The headline on Fred Hiatt's latest column immediately got my attention: "Obama could get things done by governing today." As best as I can tell, the president is eager to govern, but has run into some trouble with congressional Republicans who won't budge, so I was eager to hear how Hiatt would improve the political paralysis.
In context, it's worth noting the broad strokes of the White House's approach to policymaking in 2013 and 2014: meet Republicans in the middle with mainstream proposals on immigration, gun violence, and deficit reduction, while positioning Democrats for gains in the 2014 midterms. There's obviously more to it than that, but generally speaking, that's what Obama has in mind.
Given this, how does Hiatt believe the president "could get things done by governing today"? Apparently, it's a thesis built on compromise.
I agree that the Republican Party has moved far to the right and that too many of its representatives equate compromise with treason. But I also think it would be a mistake to accept that "to get anything done" Obama has to secure majorities in both houses of Congress. [...]
The most rational policy position isn't always in the middle. But you can't solve the debt challenge without raising more revenue and controlling entitlement costs. You can't fix immigration unless you provide a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants and establish laws and procedures to discourage future illegal entry.
Eventually, in other words, you're going to have to wheel and deal and compromise -- you're going to have to govern. It might as well be now.
"BipartisanThink" is a word that's been making the rounds lately -- I think Matt Yglesias came up with it -- and I've grown rather fond of it. There are few angles to BipartisanThink, which is intended to explain why so many Beltway pundits reflexively blame President Obama for congressional Republicans' intransigence, but if I understand the concept correctly, BipartisanThink is also defined in part by pundits agreeing with the president while being reluctant to say so.
Hiatt's piece captures the phenomenon almost perfectly.
How can Obama "get things done by governing today"? Well, he can approach the fiscal debate by offering a combination of new revenue and entitlement reforms -- which might be more compelling advice if the president hadn't already endorsed this exact proposal.
Similarly, Obama could help reform immigration laws by offering a combination of citizenship provisions and border enforcement -- which, again, is what the president has already done.
Hiatt's advice, in other words, is for the president to improve his odds of getting stuff done ... by sticking with the status quo. In fact, it seems Hiatt agrees with the White House's approach completely, but since that might make for an uninspired column, Hiatt presents Obama's ideas as if they weren't already Obama's ideas.
And if this seems familiar, it's because I feel like BipartisanThink is starting to dominate the discourse in peculiar ways. Ron Fournier blames Obama for GOP intransigence, urging the president to do what the president is already doing; David Brooks wants Obama to unveil a plan for a sequester alternative that mirrors the Obama's existing plan for a sequester alternative; Peggy Noonan wanted the president to pursue a stimulus package in 2009 with infrastructure investments identical to Obama's stimulus package in 2009; Bill Keller believes Obama should endorse the fiscal goals of the Simpson-Bowles agenda that the president has already endorsed.
I can appreciate why a series of columns blaming radicalized congressional Republicans for refusing to compromise or accept any proposal that requires concessions might seem tiresome. They'd be accurate, but Beltway pundits may not consider such commentary exciting.
But the alternative -- pundits expressing disappointment with an Obama agenda they endorse -- is increasingly odd.
