On April 28, during a rare prime-time press conference, Bush sounded intent on staying above the fray.
“I felt that people could work — work together in good faith. It’s just a lot of politics in the town. It’s kind of a zero-sum attitude…. I’ll continue to do my best. I’ve tried to make sure the dialogue is elevated. I don’t believe I’ve resorted to name-calling here in Washington, D.C. I find that to not be productive.”
That was then. Now, the president who ran in 2000 on the pledge that he knew how to bring Dems and Republicans together, and be a “uniter, not a divider,” is trying a slightly different tack.
President Bush poured out his most politically confrontational rhetoric since his reelection to a huge gathering of Republican donors last night, asserting that Democrats “stand for nothing but obstruction” on Social Security and other issues on his agenda.
Bush has been working to enlist Democrats in his plan to revamp Social Security, but his remarks showed frustration with the opposition’s unified refusal to negotiate unless he backs off key tenets of his plan.
“This is not leadership,” he scolded, speaking in a vast hall at the Washington Convention Center that was bathed in blue light. “It is the philosophy of the stop sign, the agenda of the roadblock, and our country and our children deserve better.”
And Scott McClellan kept up this line of attack yesterday.
The White House accused Democratic leaders on Wednesday of obstructing President Bush’s agenda in a second straight day of combative attacks against the minority party on Capitol Hill.
“I think the American people reject those who simply say no and stand in the way of getting things done,” White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters.
I wonder if the Bush gang has thought through the wisdom of this strategy. I also wonder if Dems could really be this lucky.
The most obviously counter-productive part of this new rhetorical tack is how it feeds into the worst public perceptions about politics in Washington. Here we are, in 2005, with Republicans controlling literally everything (the White House, Senate, House, judiciary, and a majority of the nation’s governors), and the president is publicly railing against Democrats, labeling them the cause of all of his problems.
If the polls are right, and voters are getting a little sick of partisan bickering, Bush is poised to push his already-low approval rating even lower. The president is supposed to be above name-calling and finger-pointing, and yet that’s exactly what the White House has chosen to do this week.
Just as importantly, the Bush gang also seems to be misreading (again) where the public wants the nation to go.
“We’ve made some progress in this session of Congress,” McClellan said. “But too often lately you’re seeing Democratic leaders holding up the stop sign and saying no to everything that we’re working to achieve on behalf of the American people, and that’s unfortunate.”
This assumes the public embraces the Republican agenda. It doesn’t. If anything, the public wants Dems to “hold up the stop sign” in order to keep Republicans from going too far. A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll helped highlight this fact.
Which of the following roles would you like to see Democrats in Congress play?
Work in a bi-partisan way with Republicans to help pass President Bush’s legislative priorities so that we do not have gridlock, or provide a balance to make sure that President Bush and the Republicans do not go too far in pushing their agenda.
Americans want an end to “gridlock,” right? Wrong. A surprisingly strong 57% majority of the public wants Dems to “provide a balance so Bush and the Republicans don’t go too far,” as opposed to only 33% who want the Dems to “work in a bi-partisan way to pass Bush’s legislative priorities.”
Bush sees this landscape and believes the smartest way to proceed is to last out at Democrats even more, working under the bizarre notion that name calling and partisan bickering will lead to greater cooperation.
Who thought up this strategy?