At Monday night’s prime-time press conference (transcript) at the White House, President Obama was asked by NPR’s Mara Liasson what he’d learned from his “experience with the stimulus” package, in regard to “future challenges” he will face, legislatively.
The key part of his answer: “I suppose what I could have done is started off with no tax cuts, knowing that I was going to want some, and then let them take credit for all of them. And maybe that’s the lesson I learned.”
Uh, ya think? Yeah, giving away the store, by negotiating with oneself — by handing billions of dollars in tax cuts to Republicans, before they’d even asked for it — is something we long ago learned in Negotiations 101. Apparently Obama skipped class that day.
While we do hope he’s learned from it, we coulda seen the disaster coming for miles. In fact, we did — way back in the early part of 2007 when he did something similar, causing us to post serious reservations about his negotiation and decision making skills at the time.
We were even quoted on it, at the time, by Brit Hume on Fox “News”…
In April of 2007, after Obama had declared his intention to seek the Democratic nomination for President, we were highly critical of him for having shown the Senate Democrats’ hand during negotiations with the White House over whether a troop withdrawal timeline would be included as part of the first Iraq spending bill to move through Congress since the Dems had taken over the majority.
Bush had promised to veto the bill, if it contained any timeline requirements, and Obama, while the negotiations were in the middle of being played out, told an interviewer that he believed Senate Dems would vote to fund the Iraq War anyway, even without the timeline requirements.
In the bargain, he gave away his (and the Dems’) negotiating leverage and thus, the entire store.
He further told AP at the time, that he thought it was “important for voters to get a sense of how the next president will make decisions.” He did. And we slammed him for it, even as some partisans were highly critical of our having done so. Markos at DailyKos also slammed him, and both of us were quoted, in turn — as “liberal bloggers” who had “turn[ed] on Obama” — by the opportunistic Brit Hume, as Fox “News” used it for propaganda, naturally. (Video at right).
Of course, as we hadn’t offered public support for Obama in the first place (and don’t feel particularly “liberal”), it was difficult to have “turned” on him, but that’s Fox, and another story entirely.
Nonetheless, it was little surprise when Obama gave away the store on the stimulus bill, his first major negotiation with Republicans, before negotiations even began. Let’s just hope he has, as he told Liasson last night, learned from it!
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Liasson’s question and President Obama’s answer, follows below…
What do you think you’re going to have to do to get more bipartisanship? Are you going to need a new legislative model, bringing in Republicans from the very beginning, getting more involved in the details yourself from the beginning, or using bipartisan commissions? What has this experience with the stimulus led you to think about when you think about these future challenges?
OBAMA: Well, as I said before, Mara, I think that old habits are hard to break. And we’re coming off an election and I think people want to sort of test the limits of what they can get. There’s a lot of jockeying in this town and a lot of who’s up and who’s down and positioning for the next election.
And what I’ve tried to suggest is that this is one of those times where we’ve got to put that kind of behavior aside, because the American people can’t afford it. The people in Elkhart can’t afford it. The single mom who’s trying to figure out how to keep her house can’t afford it. And whether we’re Democrats or Republicans, surely there’s got to be some capacity for us to work together — not agree on everything, but at least set aside small differences to get things done.
Now, just in terms of the historic record here, the Republicans were brought in early and were consulted. And you’ll remember that when we initially introduced our framework, they were pleasantly surprised and complimentary about the tax cuts that were presented in that framework. Those tax cuts are still in there. I mean, I suppose what I could have done is started off with no tax cuts, knowing that I was going to want some, and then let them take credit for all of them. And maybe that’s the lesson I learned.
Aw Brad, go easy on the guy. It’s clear to me that Obama learns from his mistakes (unlike Doofus). He seems to realize that the three most important words in the English language are, “I was wrong.” That’s how we learn. And Doofus knew nothing of Socratic wisdom. It’s that Yale “education” showing itself again.
Hey, I thought I did go pretty easy on him here!
I’m with Brad. Did we elect Mary Poppins? Maybe because Obama spent most of his Senate term campaigning, he missed a few lessons. But then again, Harry Reid’s been there forever and if the Repubs just breath the word “filibuster” Reid rolls over and says, OK whatever you ant. Thanks for letting me vent my frustration.
