Nexus: Chapman's Journal of Law and Public Policy

The day after losing 54 House seats and 8 Senate seats, President Clinton said, “We were held accountable yesterday and I accept my share of the responsibility." FN1. Despite such a devastating defeat, President Clinton would go on to win re-election in 1996. This re-election was in large part attributable to his famous triangulation strategy. On the advice of Dick Morris, Clinton’s political advisor, Clinton began to adopt certain Republican policies to maximum political gain and popularity. FN2.

What will be interesting to see is if President Obama will follow President Clinton’s example or if he will become a one term President? I suspect the latter.

In what I like to think of as his post-mortem press conference, President Obama recognized that he took a “shellacking”. However, in the same press conference President Obama seemed to chalk the defeat up to failing to communicate with the American people when he said, “we los[t] track of . . . the ways that we connected with folks that got us here in the first place.” FN3. When President Obama made that comment I pictured the prison warden from Cool Hand Luke saying, “What we’ve got here is…failure to communicate.” It may be a communication problem. But it isn’t that President Obama’s message is not getting out, it is that President Obama isn’t listening to the American people.

I don’t think it is a coincidence that the two worst midterm election defeats in the past 50 years happened to Presidents pushing health care reform during a recession. No poll said that healthcare was the issue most important in America. In fact, the polls showed the majority of Americans were happy with their healthcare. FN4. What the polls did say however was that the economy and jobs were the most important issues to the American people. FN5. Despite the polls being clear and no matter how bad the jobless reports were, President Obama was determined to do what he wanted.

I even think that President Obama had the opportunity to mitigate some of his appearance of being out of touch. In particular, the best time for President Obama to have given up on health care would have been after the special election of Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown. As some of you may recall candidate “Brown ran explicitly on a promise to be the ‘41st Senator,’ who would give the Republicans the power to block what he called ‘the trillion-dollar health care bill that is being forced on the American people,’ one that will ‘raise taxes, hurt Medicare, destroy jobs and run our nation deeper into debt.’” FN6. After Senator Brown was elected, President Obama promised that his number one goal would be jobs. But the President’s didn’t uphold that promise and health care was passed anyway.

Bottom line, unlike President Clinton, I don’t believe most American think President Obama “feels their pain”. President Clinton was the consummate schmoozer, a master of empathy, and could mold himself to whatever was politically expedient at the time. That is why President Clinton was able to turn his presidency around.

No matter what anyone says, Republicans didn’t win these midterm elections because of Citizens United. On 10/26/2010, The New York Times reported that the Democrats were outspending Republicans. The article stated that, “Democratic candidates have outraised their opponents over all by more than 30 percent in the 109 House races The New York Times has identified as in play.” FN7. Another source I found stated that, “Democratic candidates and their allies spent $142 million on television advertising across all House races in the general election, compared with $119 million by Republican candidates and their backers.” FN8. So much for all those evil corporate interests groups trying to subvert the will of the American people by contributing money to the Republican Party.

I could be wrong. Obama my reverse course and take a page out of President Clinton’s play book and get re-elected. But if nothing else, this election shows that history repeats itself. Like Napoleon and Hitler being stupid enough to believe Russia could be conquered in the winter, President Clinton and President Obama realized that healthcare reform was hazardous to their political health. It remains to be seen if President Obama will follow President Clinton’s shift to the right.

Source:

FN1: http://www.hapblog.com/2010/11/flashback-bill-clinton-press-conference.html

FN2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Morris

FN3: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/02/AR2010110207506.html

FN4: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/06/24/obama-pushes-national-health-care-americans-happy-coverage/; http://www.newsweek.com/blogs/the-gaggle/2009/09/01/poll-finds-large-majority-of-americans-happy-with-their-health-insurance.html. (I included the Newsweek article for readers who are skeptical of Fox News.)

FN5: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/01/21/cnn-poll-jobs-number-one-issue-with-most-americans/

FN6: http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1955410,00.html

FN7:http://governmentinexile.typepad.com/government_in_exile/2010/11/democrats-outspend-republicans-in-2010-races.html

FN8: http://lonelyconservative.com/2010/11/shock-democrats-outspent-republicans-in-house-races/