Remember when certain overly-ardent progressives questioned the president’s progressive credentials because he didn’t appoint Elizabeth Warren as head of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau? Here’s something to think about:
Nearly every Republican senator is vowing to block any presidential nominee to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) unless major changes are made to the agency.
In a letter sent to the president Thursday, 44 GOP senators said that any pick to become the first director of the CFPB, regardless of political affiliation, will be unacceptable unless the bureau is significatly altered to reduce its “unfettered authority.”
…
“The CFPB as created by the deeply-flawed Dodd-Frank Act is set to be one of the least accountable and most powerful agencies in Washington,” said Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). “The reforms outlined are necessary before we will consider any nominee to head this agency.”
The president could nominate the dead corpse of Ronald Reagan and the Republicans would still filibuster.
Maybe this example will help a couple of people understand how Washington works. The president doesn’t get to decide what he wants to do and then, presto, it is done. The way things work is that the president asks for something, and if it is okay with the Senate Republicans then it is done.
Did anybody watch this first Republican Presidential Debate (on Fox News) tonight?
I am just sitting down to watch it on the DVR and it’s like watching a REALLY BAD game show. I think I need to turn it off and watch it sometime when I’ve got a good supply of weed. I’ve had two Gin and Tonics so far and I’m finding it unbearable. And Rick Santorum needs a bigger and better dog to fuck him before he makes public appearances. He looks really uptight.
Okay. I am going to watch something else now. This debate thing really sucks.
I think Ron Paul (who’s extra nutty tonight) won, judging by the audience (in South Carolina.)
The guy (Gary Johnson, I think) who used to be Governor of New Mexico seemed okay at first but then I realized he’s just a typical Glibertarian who doesn’t think his policy ideas through to their logical conclusions. Scary.
The black guy from Godfathers pizza is entertaining but so was Michael Steele. And his policy proposals were no better. Ain’t going nowhere – at least that’s what I think this audience is thinking.
And Rick (Dog Fucker) Santorum is SO desperate for a new guvvumint job that you can smell it right through the Teevee. Was he home-schooled like his kids? He’s creepy and I don’t think he understands real people.
Oh and that Pawlenty guy… Snore. Snore. Snore. I’m familiar with him from when I lived in Minnesota and I never could quite understand why they elected HIM. But he followed Rick (The Body) Ventura, I think. Maybe they’d had enough of the batshit crazy flashy dude and went totally-opposite… Dull as old dirty dishwater Tim Pawlenty.
OMG! Frank Luntz’s focus group chose Herman Cain (Godfather’s Pizza) by a landslide. They thought he could beat Obama because he’s
blacka Republican Businessman!!!1!1!And Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, The Newt, The Donald and Michele Bachman weren’t there, of course. They all feel a big sad because these famous celebrity candidates wrote South Carolina off. What elitists!!1!!
So if Elizabeth Warren was nominated, what happens is….
nothing different.
If it’s a lose lose either way as you indicate, why not nominate her? Is there some rule she can’t fill the interim post and also be the nominee for the head of the thing later? It’s a bone to the base for no extra cost.
is that the President asks for so very little.
Oh, Ed, you’re a silly billy just like me. Very Serious People like Booman know that presidents are impotent figureheads — at least Democratic presidents are — and instead of making a fuss, we should all shrug our shoulders and stop complaining. Every Serious Person knows the only way not to lose is never to fight.
no, the problem is that the minority has effective veto power over legislation and appointments. That’s the problem.
I am already seeing negative political ads by unknown groups attacking Obama and Democrats on my TV. The election is more than 18 months out and the corporations and the Kochs or who knows who, are already running campaign ads even though we have no idea who the Republican nominee will be.
There are ways of getting an agency going without having a confirmed director. One of the most frequently used ways is to have an “acting director”. Elizabeth Warren’s job right now is as a consultant to the White House. That means that she can speak, at his instructions, for the President to the agency acting director. And the President can speak to Ben Bernanke, the chair of the governing board of the agency.
Or one could appoint a manager who doesn’t require Congressional approval to run the operations, conduct the rule-making and begin implementation and enforcement activities.
Timing is everything, and the debt ceiling “non-fight” is still going on. So I don’t expect President Obama to force the issue quite yet.
Too many ardent progressives take at face value what they read in Politico or attributed to “an Administration official”.
From the mission to capture Osama bin Laden, we know that the White House can control leaks. That would indicate a White House strategy of simultaneous conflicting messaging about what it intends to do, either as trial balloons or as a way of creating enough fog that the GOP cannot produce a counter-strategy easily.
