Obama and America’s Political Future

Theda Skocpol

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780674065970
• eBook ISBN: 9780674071643
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Barack Obama's galvanizing victory in 2008, coming amid the greatest economic crisis since the 1930s, opened the door to major reforms. But the president quickly faced skepticism from supporters and fierce opposition from Republicans, who scored sweeping wins in the 2010 midterm election. Here, noted political scientist Theda Skocpol surveys the political landscape and explores its most consequential questions: What happened to Obama's "new New Deal"? Why have his achievements enraged opponents more than they have satisfied supporters? How has the Tea Party's ascendance reshaped American politics?

Skocpol's compelling account rises above conventional wisdom and overwrought rhetoric. The Obama administration's response to the recession produced bold initiatives—health care reform, changes in college loans, financial regulation—that promise security and opportunity. But these reforms are complex and will take years to implement. Potential beneficiaries do not readily understand them, yet the reforms alarm powerful interests and political enemies, creating the volatile mix of confusion and fear from which Tea Party forces erupted. Skocpol dissects the popular and elite components of the Tea Party reaction that has boosted the Republican Party while pushing it far to the right at a critical juncture for U.S. politics and governance.

Skocpol's analysis is accompanied by contributions from two fellow scholars and a former congressman. At this moment of economic uncertainty and extreme polarization, as voters prepare to render another verdict on Obama's historic presidency, Skocpol and her respondents help us to understand its triumphs and setbacks and see where we might be headed next.

1

OBAMA’S NEW DEAL, TEA PARTY REACTION, AND AMERICA’S POLITICAL FUTURE

Theda Skocpol

Just weeks after the 2008 election, the cover of the November 24, 2008, issue of Time magazine featured a broadly grinning Barack Obama wearing a fedora and riding FDR-style in an open convertible car, a cigarette in a long silver holder jutting from his lips. Entitled “The New New Deal—What Barack Obama Can Learn from F.D.R.—and What Democrats Need to Do,” the magazine’s feature stories explained how newly elected President Obama might propel a shift in U.S. governance and politics comparable to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first New Deal in the 1930s. The stars were aligned, the Time authors suggested, for the incoming Obama administration, backed by robust Democratic majorities in Congress, to fashion public programs and tax measures that would help a majority of Americans—and do so in a way that could cement Democrats in their majority for years to come.1

Time might have been a bit over the top, but many pundits at the time agreed that momentum in U.S. politics lay with the Democrats. After all, the new Democratic president-elect was smart, eloquent, and very popular, backed by a broad, cross-regional, and multiracial coalition dominated by voters under age 45. Amid unpopular wars and a deepening economic downturn, most Americans seemed to be looking to Obama and Washington for “change you can believe in.” By contrast, Republicans were stung not just by the presidential loss but also by huge setbacks in Congress and statehouses; they were also hampered by the broad unpopularity of outgoing GOP president George W. Bush. Reduced to a hard core centered in the once-Confederate South and the inner West, Republicans were virtually written off by many commentators in late 2008. Obama and the Democrats appeared to enjoy an extraordinary opportunity to use federal government power to counter the economic downturn and begin to reverse the increased inequality and spreading social insecurities of recent decades. If Obama Democrats could fashion a second New Deal, perhaps political good fortune would smile for some time on the new president’s party.

How fast electoral fortunes—and pundit prognostications—can turn around. Obama’s popularity declined only months into his presidency, and by the fall of 2009 substantial majorities questioned his economic stewardship. More telling, Democratic congressional fortunes took what turned out to be a portentous turn for the worse as early as January 2010, when a special Senate election in Massachusetts to fill the seat of recently deceased liberal lion Ted Kennedy shockingly resulted in victory for a conservative Republican backed by populist protesters in the Tea Party. Nine and a half months later, gale-force winds hit Democrats as Barack Obama’s party experienced defeats of epic proportions in the November 2010 elections. Sixty-three seats switched from Democrats to Republicans in the House of Representatives, forcing the Democratic speaker of the 111th House, Nancy Pelosi, to hand the gavel to GOP speaker John Boehner just after noon on Wednesday, January 5, 2011. Of equal if not greater significance, the 2010 elections changed party fortunes in the states, as Republicans won 23 out of 37 gubernatorial races, and now control 30 out of 50 statehouses.2 Republicans also made huge gains in state legislatures, and now hold full sway in legislatures plus governorships in seventeen states. This happened just prior to redistricting decisions following the 2010 census that would tip further the Republican way because of such state-level gains. For Democrats losses in the electorally pivotal region of the Midwest were especially worrisome. The GOP is no longer bottled up in the old South plus the inner West; now the party holds sway in states such as Florida, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin, which are keys to Barack Obama’s bid for reelection in 2012.

