Promised Land (9781524763183)

by Obama Barack

  We considered it a minor miracle.

  It helped that congressional Democrats were enthusiastic about the core elements of the package—although that didn’t stop them from griping about all sorts of particulars. Liberals complained that the business tax cuts were giveaways to the rich. More centrist Dems expressed anxiety about how the big price tag would play with their more conservative constituents. Members across the spectrum complained about how direct aid to states would only help Republican governors balance their budgets and appear fiscally responsible, even as those same governors accused the folks in Congress of spending like drunken sailors.

  This kind of low-grade grumbling was par for the course with any major legislative initiative, regardless of who was in the White House. It was especially common among Democrats, who for a variety of reasons (a more diverse makeup, a greater aversion to authority) seemed to take an almost perverse pride in their lack of message discipline. When some of these complaints spilled into the press, with reporters hyping a handful of stray comments as a possible sign of dissension in the ranks, Rahm or I made sure to lob a call at the worst transgressors so we could explain—in plain and sometimes unprintable terms—just why it was that headlines like KEY DEMOCRATS BLAST OBAMA STIMULUS PLAN or DEMOCRATS MAKE CLEAR THEY WILL GUARD TURF were not exactly helpful to the cause.

  Our message was received. On the margins, we made some concessions in the drafted legislation, boosting funding for congressional priorities, trimming dollars from some of our own. But when the dust had settled, the legislation contained close to 90 percent of what our economic team had originally proposed, and we’d succeeded in keeping the bill free of earmarks and egregious wastes of money that might discredit it in the eyes of the public.

  Just one thing was missing: Republican support.

  From the start, none of us had been particularly optimistic about getting a big chunk of Republican votes, especially in the aftermath of billions already spent on financial rescue. Most House Republicans had voted against TARP despite significant pressure from a president of their own party. Those who had voted for it continued to face withering criticism from the Right, and there was a growing belief within Republican circles that one of the reasons they had done so badly in successive elections was that they’d allowed President Bush to lead them astray from conservative, small-government principles.

  Nevertheless, coming out of our early-January meeting with congressional leaders, I had told my team to ramp up our Republican outreach. Not just for show, I said; make a serious effort.

  The decision exasperated some Democrats, especially in the House. Having been in the minority for over a decade, House Democrats had been entirely shut out of the legislative process. Now that they were in control, they were in no mood to see me offer concessions to their former tormentors. They thought I was wasting my time, being naïve. “These Republicans aren’t interested in cooperating with you, Mr. President,” one member told me bluntly. “They’re looking to break you.”

  I figured they might be right. But for a variety of reasons, I felt it was important to at least test the proposition. Getting the two Republican votes we needed for a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate would be a lot easier, I knew, if we first secured a decent Republican vote count in the House—safety in numbers being a maxim by which almost every politician in Washington lived. Republican votes would also provide useful political cover for Democrats representing conservative-leaning parts of the country, who were already looking ahead to tough reelection races. And truthfully, just the act of negotiating with Republicans served as a handy excuse to deflect some of the less orthodox ideas that occasionally surfaced from our side of the aisle (“I’m sorry, Congressman, but legalizing marijuana isn’t the kind of stimulus we’re talking about here…”).

  But for me, reaching out to Republican members wasn’t just tactical. Since my convention speech in Boston and through the closing days of my campaign, I had argued that people across the country weren’t as divided as our politics suggested, and that to do big things we needed to move past partisan bickering. And what better way to make an honest effort to reach across the aisle than from a position of strength, at a time when I didn’t necessarily need support from House Republicans to get my agenda passed? I thought that maybe, with an open mind and a bit of humility, I might catch GOP leaders by surprise and ease their suspicions, helping to build working relationships that could carry over to other issues. And if, as was more likely, the gambit didn’t work and Republicans rejected my overtures, then at least voters would know who was to blame for Washington’s dysfunction.