The economy cannot take too much more waiting for the GOP offensive to collapse, or they will be rewarded again for obstruction. If not in the Presidency, in a continuation of GOP dominance of Congress.
that’s very different than the way it used to work.
the way it used to work, even after the democrats took over the House and Senate, was Bush would ask for something, and everyone rushed to say OK. Some democrats would give speeches objecting, and then roll over in the end, or be steamrolled by their leadership.
That’s one of the reasons they got their asses handed to them in 2010. But with the current crop of republicans, we may have another shot to squander a majority in 2012.
you have a very selective memory.
Remember when:
Bush had to (twice) use the budget reconciliation process to lower taxes on the rich (once with Cheney’s tie-breaking vote)
Bush didn’t want a congressional or independent investigation of 9/11
Bush didn’t want to create a Dept. of Homeland Security
Bush wanted Harriet Miers on the Supreme Court
Bush wanted to privatize Social Security
You always cite what Bush got, and never what he didn’t get. You list what he forced through, but never what he was forced to do against his will.
Just to be clear: the progressive critique is that Obama and Reid never did anything to challenge or change this dynamic. The “60 votes to do anything in the Senate” dynamic isn’t how things worked for the vast majority of the history of the Senate. It was innovated by Dole and now perfected by McConnell. Again, you can come back to me and say “there’s nothing Obama or Reid could do tactically or strategically to get us back to a time where the senate works like it did before Dole”, but that’s where the discussion is.
Recall that Frist as Senate majority leader undertook a pretty aggressive PR strategy when the Dems wouldn’t allow votes to confirm Bush’s radical judicial appointees. I don’t think Obama and Reid ever took that approach, for better or worse. My point is that progressives say, you create your own reality. You seem to be saying that things are what they are and you can’t change them, no matter what. I think that view drastically underestimates the fluidity of american politics and the ability of leadership to create new realities.
that’s fine as a point of debate, but it’s not fine when asking why something wasn’t done, like appointing Warren or any number of other things.
I argued strenuously that the Senate needed to change the rules. They didn’t. I guess some measure of blame for that can be leveled at the president, since he could have made a public case for it. But that’s one debate. What he can do in the absence of a change in the Senate rules is a separate debate. And it is a debate about reality.
but he has chosen not to. He has chosen to be the bipartisan president. That means that, unlike Bush, he will not criticize the other side. You possibly have noted that this is a unilateral disarmament deal. He does not criticize or blame republicans, but they blame and criticize him. The public being what it is, believes what they hear. If they hear “Democrats suck and are terrible” but never the other side, they will believe that Democrats suck and are terrible.
If Obama framed a compelling argument and presented it with enthusiasm, repetition, and craftiness, he might get success. But he is not going to do that, and so he gets his butt kicked by the Repukes on a consistent basis.
The realm problem is that the vast majority of self-described liberals WANT compromise. See the poll, 70% or something like that.
When people who are still willing to call themselves liberal want that, that simply has to change. Though of course I think criticizing Obama is one part of doing so.
West Wing was fiction. Things don’t really work like that.
Right- at this point it is just a point of debate. Totally agree.
But I think its an important thought exercise as we evaluate our leadership: in January 2009 could different political strategies and tactics been employed to limit the ability of McConnell to box the president in as he did? I think so and I’m sure that there are people in the party leadership who thought that way as well. Politcal strategists much smarter than I probably have thought of ways to shift this dynamic and limit McConnell’s ability to control the process votes of every member of his caucus. I’d hope people who had such ideas are elevated and rewarded for their foresight and those that were blindsided by this dynamic are demoted. I’m about as far from power and influence as possible, but this is the kind of stuff that I think really matters.
Perhaps it would reflect reality more if your last sentence indicated approval by Koch brothers rather than Senate Republicans.
Did I hallucinate or was there a speech Obama gave a few weeks ago where he called Paul Ryan’s plan un-American to his face?
By the way, it sounds like the Republicans are giving up on privatizing Medicare, but don’t make the mistake of thinking that’s because Obama acted tough. They were getting hell from their constituents and had to fold. That’s how political pressure moves the government, not through some Green Lantern act of willpower by the President.
but true progressives will attack the president on script no matter what.
If the Republicans are going to block whoever is appointed, that’s an argument to appoint Warren. You get a strong spokesperson for a politically popular message, who will do a serious job if she does eventually get it, and no more problems from the Repubs than you were going to get anyway.