (i) approves of the goals of a president and who (ii) believes that the president has hit upon a reasonable way to achieve those goals would be irrational not to support the president.
Gingrich seems to be saying that he approves of Obama’s goals and that he’s come upon a decent way to solve the problems and that therefore Republicans should be wary of intentionally sabotaging the president just to make him look bad at a PR level (a technique Gingrich himself helped perfect). I assume Limbaugh agrees with the goal of “improving” people’s lives — at least in his public statements — but thinks that Obama’s strategy for doing so would not be successful. What Limbaugh is saying is “I’m not trying to sabotage the president’s agenda; I really believe what I’m saying when I criticize him.” More locally, Limbaugh may have different priorities. He may prefer to torture people he designates as terrorists over not torturing them, and so regards the goal of ending torture as undesirable.
I’m willing to take Limbaugh at his word and to say that his priorities are all screwed up and highly damaging and destructive to the future of the country.
Comment by Lee — January 19, 2009 @ 3:05 pm
We all know that Barack Obama is significantly to the left of both Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh. You seem to be interpreting Gingrich’s comments about wanting Obama to succeed as an endorsement of Obama’s politics. If Newt Gingrich, one of the most prominent conservative leaders in America, and Lee, a committed progressive, both want Obama to succeed, does this indicate that Obama has magically managed to synthesize or unify the entire political spectrum that lies between them under his leadership? Is it possible for any political leader to win the support of Lee and Gingrich? If so, this is truly an extraordinary accomplishment — precisely the sort of accomplishment that Limbaugh feels threatened by.
Is it not appropriate to treat Limbaugh as a real political actor?
This idea that we shouldn’t discuss Limbaugh openly — is this because Limbaugh’s influence on our politics is insignificant and not worth analyzing? Or is this because we think that by ignoring Limbaugh, we can somehow make him go away? Limbaugh would love for us to ignore him, because that way he can stir up huge numbers of conservative voters without facing any pushback from liberals, while conservative politicians lull us into a sense of complacency. I think it’s willful ignorance to pretend that Rush Limbaugh isn’t a very real force in American politics — far more influential than most New York Times columnists. Am I wrongheaded to discuss him, or do we just find it degrading to include him in our political discourse because he’s too lowbrow?
Comment by Ian — January 19, 2009 @ 4:47 pm
My main complaint against Limbaugh is that his goal, like Jay Severin is to shock and enrage. Fear and anger drive their ratings and in effect their paychecks.
While he is not a serious politician you can’t discount the self-described dittoheads who take what he says chapter and verse and vote accordingly.
Comment by John — January 19, 2009 @ 5:26 pm
I totally agree with John’s point. As I wrote in my post, Limbaugh is (as Lee put it) an “outrage performance artist.” That said, he is, by definition, a political leader because he effectively shapes the thoughts, goals, and rhetoric of hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of Americans who pay attention to politics. Saying we should ignore Limbaugh because he isn’t a legitimate political leader is like saying we should ignore Putin because he’s not a legitimate political leader of Russia. Putin may not be “legitimate,” but he does effectively control Russia, and those of us who live in the reality-based community must acknowledge the reality that he is a force on the planet.
Comment by Ian — January 19, 2009 @ 6:31 pm
I’m wary of treating Limbaugh as a real political actor not in any way because I think we should ignore him but for more or less the reason that John mentions: that Limbaugh is a cynical entertainer and not a serious political commentator who is committed to making cogent arguments based on logical premises supported by facts and evidence. The fact that his bile-filled rants and reactionary slimy political stances are taken seriously by a significant portion of the American public is reason enough to focus on him — in order to expose him.
That said, I think that one has to be careful in claiming that Obama is synthesizing anything particular, say me and Gingrich. Obama’s stimulus, though some (like Krugman) claim it doesn’t go nearly far enough, is even as it stands in clear violation of the principles that Gingrich has claimed in the past to passionately believe in. Gingrich wholly supports libertarian conservatism and has blurbed Grover Norquist’s Leave Us Alone: Getting Government’s Hands Off Our Money, Our Guns, Our Lives.
Perhaps Gingrich has changed his mind about his economic principles — which is fine by me — or perhaps he is basically admitting that he understands that his own previously strongly held public views are in fact harmful to the economy and that given the nature of the financial crisis (rich people are hurting!) the jig is up; his ideology has been too irreparably exposed as a fraud. In any case, I don’t see much synthesis going on here. Gingrich is basically just caving in to the idea of a stimulus, against his own stated ideology.
Limbaugh, on the other hands, still seems to want to maintain that Obama is some kind of crazy socialist redistributor and perhaps even agrees with conservatives who believe — as George Will has argued — that the New Deal prolonged the Great Depression.
Comment by Lee — January 20, 2009 @ 2:14 am
To clarify: I never meant to suggest that Obama was synthesizing ideologies. Perhaps I was wrong to use the word “synthesis.” My point is that if we accept your argument — that Gingrich’s stated desire to see Obama succeed must be interpreted as an endorsement of Obama’s approach to governance — then it must be that Obama has managed to come up with an approach to governance that wins support from Gingrich and Lee. This may be because Gingrich has changed — but either way, it is an awesome political acheivement.
You (and millions of people like you) want Obama to succeed, and so does Newt Gingrich. This is an awesome achievement.
Comment by Ian — January 20, 2009 @ 1:46 pm
My theory is that Gingrich basically doesn’t actually believe in the principles he claims to believe in. When it comes to the economy Gingrich will claim he supports a free market, but when the free market threatens to actually genuinely hurt the economy — that is to say, wealthy people in the economy — he’ll support massive government intervention into the markets. If by doing so he is forced to accept some stimulus that helps people lower down the food chain, so be it.
In that sense, I think he is supportive of the stimulus because he understands it’s absolutely necessary. Many intelligent Republicans feel the same way. They’re all for stimulus when it helps banks and CEOs, but suddenly become principled defenders of the free market when it comes to unionized auto workers. Not a single Republican wanted to make CEO pay at the big three “comparable” to foreign auto CEO pay; only the disparity in worker pay aroused their noble principled objections.
Conservative outrage artist entertainers like Limbaugh may, I’d speculate, not understand that the principles they are advocating for are in fact cynical poses and so will continue to support destructive principles even when intelligent Republican legislators give up the charade. One thing we can say about the outrage artists: they’re accountable to their listeners, who may genuinely consistently believe in non-internvention by the government in the market, which is why they were so outraged about the bailout — and will be outraged about the coming stimulus package. Gingrich is way too smart to listen to those consistent conservatives.
Comment by Lee — January 20, 2009 @ 4:36 pm