Are people really ‘sick and tired of the fighting and the gridlock’?

May 5, 2007

The WaPo had a front-page item today on congressional Dems finding their legislative agenda stalled. The House has passed a variety of key pieces of legislation, but a combination of Republican obstructionism, presidential vetoes, and attention to the war in Iraq has slowed down progress. A variety of Dems quoted in the piece agree that they want to do much more to cross items of their to-do list this year.

But the piece also included a quote from former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, who’s been increasingly critical of the congressional Dems.

“The primary message coming out of the November election was that the American people are sick and tired of the fighting and the gridlock, and they want both the president and Congress to start governing the country,” warned Leon E. Panetta, a chief of staff in Bill Clinton’s White House. “It just seems to me the Democrats, if they fail for whatever reason to get a domestic agenda enacted … will pay a price.”

There may be a kernel of truth in Panetta’s comments about the need to pass a domestic agenda. I don’t doubt, for example, that Dems will be justifiably slammed if they fail to put a minimum wage increase on the president’s desk before the end of the year.

But the rest of the quote seems oddly detached from recent events. Why would the message of the midterm elections be disgust over “gridlock”? There was no gridlock. Before November, Republicans controlled everything and passed what they wanted to pass. Americans couldn’t have gotten tired of DC stalemates — there were none.

If anything, the elections should be interpreted in the exact opposite way. Americans saw the results of a Republican Congress acceding to the demands of a Republican White House, and said, “We’ve had enough.” For that matter, if polling data means anything, the electorate overwhelmingly decided that the Democrats’ agenda is preferable to the GOP’s, on matter of domestic and foreign policy.

Panetta seems to believe Democrats should be less forceful in advancing a popular policy agenda endorsed by voters, moving closer to Bush in order to “start governing.” This doesn’t make any sense.

Voters are “sick and tired of the fighting”? That’s a rather cliched soundbite, but more importantly, it’s also unsupported by the facts. Greg Sargent pointed to the results of a recent Pew Forum poll (.pdf), which asked respondents, “Do you think Democratic leaders in Congress are going too far or not far enough in challenging George W. Bush’s policies in Iraq, or are they handling this about right?”

A plurality (40%) said Dems should do more to challenge the president, while 30% said the Dems’ efforts are “about right.” Only 23% said Dems are going too far. Greg concluded:

So 70% say that Dems are being appropriately or even insufficiently aggressive in challenging Bush. Multiple polls show that solid majorities back Dem efforts to end the war — efforts which by nature are confrontational and, yes, basically partisan, thanks to the GOP’s backing of Bush. What’s more, multiple polls have also found that solid majorities support Dem efforts to probe the GOP’s malfeasance in general — also efforts which by nature are confrontational and partisan.

I’d only add that the Post article’s central premise — that the Dems aren’t legislating enough — is itself flawed. After three months, the 110th Congress has already passed more bills, held more hearings, called more roll-call votes, been in session more days, and seen more laws enacted than the same time period two years ago.

So what is Panetta complaining about? Why does he believe the onus is on Dems to change?

The Washington Post has credibility problems these days (see Fred Hiatt, Charles Krauthammer, David Broder). In what year was Leon Panetta quoted and in what was the full context?

  • As is usual with the Clintonista morons, Panetta gets it wrong. The country did NOT vote to get “bipartisanship” in November – they voted to end one-party Republican rule and let the President know they didn’t (and don’t) like what he’s doing. If there was all this fervor for the bullshit Panetta is shovelling here, why are there solid majorities in favor of the Congress taking control on the Iraq war and solid minorities in favor of Bush and the Republicans.

    Let’s remember it was the Clintonista scum who sold out Al Gore in 2000, counseling him not to “harm the country” by fighting for the Florida recount.

    Leon Panetta is just another of the pinstriped corporate public-suckers-and-swallowers who want to get back to power so they can continue to sell the country down the river like they did with NAFTA and all their other sellouts of what it means to be a Democrat when they were in power.

  • Panetta comments just enrage. How do me and my friends get in on this pew poll. I suspect there are millions like me who are not polled. We have definitely run out of patience……..with the republicans. But our only option is waiting till we can replace them. We don’t want Democrats to compromise on any of the legislation more than they already have. The Republicans only care about winning and losing not about the issues. They stall, block and impede at every opportunity. They legislate by ambush always trying to sneak something into a bill that clearly was never meant to be there. We want them out. Can’t begin to tell you how many republicans won’t be voting republican in the next election. Besides Iraq the main issue was CORRUPTION and this is how we see these republican tactics as merely a means to corrupt the system. You wait…the only way Republicans will get elected i9s if they steal or buy the election. We don’t blame Dems for Republican trash. I only wish Dems would be louder in calling a spade a spade.

  • I don’t know where Panetta get’s this “we’re sick of fighting & gridlock” idea, but I’ve got a feeling he couldn’t be farther from the truth.

    Maybe it’s just because I’m only in my early 20’s and have thus spent my entire voting life under Republican rule, but I’d like nothing more than to see the republican’s blocked every step of the way and, if possible, be completely stomped in the ’08 elections.

    I was a republican in the ’00 elections, but these intervening years have made me solidly democratic. If they’ve driven me away I’d be curious to see how many other people my generation would love to see the Republican party die in a pool of their own corruption and incompetence and go the way of the Whigs.

  • I think that you folks are wrong.

    Most Americans understand that compromise is necessary for a functioning government. Panetta specifically says that “they want both the president and Congress to start governing”.

    Furthermore, many laws have been passed by the House, but few of these have made it through the Senate.

  • #3 bjobotts gets it right and so does #2 Tom Cleaver. Panetta is a pi**- ant for giving the Washington Post that quote. Of course he was once the token Democrat in W’s cabinet, but he ought to shut up and lets the Democrats in congress do their job.

    I believe their main job now is to obstruct and prevent the blatant takeover of the United States government by corporate and foreign interests. Certainly an unfettered Bush administration will do no such thing. What has happened to our country in the last six years is shameful and may be irreversible without a great deal of obstructionism.

  • Panetta, Broder, Carville – over and over we keep seeing these people’s opinions presented as if they were gospel, which clearly they are not, and have not been for some time.

    People voted for legislators who would actually go to work every day, who would remember that they work for us, and that the Congress is not a little club where the memvbers get to make it easier for their buddies to get rich and for the rest of us to pay for it.

    There has been no bipartisanship in the Congress since the GOP attained a majority, and not only was there no effort on their part to work for even a modicum of it, the GOP rules committees changed as many rules as they could to specifically exclude Democrats from the process. Democrats and Independents who yearned for some representation of their issues and concerns voted for a chance to be heard.

    For too long, this whole business about “governing from the center” has come to mean that one side just caves in to the other; that’s not what “working with” the other side means. We see it so clearly in the standoff on the Iraq funding bill: Bush wants to “work with” Democrats to get a clean bill – which means he wants them to surrender, and Bush will call that “bi-partisan” support.

    Nope, sorry – that wasn’t what we voted for. We voted to change the direction the country is headed, to make Bush a passenger 8in, and not a driver of, a bus that has clearly been headed for the abyss.

    Panetta doesn’t get it, Broder doesn’t get it and neither do the rest of the Clinton-era relics whose time is over.

  • Leon Panetta did not hire the current Congress to govern; the American People did. If we take this just one step further—by paraphrasing the ReThug talking point of “pre-9/11 thinking,” then we might also realize that what Leon Panetta represents is a form of “pre-Bu$h thinking.” In so doing, one might find it easier to understand that the current administration of the United States of America is—in and of itself—a multi-pronged terrorist attack upon the Republic, the Constitution, and the People.

    Just as any nation, once rid of a tyrant, had found itself unable to revert to the “good old days of pre-tyranny,” so the United States shall forever be barred from reverting to “the good old days of a pre-Bu$h America.” The Bu$h administration is our Auschwitz, with chimneys belching forth the smoke and ash that was once the life-force of many, many thousands; it is our Nanking, after the abomination of the Imperial Japanese Army; our Cambodian killing fields of Pol Pot; our contemporary cousin to the travesty of Mi Lai. To go back to a pre-Bu$hian way of thinking, as Panetta would have the nation do, is to seek a form of historical revision. And to embrace the mere notion of Democrats moving closer to the vision of the administration—at the inconceivable price of moving away from the Will of the People— is nothing more than a carefully couched invitation to cozy up to the brutalities of tyranny.

    Leon Panetta suggests that Dems “not fight Bu$h?” I think I might find, within the annals of American history, a reply to Mr. Panetta:

    “I have not yet BEGUN to fight….”

  • “Most Americans understand that compromise is necessary for a functioning government.”

    Yes, but compromise is a two way street. When the Republican party was in power these last 6 years they didn’t compromise, not one inch. So tell me: Why should the democrats care about compromising with a party that not only has proven itself incapable of good governance but also proven itself to be corrupt, hypocritical, and often downright mean-spirited all in the name of winning power?

