If the hallmark of a Bob Woodward book is that it puts you in the room, you may well, before long, start clawing for the exits.I mention this here because in summing up these events Woodward commits an error that I think bedevils the writing of modern history. According to Jeff Shesol,
Woodward reserves his most damning indictment for Obama, whom he sees as well meaning but often stumbling, and cocky and remote — a cold fish with a high hand who needlessly alienates potential “friends.” Woodward recounts that in early 2009, after every last House Republican voted against the administration’s stimulus package, Cantor told Emanuel that “you really could have gotten some of our support”— if it weren’t for the president’s “arrogance.” Woodward seems to take this claim at face value, along with similarly self-serving statements by Rep. Paul Ryan and others. They inform Woodward’s final, blistering judgment. Yes, he acknowledges, Obama inherited a “faltering economy and faced a recalcitrant Republican opposition. But presidents,” he says, “work their will — or should work their will — on the important matters of national business.” Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton largely did, he concludes. “Obama has not.”This business of blaming leaders for not getting more in negotiations with their enemies crops up all the time. John McCain and other Republicans attacked Obama for not getting the Iraqi leadership to agree to permanent American bases, as if this were purely his fault and had nothing to do with Iraqi politics and the absolute horror with which almost all Iraqis regarded the notion. Gore Vidal went after FDR again and again for not being more successful in his negotiations with the Japanese before Pearl Harbor, as if by saying the right thing he could have induced the Japanese militarists to renounce their plan to dominate Asia.
Sometimes, in other words, negotiators fail because they bungle, but other times they fail because the other side absolutely will not agree to a compromise that would satisfy their own constituents. Perhaps Obama is a less skilled gladhander than Clinton or Reagan, and perhaps he should have worked harder to cultivate relationships with top Republicans. But the circumstance he faced was that his own party demanded, as the price of any deal, higher taxes on the wealthy, and the Republican caucus was dead set against any tax increase. None of the Republican leaders was willing to do what the elder Bush did, and sacrifice his career for the sake of a budget deal. Is that Obama's fault?
The real story here is the anger and rigidity of the Republican caucus since 2008. They refused to accept any tax increase, without which there could be no deal. Reagan was able to make so many deals with Democrats because he accepted some of their demands, including big tax increases in 1982 and 1986. Boehner and Cantor would not make that deal.
The interesting question is, why has the Republican party changed? Partly it may be revulsion against their own behavior under Bush II, when they enabled fiscal disaster. But mainly I think it is the angry reaction of white suburban and rural men against the America of the future. In the future America will be less white, more urban, more tolerant of homosexuality, and less dominated by men. It will change, and those changes will decrease the power of white people, of men, of suburbanites with big lawns, of Christians. They know it and are digging in their heals. The Tea Party is their tantrum, and in that mood they were not willing to accept any deal that Obama could sign. Whether they will still feel that way in January, when the Bush tax cuts are set to expire and the automatic budget cuts to take effect, remains to be seen.
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