  To lead our Legislative Affairs office, we had recruited a savvy former senior House Democratic staffer named Phil Schiliro. He was tall and balding, with a high-pitched laugh that masked a quiet intensity, and from Congress’s first day in session Phil set out in search of negotiating partners, calling in me or Rahm or Joe Biden to help court individual members where necessary. When some Republicans expressed interest in more infrastructure, we told them to give us a list of their priorities. When others said they couldn’t vote for a bill that included contraception funding dressed up as stimulus, we urged Democrats to strike the provision. When Eric Cantor suggested a reasonable modification to one of our tax provisions, despite the fact there was no chance he’d be voting for the bill, I told my staff to make the change, wanting to send a signal that we were serious about giving Republicans a seat at the table.

  Yet with each passing day, the prospect of Republican cooperation appeared more and more like a distant mirage. Those who’d initially expressed interest in working with us stopped returning our phone calls. GOP members of the House Appropriations Committee boycotted hearings on the Recovery Act, claiming that they weren’t being seriously consulted. Republican attacks on the bill in the press became less restrained. Joe reported that Mitch McConnell had been cracking the whip, preventing members of his caucus from even talking to the White House about the stimulus package, and Democratic House members said they’d heard the same thing from their GOP counterparts.

  “We can’t play” was how one Republican apparently put it.

  Bleak as things looked, I thought I still might have a chance to sway a few members during my visits to the House and Senate Republican caucuses, both of which were scheduled on January 27, the eve of the House vote. I took extra time to prepare my presentation, making sure I had all the facts and figures at my fingertips. The morning before the meetings, Rahm and Phil joined me in the Oval Office to review the arguments we thought Republicans might find most persuasive. We were about to load my motorcade for the drive to Capitol Hill when Gibbs and Axe walked into the Oval Office and showed me an AP wire story that had just come in, right after Boehner’s meeting with his caucus. HOUSE REPUBLICANS URGED TO OPPOSE STIMULUS BILL.

  “When did this happen?” I asked, scanning the article.

  “About five minutes ago,” Gibbs said.

  “Did Boehner call to give us a heads-up?” I asked.

  “No,” Rahm said.

  “Am I correct to assume, then, that this shit’s not on the level?” I said, as the group of us started heading outside toward the Beast.

  “That would be correct, Mr. President,” Rahm said.

  The caucus meetings themselves weren’t overtly hostile. Boehner, Cantor, and House Republican Conference chair Mike Pence were already at the lectern when I arrived (deftly avoiding a private conversation about the stunt they’d just pulled), and after Boehner’s brief introduction and some polite applause, I stepped up to speak. It was my first time at a House Republicans gathering, and it was hard not to be struck by the room’s uniformity: row after row of mostly middle-aged white men, with a dozen or so women and maybe two or three Hispanics and Asians. Most sat stone-faced as I briefly made the case for stimulus—citing the latest data on the economy’s meltdown, the need for quick action, the fact that our package
contained tax cuts Republicans had long promoted, and our commitment to long-term deficit reduction once the crisis had passed. The audience did perk up when I opened the floor for a series of questions (or, more accurately, talking points pretending to be questions), all of which I cheerfully responded to as if my answers mattered.

  “Mr. President, why doesn’t this bill do anything about all those Democratic-sponsored laws that forced banks to give mortgages to unqualified borrowers and were the real cause of the financial crisis?” (Applause.)

  “Mr. President, I’ve got a book here for you that shows the New Deal didn’t end the Depression but actually made things worse. Do you agree that the Democrats’ so-called stimulus is just repeating those mistakes and will leave a sea of red ink for future generations to clean up?” (Applause.)

  “Mr. President, will you get Nancy Pelosi to put her partisan bill aside and start over with the truly open process that the American people are demanding?” (Cheers, applause, a few hoots.)