Did the huge 2008 to 2010 turnaround back toward the Republicans happen because President Obama and the Democrats failed to deliver on their major campaign promises made during 2007 and 2008? It would be hard to reach such a conclusion because the record of policy accomplishments and promises fulfilled was impressive.3 President Obama and the Democrats of the 111th Congress fashioned landmark pieces of legislation for comprehensive health reform, the revamping of higher educational loans, and the regulation of Wall Street financial practices. The Obama administration used cabinet powers to spur school reforms, improve health and safety enforcement, enforce immigration laws, and tackle environmental threats. Economists of various persuasions and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office agree that the fledgling Obama administration and congressional majorities also took the basic steps necessary in 2009 to cut short a financial crisis, prevent the sudden disappearance of the U.S. auto industry, and forestall overall economic collapse into a second Great Depression. During 2009 and 2010, America’s beleaguered economy turned from nearly unprecedented contraction to gradual growth.4 All this happened as the White House pulled back from the protracted bloodletting in Iraq and, as Obama had promised during the 2008 campaign, redoubled the military effort in Afghanistan in preparation for starting a pullback in 2011.

Big policy accomplishments there may have been, but the projected political payoffs for Democrats certainly did not materialize. Leading into the fall 2010 elections, the economy remained in the doldrums and unemployment was close to 10 percent. In this dire economic situation, Obama’s early presidency was not only proclaimed a failure by his opponents but also deemed a disappointment by many of his initial supporters.5 The House of Representatives shifted to GOP control and shifted markedly toward the ideological far right. Republicans who took office in 2011 smelled blood. GOP leaders declared their determination to block any further Democratic initiatives, roll back public spending to the level of 2008 before Obama took office, and repeal or eviscerate the Democrats’ early signature accomplishment, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. Indeed, as its first big move in 2011, the GOP House changed budget scoring rules and limited amendments and debate in order to rush forward quickly with a full repeal vote on health reform, taking this aggressive step even before President Obama could deliver his next State of the Union Address in front of the newly seated 112th Congress. Thereafter, Republicans in Congress—and in many key states as well—embarked on unending legislative guerrilla warfare against Obama and Democratic programs and priorities. Erase the Obama era altogether! That, in essence, was the rallying cry of the Republicans after their 2010 rebound.

Far from the advent of sustained Democratic dominance, in short, the early Obama presidency gave way to conservative backlash. And the GOP electoral rebound may continue. Because there are 23 Democratic Senate seats at stake in 2012, compared to only 10 currently held by Republicans, the GOP may capture a Senate majority, while it will be difficult for Democrats to reclaim the House in 2012. Obama may or may not be defeated in a 2012 GOP bid for full control of all branches of the federal government. But GOP primary contests to see who wins the opportunity to try to make Obama a one-term president, followed by a high-stakes presidential contest, will keep right-wing priorities front and center on the national political agenda through 2012 and beyond.

The startling turnarounds of recent U.S. politics—from a change election in 2008 to another switcheroo in 2010—raise fundamental questions. The pages that follow explore three sets of issues and suggest answers or possibilities, to the extent possible in dealing with ongoing events.

What happened to that “new New Deal” predicted for Obama and the Democrats? This is the first question, already posed. Fresh policymaking may merit the label, but the political results were not as expected, for several reasons. During his first two years, Obama had to deal with a sudden financial and economic meltdown, and did so in ways that looked like a betrayal to many Americans worried about loss of savings, livelihoods, and jobs. Although Democrats seemed to be “in charge” in Washington, D.C., legislative achievements came slowly and with messy, controversial political bargains that looked highly partisan. Given current media dynamics and presidential choices, policy developments and shortfalls were never well explained to citizens, leaving them angry or anxious amid the continuing economic crisis. Most achievements by Obama and the Democrats were invisible or worrisome to supporters, yet provocative and threatening to opponents. Politically, it was the worst combination—leading to friends who stood down while enemies mobilized.

Mention of opponents reminds us that the story of 2009 and 2010 was not just about Democrats in Washington. It was also about an explosive Tea Party that refocused and reshaped the GOP. We have to ask not only why Republicans rebounded—a certain amount of that was always in the cards for 2010—but why the party hurtled toward the far right and adopted an increasingly fierce and rigid antigovernment stance. Parties usually make gains through moderation, but the exact opposite happened in this case. I will dissect the popular and elite components of the Tea Party reaction to Obama’s presidency that helped to reposition the Republican Party in ways likely to reverberate for years to come.

Finally, after I probe Obama’s “halfway New Deal,” and assess the whys and wherefores of the GOP’s lunge toward the right, we will look ahead. In an era of major, inescapable national challenges, where is U.S. politics headed next? What do the crosswinds of political changes of the past few years portend for the vitality of our democracy and the effectiveness of our governance?

Obama’s Halfway New Deal

In a number of ways, the November 2008 election seemed to open the door to more than incremental shifts in U.S. policy and politics. Most presidential contests after 1988 had culminated in plurality victories or very close outcomes, but Barack Obama won decisively—especially for a Democrat in recent memory. Obama’s margin over John McCain was 53 percent to 46 percent in the total popular vote, and 365 to 173 in the Electoral College. At the same time, congressional Democrats strengthened their majorities in both the House and the Senate—and midway through 2009, when the protracted court battles in Minnesota were finally settled, the 58 Democrats plus 2 Independents in the Senate Democratic caucus gained some possibility of overcoming GOP filibusters.

The U.S. elections of 2006 and 2008 were also marked by the mobilization of new blocs of voters into greater participation, as well as enhanced support for the Democratic Party. Younger voters raised their level of engagement; African Americans turned out in droves to vote for the first African American presidential candidate; and Latino voters increased their level of participation and shifted toward a greater margin of support for Democrats.6 Around the November 2008 election, commentators especially noted the age-gradient of partisan divisions, and trumpeted the Democratic Party, preferred by under-45-year-olds, as the party of the future.7

Barack Obama won the presidency at a juncture when most Americans of all political persuasions were disillusioned with his predecessor, George W. Bush, and the policies Bush had pursued with GOP support. To reach the White House backed by congressional party majorities after the country has “repudiated” the predecessors bodes well for an ambitious president determined to change policy directions.8 In addition, some analysts would say that it is good for a president who wants to use federal power vigorously to come to office during a deep economic downturn, with businesses and average citizens open to a helping hand from government.9 Barack Obama arrived in Washington just as an epochal financial meltdown was plunging the country into the Great Recession, the deepest economic downturn since the 1930s.

Finally, Obama made no secret that he would seek to change the direction of federal social and fiscal policies. During the 2007 primaries and the 2008 general election, Obama promised to help average Americans and argued that prosperous families, making more than $250,000 a year, should pay higher taxes. Candidate Obama called for growth and economic renewal “from the bottom up” rather than the top down, aiming to reinvigorate the American middle class and broaden its ranks.10 Obama’s pledges to change direction followed years of federal policies that had redistributed wealth upward, while reducing taxes on the very rich and eliminating many regulatory limits on business.11

THE CHALLENGE OF REALIZING CHANGE

Even at the height of speculation about a possible New Deal, analysts sounded notes of caution and pointed toward predictable roadblocks. U.S. electoral outcomes normally swing back and forth—and a rebound for the out-party is especially likely in midterm congressional elections when the other party controls the presidency and both houses of Congress. FDR’s 1936 landslide was followed by midterm losses of 71 seats in the House and half a dozen in the Senate; Lyndon Johnson’s Democratic Party lost 47 House seats two years after its landslide win in 1964. In general, the party in power has lost 22 seats in the House since World War II, and the losses have been higher when presidential approval ratings slipped below 50 percent (as was the case for Obama during 2010). In general, older, richer, and whiter voters are the ones most likely to turn out in midterm elections—and according to exit polling for the 2008 election, these were the demographics least enamored of Barack Obama.12 Savvy analysts knew from the start—and so did Democratic Party strategists—that the president and his congressional copartisans would likely face electoral setbacks in 2010.

Beyond normal electoral swings, it has long been well documented in survey research that Americans are ideologically cautious about strong government or governmental activism. From the very beginning of mass surveys and continuing until the present, researchers have noted that if you ask Americans abstract questions—such as “Do you agree that people in government waste a lot of money we pay in taxes?”—they favor the free market and oppose government intervention; but if you ask them about specifics—such as “Do you support Social Security?” or “Would you be willing to pay more taxes for early childhood education?”—they tend to support liberal positions about active government.13 Americans are, in short, philosophical conservatives and operational liberals. This means that even if Americans approve many specific measures furthered by President Obama and the Democrats, popular worries could be stoked by political opponents. As a young, change-oriented president, Obama would have faced such worries under any circumstances. But the spreading economic distress of 2009 and 2010 generated genuine fear that was readily exploited by political foes who equated even mild government activism with “radicalism.”

The divisions inherent in a large congressional majority would also predictably bedevil the Obama White House. Of course, substantial Democratic majorities created opportunities for policy changes; but apparent openings to pass new legislation were compromised by significant intraparty divisions, which would make it hard to overcome GOP opposition reinforced by filibusters in the Senate. In the 111th Congress, as always, the ranks of congressional Democrats included not only liberals but also moderates and conservatives who oppose tightening government regulations or raising taxes even on the very wealthy. On key issues, ideological splits were reinforced by regional divisions. For example, Obama’s call for energy reform was haunted by the split between Democratic lawmakers from coal-producing states and those from regions with businesses focused on developing other sources of energy; and health care reform was slowed, in part, because of tensions between legislators from the (mostly midwestern) states that provide health care at lower cost and the (eastern and western) states where costs are higher (even taking account of the overall cost of living). Immigration is yet another topic that splits legislators within each party along largely regional lines, including the Democrats.

Notwithstanding such typical sources of push and pull in U.S. politics, Obama’s push for changes in federal policies started out strong. The new president enjoyed sky-high public approval ratings and quickly persuaded Congress to pass the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the so-called stimulus), which injected nearly a trillion dollars into the economy and included initial resources for new policy initiatives in education, clean energy production, and health care.14 Congressional Democrats passed and Obama quickly signed legislation about fair pay and children’s health insurance that had been vetoed under President George W. Bush.

Somewhat to the surprise of D.C. insiders (who expect new presidents to pivot away from electoral rhetoric), President Obama pressed forward to meet the promises he made during the 2008 campaign. His first budget was called A New Era of Responsibility: Renewing America’s Promise, and was far from the usual snoozy bureaucratic treatise. In visionary language, the budget called for regulatory shifts and new directions in taxing and spending. It spelled out proposals to move away from providing federal subsidies to favored private industries and tax cuts for the very wealthy, while shifting resources toward broadening access to higher education, stimulating K–12 school reform, paying for health insurance for all Americans, and encouraging new environmentally friendly practices. In contrast to the Republican legislative strategy of relentlessly cutting taxes and talking about spending cuts without delivering them, Obama candidly proposed a fiscal policy that would expand social benefits for middle- and lower-income Americans and pay for them with specific spending...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword by Daniel Carpenter
• 1. Obama’s New Deal, Tea Party Reaction, and America’s Political Future
• 2. A New Deal Fantasy Meets Old Political Realities
• 3. Obama’s Problem: Misreading the Mandate
• 4. Obama and the Challenge of Submerged Policies
• 5. Making Sense of America’s Political Maelstrom
• Notes
• About the Authors
• Index