The nation's capital was hammered with 32 inches of snow last weekend. The storm pushed Washington, D.C.'s total snowfall this winter to 45 inches — the average annual snowfall is 15-17 inches. That said, things were frozen in D.C. for some time before the snow began falling Friday evening, and certainly before President Barack Obama delivered his State of the Union address a few weeks ago.
President Obama covered standard ground in his State of the Union, but what stood out most about it was his highly accusatory, disdainful tone toward Congressional Republicans. As the speech wore on, Obama reminded viewers and congressmen alike that the Bush administration had created a fiscal mess long "before I walked in the door."
Obama then proceeded to scold Republicans, to denounce them as the "party of no," and to vilify them for working in lockstep against the Democrats, forcing 60 votes "to do any business in this town." Obama continued on the warpath later that week in Baltimore, Md. where he locked horns with state Republicans in a heated televised debate.
Somehow, President Obama has forgotten that Democrats and Republicans are not supposed to agree on every policy issue, and that core philosophical differences still exist between the Left and the Right. With explicit regard to two major initiatives, health care and job creation, Obama seems to expect Republican leadership to automatically approve of a massive expansion of government through health-care reform, and to sanction the immensely interventionist $787-billion stimulus package passed last year.
In all fairness to President Obama, the Republicans certainly have refused to cooperate with the Democrats — they have not engaged in any modicum of bipartisanship. The Republicans have made life incredibly hard for Obama and the Democrats — and most certainly not by accident. The nomination hearings for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor this past summer were an excellent example of the sort of senseless, premeditated partisan bickering that has become standard from Republicans.
Leadership in both houses of Congress require that the majority engages the minority in some capacity beyond name calling; the majority must listen to ideas, incorporate policies from both sides and eventually hammer out some sort of amalgamation of both sides' ideologies. The Democrats did not exhibit any quality of leadership during the first year of Obama's presidency, largely because they didn't need to with a cloture coalition intact. But their inability to lead their party, no less all of Congress, became painfully obvious last fall during the struggle over health-care reform.
The Democrats railed against the Republicans, asserting that Americans "can't afford the politics of no." But Americans can't exactly afford the "politics of yes." Americans need neither the politics of "yes" nor "no" — call it the "politics of maybe," if you like. Ultimately, Democrats need to realize that blaming George W. Bush for their problems does nothing to stabilize the economy, create jobs or bring about meaningful change in governance; Obama's recent over-aggressiveness does not help, either. Republicans must realize that simply rejecting anything the Democrats propose is brazen, shameless obstruction, and is clear evidence that both leadership and constructive policy is lacking at all levels. Both donkeys and elephants need to learn to play nice in the same pen to avoid a catastrophic legislative logjam.
In short, now that the Democrats have lost their supermajority, they must legitimately engage the Republicans — and the Republicans, for that matter, need to make themselves worth engaging. Both parties need to stop beating around the bush (Republicans) or beating the Bush (Democrats) and get to work. It may seem like a common-sense conclusion, but as evidenced by the current deep freeze of the Washington political process, common sense may not be so common.
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Teddy Minch is a senior majoring in political science. He hosts "The Rundown," a talk show from 3 to 5 p.m. every Friday on WMFO. He can be reached at Theodore.Minch@tufts.edu.