  On the Senate side, the setting felt less stilted. Joe and I were invited to sit around a table with the forty or so senators in attendance, many of them our former colleagues. But the substance of the meeting was not much different, with every Republican who bothered to speak singing from the same hymnal, describing the stimulus package as a pork-filled, budget-busting, “special-interest bailout” that Democrats needed to scrap if they wanted any hope of cooperation.

  On the ride back to the White House, Rahm was apoplectic, Phil despondent. I told them it was fine, that I’d actually enjoyed the give-and-take.

  “How many Republicans do you think might still be in play?” I asked.

  Rahm shrugged. “If we’re lucky, maybe a dozen.”

  That proved optimistic. The next day, the Recovery Act passed the House 244 to 188 with precisely zero Republican votes. It was the opening salvo in a battle plan that McConnell, Boehner, Cantor, and the rest would deploy with impressive discipline for the next eight years: a refusal to work with me or members of my administration, regardless of the circumstances, the issue, or the consequences for the country.

  * * *

  —

  YOU MIGHT THINK that for a political party that had just suffered two cycles of resounding defeat, the GOP strategy of pugnacious, all-out obstruction would carry big risks. And during a time of genuine crisis, it sure wasn’t responsible.

  But if, like McConnell and Boehner, your primary concern was clawing your way back to power, recent history suggested that such a strategy made sense. For all their talk about wanting politicians to get along, American voters rarely reward the opposition for cooperating with the governing party. In the 1980s, Democrats retained their grip on the House (though not the Senate) long after Ronald Reagan’s election and the country’s shift to the right, in part because of the willingness of “responsible” Republican leaders to help make Congress work; the House flipped only after a Gingrich-led GOP turned Congress into an all-out brawl. Similarly, Democrats made no inroads against a Republican-controlled Congress by helping pass President Bush’s tax cuts or his prescription drug plan; they won back the House and Senate when they began challenging the president and Republican leaders on everything from Social Security privatization to the handling of the Iraq War.

  Such lessons weren’t lost on McConnell and Boehner. They understood that any help they offered my administration in mounting an effective, sustained government response to the crisis would only be to my political benefit—and would tacitly acknowledge the bankruptcy of their own anti-government, anti-regulation rhetoric. If, on the other hand, they fought a rearguard action, if they generated controversy and threw sand in the gears, they at least had a chance to energize their base and slow me and the Democrats down at a time when the country was sure to be impatient.

  In executing their strategy, Republican leaders had a couple of things going for them—starting with the nature of modern news coverage. From my time in the Senate and on the campaign trail, I’d gotten to know most of the national political reporters, and on the whole, I found them to be smart, hardworking, ethical, and committed to getting their facts straight. At the same time, conservatives weren’t wrong to think that in their personal attitudes the majority of news reporters probably fell at the more liberal end of the political spectrum.

  This would seem to make these reporters unlikely accomplices in McConnell’s and Boehner’s plans. But whether out of fear of appearing biased, or because conflict sells, or because their editors demanded it, or because it was the easiest way to meet the deadlines of a twenty-four-hour, internet-driven news cycle, their collective approach to reporting on Washington followed a depressingly predictable script:

  Report what one side says (quick sound bite included).

  Report what the other side says (opposing sound bite, the more insulting the better).

  Leave it to an opinion poll to sort out who’s right.

  Over time, my staff and I became so resigned to this style of “he said / he said” coverage that we could joke about it. (“In dueling press conferences today, the debate over the shape of planet Earth heated up, with President Obama—who claims the Earth is round—coming under withering attack from Republicans who insist that the White House has covered up documents proving the Earth is flat.”) In those first few weeks, though, with our White House communications team barely in place, we could still be surprised. Not just by the GOP’s willingness to peddle half-truths or outright lies about the contents of the Recovery Act (the claim that we were planning to spend millions on a Mob Museum in Las Vegas, for example, or that Nancy Pelosi had included $30 million to save an endangered mouse), but by the willingness of the press to broadcast or publish these whoppers as straight news.

