By any measure it has been an amazing lame duck session for Congress, and the country will benefit. President Obama certainly deserves credit as well as the Democrats in Congress. Unfortunately, the spin coming from even the left wing writers underestimates what President Obama can do. The last paragraphs of Gail Collins' column today in The New York Times (here) summarizes the spin.
But let’s admit it. Nothing would have gotten done if Obama hadn’t swallowed that loathsome compromise on tax cuts for the wealthy.I normally agree with Gail Collins and love her columns, but in this case she is selling President Obama's skills when combined with the inherent bully pulpit of the President short by a mile. The strategy devised by President Obama to get the nuclear arms treaty ratified exemplifies how President Obama should approach all the legislation that he really wants. Peter Baker wrote a great article in The New York Times today (here) entitled "Obama's Gamble on Arms Pact Pays Off". In the article, Mr. Baker explains how President Obama was following his regular approach of courting one or a couple Republican Senators to get their support by essentially bribing them. In this case it was Senator Jon Kyl but of course in the end, Senator Kyl turned against President Obama and vowed to vote against the treaty. At that point according to Mr. Baker, some of President Obama's advisors suggested that he back off because it would be bad to fight and not get the treaty ratified. Here is how Mr. Baker describes how President Obama got the treaty ratified:
If he’d taken the high road, Congress would be in a holiday war. The long-term unemployed would be staggering into the new year without benefits. The rest of the world would look upon the United States as a country so dysfunctional that it can’t even ratify a treaty to help keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists. The people who worked at ground zero would still be uncertain about their future, and our gay and lesbian soldiers would still be living in fear.
It’s depressing to think that there was no way to win that would not have involved giving away billions of dollars to people who don’t need it. But it’s kind of cheery to think we have a president who actually does know what he’s doing.
Some aides counseled Mr. Obama to stand down. Losing a treaty vote, as one put it, would be “a huge loss.” But Mr. Obama decided that afternoon to make one of the biggest gambles of his presidency and demand that the Senate approve the treaty by the year’s end. “We’ve just got to go ahead,” he told aides, who recounted the conversation on Wednesday.Although not included in Mr. Baker's article, President Obama included a lot of bribes in the form of pork spending. Zachary Roth wrote an article (here) entitled " Russian arms accord may come at a cost". These paragraphs sum up his thesis.
Along the way, he had to confront his own reluctant party leadership and circumvent the other party’s leadership. He mounted a five-week campaign that married public pressure and private suasion. He enlisted the likes of Henry A. Kissinger, asked Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany to help and sent a team of officials to set up a war room of sorts on Capitol Hill. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. had at least 50 meetings or phone calls with senators.
As a condition of support for the accord, Senate Republicans held out for a pledge from the Obama administration to modernize the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal. That demand, in itself, is not necessarily a problem. After all, many of the warheads, built in the Cold War, are rapidly degrading.So the President's strategy of constant public pushing for the treaty using anybody he could find to help combined with constant lobbying of Republican Senators and some good old fashion pork barrel spending was a successful strategy. President Obama made it clear exactly what he wanted, he made it clear he would not accept any changes in the treaty, and he went to the public to get their support so that they would pressure their Senators. He also used all the regular Washington ways of lobbying and bribing. When President Obama really wants something, and he is willing to risk losing, he knows exactly how to get what he wants.
But the modernization isn't likely to be carried out in anything like a rational, cost-effective way. Case in point: It will likely include more than $6 billion dollars for a uranium processing facility, to be built at the Y-12 weapons compound in Oak Ridge, Tennessee (pictured). Indeed, the states' two GOP senators, Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander, both said that money for modernization -- and therefore, in all likelihood, pork for their district -- was a key condition of their support.
Why is that a problem? In 2005, an independent, blue-ribbon task force concluded that the U.S. weapons complex, which occupies eight separate sites across the country, is way too spread out. Shuttering some of the more peripheral sites could save billions, improve security, and make it easier for the complex to adjust to the needs of the 21st century. Y-12, it implied, was a top candidate for closure. But those recommendations were never acted upon.
What I don't know is what does he really want. What is he willing to risk fighting for even if he might lose?
I am really happy and proud that he gambled and fought for the arms treaty. It is good for our country and the world. Unfortunately, I struggle to understand why President Obama has been unwilling to gamble on the other things that he says he supports.
Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal
