Count me among those whose immediate reaction to hearing about President Obama's proposal to freeze discretionary federal spending for three years was to look around for a blunt object with which I could crack open my skull and try to extract knowledge that he was doing it directly out of my brain. And no, the argument that some may stay the same while others may go down more than average is cold comfort. Am I happy if energy research takes the hit rather than education? Environmental enforcement rather than housing assistance? No thank you, these are all my babies and I remember that Sophie's Choice ended badly. Let me sacrifice agricultural subsidies (without sacrificing Food Stamps) and then we can talk.
This is so wrong, such a weak approximation of what Republicans and conservatives might want him to do, that I searched for another explanation. Perhaps he is doing because he wants to show conservative Democrats that he's willing to do it.
And perhaps he wants us to beat the crap out of him over it, to show them that it won't work.
I haven't seen the phrase "11-dimensional chess" here for a while, but in the good old three dimensional chess of politics it can be a good strategy sometimes to show people who want to pull you in one direction or another than your hands are tied. (We on the left should know -- it certainly happens to us often enough.) Well, maybe he's doing the same thing now to the right.
If we react to this with horror -- and really, folks, we should, and if you stop talking about "domestic discretionary spending and just list the programs that are getting frozen, you'll see why -- then he has to go back to the Bayhs and the Conrads and the Nelsons and the Snowes and say "look, I tried it your way, and people flipped out, saying that I was breaking the very tools I needed to dig us out of a recession."
Many of these conservatives are not all that bright (hi, Evan Bayh!) and they actually need to see consequences happen before they believe in them. So think of the spasm of pain we've seen here as a "consequence." This may be what they need to see -- that this lead trial balloon ain't floating nowhere -- before they agree to Leave Barack Alone.
That means that this is one of the times when a spasm of anguish is the correct response to one of the President's proposals, because it strengthens his hand against his conservative opponents. So that we don't get another half-dozen GCBWs in one night again (see you all again soon!), I suggest some ground rules.
- Stress that we don't hate Obama. We love Obama.
- Stress that we want him to succeed.
- Stress that we want the economy to flourish.
- Stress that discretionary spending is what can help the economy.
- Express understanding that he's under pressure from so called deficit-hawks (or, as someone referred to Bayh recent, "deficit peacocks.")
- Express that, nevertheless, we have got to howl at him until he gives up the crazy.
- Talk specifics: what programs will be hurt, how hurting them will hurt the economy.
- Mention that the conservative talk about extending the Bush tax cuts to the wealthy is, in this context, insane.
When you see me beating up Obama about this, it is with the above principles in mind. The louder we are, the quicker he can abandon this plan -- even if he stupidly (yes, "stupidly") has to include it in the SOTU to give the Republicans an applause line and a videotape they can play later to show how he promised it and then abandoned it -- and start thinking like a liberal economist. We should criticize Obama from a standpoint of fundamental love and respect. But we should be screaming our lungs out so that in talking to conservatives he can point to the mad dogs we are as the reason that, so sadly, he cannot be as stupid a President as they would prefer.
If it's a trial balloon -- and not everything mentioned in a SOTU address does get enacted, ever or for long, after all -- then let's bring out the big guns and shoot it to smithereens.