  With enough badgering from us, an outlet might eventually run a story that fact-checked Republican claims. Rarely, though, did the truth catch up to the initial headlines. Most Americans—already trained to believe that the government wasted money—didn’t have the time or inclination to keep up with the details of the legislative process or who was or wasn’t being reasonable in negotiations. All they heard was what the Washington press corps told them—that Democrats and Republicans were fighting again, politicians were splurging, and the new guy in the White House was doing nothing to change it.

  Of course, efforts to discredit the Recovery Act still depended on the ability of GOP leaders to keep their members in line. At a minimum, they needed to make sure the stimulus package didn’t get enough support from stray Republicans to be deemed “bipartisan,” since (as McConnell would later explain) “when you hang the bipartisan tag on something, the perception is that differences have been worked out.” Their task was made easier now that the majority of GOP members hailed from districts or states that were solidly Republican. Their base of voters, fed a steady diet of Fox News, talk radio, and Sarah Palin speeches, was in no mood for compromise; in fact, the biggest threat to these representatives’ reelection prospects came from primary challengers who might accuse them of being closet liberals. Rush Limbaugh had already castigated Republicans like McCain for saying that with the election over, they now hoped for my success. “I hope Obama fails!” the talk radio show host had thundered. Back in early 2009, most Republican elected officials didn’t consider it wise to be quite that blunt in public (it was a different story in private, as we would later learn). But even those politicians who didn’t share Limbaugh’s sentiments knew that with that single statement, he was effectively channeling—and shaping—the views of a sizable chunk of their voters.

  Big conservative donors weighed in as well. Panicked by the cratering economy and the impact it was already having on their members’ bottom lines, traditional business organizations like the Chamber of Commerce eventually came out in favor of the Recovery Act. But their influence over the Republican Party had by then been supplanted by billionaire ideologues like David and Charles Koch, who ha
d spent decades and hundreds of millions of dollars systematically building a network of think tanks, advocacy organizations, media operations, and political operatives, all with the express goal of rolling back every last vestige of the modern welfare state. For them, all taxes were confiscatory, paving the road to socialism; all regulations were a betrayal of free-market principles and the American way of life. They saw my victory as a mortal threat—which is why, shortly after my inauguration, they pulled together a conclave of some of America’s wealthiest conservatives in a smartly manicured resort in Indian Wells, California, to map out a strategy to fight back. They didn’t want compromise and consensus. They wanted war. And they let it be known that Republican politicians without the stomach to resist my policies at every turn would not only find donations drying up but also might find themselves the target of a well-financed primary challenge.

  As for those Republicans who were still tempted to cooperate with me despite lobbying from constituents, donors, and conservative media outlets, good old-fashioned peer pressure usually did the trick. During the transition, I had met with Judd Gregg, a capable, decent GOP senator from New Hampshire, and offered to make him commerce secretary—part of my effort to deliver on my promise of bipartisan governance. He’d readily accepted, and in early February, we announced his nomination. With Republican opposition to the Recovery Act growing more boisterous by the day, though, as McConnell and the rest of leadership worked him over in caucus meetings and on the Senate floor and former First Lady Barbara Bush reportedly stepped in to dissuade him from joining my administration, Judd Gregg lost his nerve. A week after we’d announced his nomination, he called to withdraw.

  Not every Republican picked up on the rapidly shifting mood within their own party. On the day the Senate was to vote on the Recovery Act, I found myself in Fort Myers, Florida, at a town hall–style meeting meant to drum up public support for the bill and allow me to answer questions about the economy. Joining me was Florida governor Charlie Crist, a moderate Republican with a friendly, polished demeanor and the kind of good looks—tanned, silver-haired, sparkling white teeth—that seemed straight out of central casting. Crist was hugely popular at the time, having cultivated an image of someone who could work across party lines, avoiding divisive social issues and instead focusing on promoting business and tourism. He also knew that his state was in big trouble: As one of the hot spots of subprime lending and the housing bubble, Florida had an economy and state budget in free fall and in desperate need of federal help.