Why Obstructionism is Good Politics
The republican obstructionism in the senate SHOULD, in an ideal world, be a politically costly maneuver. But it won't be.
If voters were perfectly rational and had perfect information, they would associate the Republican brand in 2010 with the status quo. They would apportion blame appropriately for government's failure to act on several major issues (health care, carbon emissions, defecit management, and financial industry reform), with most of the blame going to the Republicans. Voters would say to themselves "Jesus, the country really sucks right now! Thanks George Bush (jerk)! Boy howdy, we haven't taken any action to really tackle any of our problems! What's up WITH THAT??? Congress can't do anything, and all they do is fight and bluster for the cameras. But if it wasn't for those dang Republcans and their filibustering, we'd at least have gotten something done."
But that's not what's gonna happen.
First of all, voters are myopic. It's been a whole YEAR since George Bush was in office. Can you remember the last nine years? I bet you can, because you, my reader, are probably beautiful and intelligent. You know who can't? The average American voter. Instead, they look around and say, "hey, lots of people I know are unemployed and my kid's teacher just got fired cause the states are all facing huge budget cuts and my 401K is still on life support. Goddamnit! It's the goddamn gub-ment's fault! Who's in power right now? Oh yeah..that Obama guy. I think I might have voted for him. Must be his fault...that fucker." They look around, make an assesment of the general condition of the country, and punish or reward whoever happens to be in power, regardless of how rational or irrational that might be.
(This is a gross oversimplification, but what do you want, this is a fuckin blog, not my dissertation).
This is why the President's party tends to lose seats in off-year elections. The President embodies the brand of the party in power, and people credit the President (usually wrongly) with whatever happens to be good or bad about the country. They also soon realize that all those fancy campaign promises the President made were conditional upon an unspoken but crucial phrase: "I will do X, Y, And Z...if Congress passes my proposals." There is a measure of disappointment when people realize the President is not, contrary to what he claimed in the campaign, a god on earth.
Ok, I'm kind of rambling. Back to obstructionism and why it's good politics.
Because voters tend to blame the party in power for 1. everything that's wrong with the country and 2. failure to accomplish anything in Congress, the Republicans face relatively low political risk in simply saying no to every goddamn bill or nominee that passes through the senate. Voters are not generally going to be well-informed enough to understand precisely how the senate works (I'm a ph.d. student in American politics, and even I have only a vague idea). Instead, they are just going to say "damn congress can't get anything done...throw the bums out!!!"
So, by virtue of being the minority party in Congress and of having a President from the opposite party, Republicans are not going to suffer anything like the kind of blame that they really should suffer from their senatorial obstructionism. They're using the predictable biases of the electorate as a political force field. It's a pretty good electoral strategy, but it's shitty policymaking.
posted by Joe @ 7:50 AM
4 Comments:
I believe in this case Republicans have the good fortune of having unpopular policy that happens to be bad to obstruct.
1.) health care – People know any time the government promises more for less it’s probably bunk. In this case it is. The only way to make this bill deficit neutral is to collect revenue for 10 years and only offer services for 6.
2.) Carbon emissions – Does anyone honestly believe 1 degree Celsius over the next 100 years is going to bring about Armageddon or at least a problem worth a few points of GDP for the foreseeable future? Lets at least figure out how to produce one climate model that reflects observed climate behavior before allocating trillions.
3.) Deficit management – The proposed freeze on discretionary spending amounts to a rounding error and is just more window dressing.
4.) Financial industry reform – I think most people are ambivalent about this. Most versions of this bill aren’t bad but some contain additional transaction fees that could force financial activity overseas.
You're making two points. One, that the proposals are bad policy. Two, that these bad policies are unpopular.
I'm not gonna argue the merits of the policies right now, but on the popularity question, I'm not sure the average voter has strong opinions about the details of the financial reform proposals or relative merits of cap and trade versus strict carbon limits versus carbon sequestration. While political elites and strong partisans have clear and consistent policy preferences, most voters on most issues don't (not at any level of detail anyway).
But, I guess my point in this post was that there is a political reward for success and a political punishment for failure that is independent of the substantive content of policies.
To this point, I read a really interesting paper recently. It showed that Americans tend to place themselves between the two parties, ideologically. They think the two parties are slightly to the right and slightly to the left of themselves. But, in terms of political PROCESS, they see both parties as being much, much more closed off from popular input than they would like. So, substantively, people are fairly happy with government, but procedurally, they hate it. Anyway...that's a long way of saying that procedural things have political consequences.
How did them obstructin’ Republicans do versus Clinton in that Government shutdown showdown? I don’t think you can deny that the perceived value of the actions being obstructed is the major contributing factor in the political success of the obstructing party. Newt overreached and paid the price.
hmm...interesting point. I'll have to contemplate that.
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