I think this is what he means by “transparency” in his administration….
Honesty IS the best policy, but unfortunately also suicidal when dealing with perfidious fucks, and complicated greatly when your own allies are about as perfidious as the other side.
We didn’t want another snake in the White House. We may have gotten a cream puff instead. I’m about puking over his charm offensive, complete with Oprah-style giveaways — viz. Henrietta Hughes, bless her heart — while leaving the venal power brokers to duke it out on the *-style giveaways, or whatever the hell this stimulus package turns out really to be.
I have a couple of points.
Why isn’t a portion of the stimulus going to taking houses, re assessing the value of them and giving a statement of the homes new worth to the homeowner to take to the bank to get a new fixed interest loan?
Do this also for the families that have already been kicked out too.
Give a 20,000 dollar coupon to every family to go and buy an assembled in America car and freeze prices on the automakers so they can’t raise prices due to demand or sell them wholesale instead.
Why didn’t they do this instead of throwing money at those two outfits for nothing?
The Gummint could then reimburse the two for losses incurred.
… Floridiot asked…
Because the Republicans made them do it.
Sad thing about that joke is… is that it’s the truth.
Dems… running scared and hiding behind the de facto Rethug Blue Dogs for political cover.
Pardon me. Pardon me. But… holy fuck. My teeth are dropping out all over my desk. Can it be true? Can the world’s biggest blog really be doing this? Am I dreaming?
They won’t 99, because the yew know who’s will have to admit something.
One thing that bothered me about the 9/11 investigation is it clearly was a politically run investigation and not run by the FBI or some type of police institution.
For example, Marvin Bush (the seldom-heard younger brother) co-owned the security screening company at Dulles … with Kuwaiti owners. Marvin bush also held a key position in the security company (I forget whether he owned or just managed it) in charge of WTC 7, and he sat on the board of directors for the company that insured the WTC complex. Now any serious detective would OBVIOUSLY be investigating Marvin as a “person of interest” and yet his name doesn’t appear even once in the 9/11 commission report. Thus, the 9/11 commission was not a serious commission because even a noob like myself found a key person who was not investigated in conjuction with the events of that day.
Hey, at least he’s publicly copping to being a tool. He’s still pretty green and Doesn’t Quite Completely Get It yet. Would be nice to see Obama really learn to play hardball. But even nicer would be Leahy moving ahead with his investigation. Sign the petition here:
http://ga3.org/campaign/btcpetition?source=feb09_btc1
I wonder if Obama actually believes the whole war on terror BS? That would be amazing. If so, boy, is he in for a rude awakening. I can just see him primetime address to the nation… “Like all of you, I was tragically misled… by a group of neoconservatives and the military industrial complex… into believing we had been attacked by al Qaeda on 9-11, a group we have only recently learned was in fact a CIA construct…”
Hey! on my #5, it’s a start (maybe)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29146768/
I’m going to completely disagree with the Leahy plan. Leahy dredges up some example of his committee plan but a more recent one is in order: the Iran/Contra Senate hearings. Every one of the major witness’ were immunized including Ollie North and john Poindexter. Later, North and Poindexter (traitors and self-confessed lawbreakers) were indicted, tried and convicted. The judge in the appeal of the case’s rightly threw out all charges and evidence that was tied to North and Poindexter’s immunized testimony. If people want to see the lawbreakers of the last 8 years at trial then Leahy’s idea will produce exactly the opposite effect.
Also, the following link is a pretty good breakdown of the stimulus with a chart (It’s USAToday but the chart is easy on the eyes- you don’t have to make your own from various account’s)
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-02-11-stimulus-conference_N.htm
Obama’s original counter offer was 275B in tax reduction. USAToday says final is 282B and MSNBC said last night 276B. Somewhat higher than the original counter. I suspect the Alternate Minimum tax was addressed in the stimulus to avoid a separate fight in a tax reform bill. That’s a debate that’s been building for awhile and doing it here buys some time before tax reform has to be dealt with. Not entirely honorable IMO, I’d like to see a tax reform bill fought out publicly.