Why can't Obama be more like LBJ?

In context with what I wrote yesterday, this is a great piece by Matt Bai.  I don't agree with all of it -- especially the familiar dismissal by non-Texas pundits of Rick Perry's felony indictments -- but some other points are salient.

The problem with Barack Obama, people are always telling me these days, is that he just doesn't love the full contact sport of politics. He has no capacity for the inside machinations or tactical brutality we associate with a more sophisticated and celebrated president like Lyndon Johnson.

What we really need, I guess, is an executive in the mold of a Chris Christie or an Andrew Cuomo or a Rick Perry, all of whom are more extroverted and more brazen about wielding their power as governors than Obama is — and all of whom, not incidentally, are now fending off prosecutors and investigations while scrambling to keep their national ambitions afloat.

And this illustrates an interesting paradox of modern politics: We love this idea of the ruthless and effective political operator, right up until the moment we're confronted by the reality.

Is this really what "we" want?  I just want an effective progressive manager.  I don't want any coolly detached, above-the-fray, aloof executives any more than I want a war-mongering bully/asshole like those three mentioned.  In fact, Hillary Clinton seems to strike the right balance between those two spots -- without enough of the 'progressive' part I would like.  But I digress.

But there's a common theme in all of this, which is that all three governors were doing exactly the thing Obama's Democratic detractors and sympathetic commentators so often pound him for not doing — stretching the boundaries of your authority in order to outmaneuver adversaries and ultimately get your way. (Ironically, it's also the thing Republicans insist Obama actually does too often, which is why they're suing him, but that's another story.)

And there's my point: Republicans want this sort of jerk.  They like jerks.  Nobody else does.

You want the kind of elected executive who's going to make the machine work the way he wants it to, even if he has to grab a sledgehammer and bang a few parts into place? Well, this is what it looks like. It's not especially ennobling, and it never was.

Lately there's a lot of admiration for Johnson, who's often portrayed, in this age of entrenched dysfunction and colorless politicians, as a charismatic, needy rogue who knew how to make Washington work. The truth is that the things Johnson did for the purpose of amassing power would make Rick Perry quiver like a little girl.

No, not the sledgehammer, thanks.  Not even a rubber mallet.

Bai goes on to share a recent conversation he had with LBJ biographer Robert Caro, who is working on a fifth installment of the mercurial '60's-era Texan and CIC.  Caro's volumes are the definitive interpretation of the man, his presidency, and his effects on the nation.

Yet somehow Johnson is the president we'd like Obama to be. And Perry is just a perp.

[...]

Today's embattled governors, too, have done their share of intimidating in the service of significant accomplishments; Christie won bipartisan compromise of a controversial plan to reform public pensions, and Cuomo did the same on gay marriage. But what gets the most attention are the petty transgressions that come with no higher purpose.

What we want, apparently, is a swaggering politician who can be maniacally manipulative when it comes to the big and noble stuff, but who can simply switch it off when the stakes aren't as grand. Good luck with that.

Nope, still don't want that.  An effective negotiator -- the kind of horse-trading that most people at the fringes despise, as manifested in the ritualistic purge of the least conservative Republican in their primary elections.  But Bai is right that we'll never get that sort of person elected anyway... his, or mine.

At this point, 40 years after Nixon resigned, our distrust for politicians and our political institutions is so profound and ingrained in the culture that it's hard to imagine our giving any elected leader the license to scheme that Johnson enjoyed. And in this moment of the 60-second news cycle, when every backroom confrontation seems to spill into public view instantaneously, the sordid means of politics almost always overwhelm the end.

If our idealized version of Johnson himself suddenly came back to life and reappeared on the scene today, we wouldn't admire him as roguishly competent. We'd probably refer him to a grand jury.

It may be, as Caro suggests, that lesser politicians simply get less latitude. "Real political genius doesn't come along very often," he told me. "How long has it been since we had a leader who not only enunciated what government should do and laid our specific ends that people could unite behind, but also had the tactics and the determination to achieve those ends?"

But it might also be that if Obama really were this type of political genius, we'd reject and revile him. Such is the contradiction in our politics. We pine for leaders who strong-arm the system, just as long as they don't get caught.

I don't think we -- and by 'we', I mean the people who will elect Hillary Clinton in 2016 -- pine for that at all, Matt.  And I also don't mean to suggest that I will be helping Hillary Clinton get elected, because I won't.

Obama, like Bush before him, has coalesced power and authority in the executive branch.  It's not quite unitary executive stuff, but it's close, especially as it relates to his drone kill list.  What he does most effectively is manage around the intransigence of the legislative branch by utilizing executive orders.  He will do so shortly with regard to the unyielding Congressional obstinance of necessary and long-overdue immigration reform.  This should be a good thing, from a policy perspective as well as a political one.

If that action gets received well -- the hardest part will be enduring the conservative caterwauling about 'amnesty' -- it could lift the fortunes of Democrats in the midterms by enthusing the long-awaited Latino turnout.  That would also be a good thing, and just in the nick of time.

Update: Carla Seaquist has more good advice for the president in this regard.

See?  I don't hate Obama completely.  I just want him to be a better president.

The disintegrating relationship between Obama and Congressional Dems

Thank goodness there's something to blog about besides Rick Perry or Ferguson.

It was perhaps only a matter of time before Democrats, in the midst of a challenging midterm election campaign, began distancing themselves from an unpopular president. President Barack Obama's average approval rating sits at 41.6%, according to Real Clear Politics, and he has been under fire recently for the way he has handled crises both at home and abroad.

A New York Times story published Tuesday lays out the overall deteriorating relationship between Obama and congressional Democrats. One anecdote involving Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, stemming from a late-June meeting with congressional leaders to discuss the deteriorating situation in Iraq, tells it best.

With Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, sitting a few feet away, Mr. Reid complained that Senate Republicans were spitefully blocking the confirmation of dozens of Mr. Obama’s nominees to serve as ambassadors. He expected that the president would back him up and urge Mr. McConnell to relent.

Mr. Obama quickly dismissed the matter.

"You and Mitch work it out," Mr. Obama said coolly, cutting off any discussion.

Mr. Reid seethed quietly for the rest of the meeting, according to four separate accounts provided by people who spoke with him about it. After his return to the Capitol that afternoon, Mr. Reid told other senators and his staff members that he was astonished by how disengaged the president seemed. After all, these were Mr. Obama’s own ambassadors who were being blocked by Mr. McConnell, and Secretary of State John Kerry had been arguing for months that getting them installed was an urgent necessity for the administration.

Long-time readers know that this is the sort of thing that made me step away from Obama years ago; his refusal to engage -- either as aggressor or as mediator -- in any meaningful way.  It has cost his supporters and the Democratic Party a lot, it's even cost the American people quite a bit (universal single payer  public option is what I mean)... and now his insouciance may finally be costing him.

The exchange between Obama and Reid, considering that Reid is Obama's staunchest congressional ally, was the most striking anecdote in a Times story that portrayed a president with dwindling friends on Capitol Hill. The article contains criticism from a wide array of Democrats, including from the red-state Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and from Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut), one of the Senate's most left-leaning members.

Manchin, quote unquote, speaking about his relationship with the president: "It's fairly nonexistent, really. There's not much of (one)."

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Missouri) compared "schmoozing with elected officials" to "eating his spinach" for Obama, but Democrats told the paper that Obama's lack of reaching out harmed congressional relationships.

We could go on a bit more here, but I think you get the point.

As for Democrats in close elections in red states, they're not waiting around for the president to warm up.  Mark Begich in Alaska is running against Obama.  Alison Grimes in Kentucky is running against Obama.  Wendy Davis has given him a stiff arm or two to some criticism, including my own.  That's right; I am flip-flopping.  I no longer think that there are very many Blue Teamers in tight races that have more to gain than lose by standing with the president.

Contrary to what I advised here, it's time for every Democrat not in a safe district or a blue state to do what they have to do in order to get elected.  And if that means speaking out against Obama's slow response to the appalling civil rights travesties in Ferguson, or his lack of assertiveness in more forcefully coalescing international support against the gathering menace of ISIS, or addressing the First Amendment perils -- to say nothing of the threats to their lives -- to members of the US media at home and abroad... then do it.

When Rick Perry is drawing sympathy from Latinos (Dave Jimenez, about halfway down the page) who oppose his border surge but attended the governor's mugshot pep rally yesterday as a supporter, you know it's time for the rest of us to turn the page.

It's going to be a little too late for Obama to help Senate Democrats carry out his agenda if the upper chamber flips red in November.  By that time, it will be all they can do to prevent him from being impeached.

He'd better start making friends and mending fences.  Fast.  Likewise for the rest of you blue partisans; it's every man for himself.

Update: More on this from Ezra Klein at Vox, who says this is no big deal.  It doesn't seem like Ezra is looking far enough ahead -- as in beyond November.

Update II: At least one endangered Senate Democrat, David Pryor of Arkansas, is running hard on support of Obamacare, a topic Wayne at Texas Leftist has covered.