    So tell me again, why should compromise only be a one-way street? (because have no doubts, with the current crop of Republicans it will be)

  • Panetta’s comments are the triumph of a triangulator, but where the hell does he get off with his interpretation of last November’s elections being a referendum on “the American people are sick and tired of the fighting and the gridlock.” BS! Prior to November of ’06, the Republicans steamrolled whatever the hell they wanted through the halls of Washingon. There was no fighting in any meaningful context since debate was effectively and illegally squelched, and the Dems had no power to contest any measure put forth in either chamber. Gridlock? The prez has issued only two vetoes in over six years and Congress was a rubber stamp since Bush came into office.

    Leon needs to get his facts straight, and until then his credibility is zilch.

  • I just looked up Panetta, who apparently started in politics as a Republican, but didn’t like their position on civil rights. He’s a Vietnam vet, but his career has been about domestic policy — civil rights, environment, hunger. Here’s a link to a column of his on Iraq, showing he’s very much a Democrat these days. http://www.panettainstitute.org/Commentaries/091204.htm

    Probably he’s just using the word loosely. What he probably means is simply that good domestic policy hasn’t been passed, and he’s attributed that to gridlock, instead of a Republican majority being against it.

    Not sure why this needs our attention, since he’s clearly on our side, saying the previous Congress wasn’t getting things done, and that he hopes this one will get things done.

  • What is it with the collection of ‘senior Democratic officials’ who spend all their time talking about the doom of the Democratic party and its efforts? Recently, we’ve had the ‘unnamed senior strategist’ who said the Democrats were on the road to extinction, now, we’ve got Panetta also espousing the gloom-and-doom. We need to get rid of the people who seem to only plan for failure and get more people who actually can generate some optimism about the party.

  • Like so many of the journalistic and political “elite,” Panetta is in denial, unwilling to acknowledge the breadth and depth of the threat to democracy that modern conservatism represents.

    Exactly what in the past 12 years allows him to believe that republicans are interested in working with anyone who doesn’t toe the party line?

  • Personally I’m sick and tired of anyone that accomodates Bush, his Administration, and the true believers that support them.

    They are dangerous to the fundamental principles of constitutional and representative government and to liberty itself. They are a far greater threat to our safety and freedom that the terrorists they use for fearmongering (though their stunningly foolish foreign and military advertures have certainly made us less safe.

    The most important challenges of the months remaining in the Bush Administration are to paralyze them so that they can do no further harm and to ensure that they are replaced by an Administration that adheres to and even honors basic principles.

    Nevermind gridlock. I’ve been waiting for gridlock for years. What I want now is some Democrats and maybe a handful of Republicans who haven’t drunk the Right Wing Kool-Aid to punch George Bush and everyone around him in the nose and to save our country from further harm.

  • Proof Panetta has his head where all Clintonistas do (up their ass):

    From the WaPo’s own poll (that they ignored):

    Do you think Democratic leaders in Congress are going too far or not far enough in challenging George W. Bush’s policies in Iraq, or are they handling this about right?

    Too far 23%
    Not far enough 40%
    About right 30%
    Don’t know/Refused 7%

    As Greg Sargent put it over at TPM:

    Bottom line: Asking whether the public opposes generic “partisanship” in the current environment is utterly meaningless. Here’s the deal: Bush and the GOP are doing a bunch of things. The American people don’t like those things, and want them changed. But Bush and the GOP just keep on doing them, anyway. So Dems are the ones now trying to force Bush and the GOP to change. In other words, the choice the public faces isn’t between “fighting” and “gridlock” on the one hand, and “bipartisan cooperation” on the other. Rather, it’s between (a) accepting the disastrous Bush/GOP status quo; and (b) backing Democratic efforts to change it. And the public supports the latter. Even though those efforts are partisan and confrontational. Is that really so hard to fathom?

  • Not to be a blogwhore, but here is what the American people think of Panetta’s good ol’ Republican buddies (from Newsweek):

    It’s hard to say which is worse news for Republicans: that George W. Bush now has the worst approval rating of an American president in a generation, or that he seems to be dragging every ’08 Republican presidential candidate down with him. But According to the new NEWSWEEK Poll, the public’s approval of Bush has sunk to 28 percent, an all-time low for this president in our poll, and a point lower than Gallup recorded for his father at Bush Sr.’s nadir. The last president to be this unpopular was Jimmy Carter who also scored a 28 percent approval in 1979. This remarkably low rating seems to be casting a dark shadow over the GOP’s chances for victory in ’08. The NEWSWEEK Poll finds each of the leading Democratic contenders beating the Republican frontrunners in head-to-head matchups.

  • The public probably thinks that nothing a 28% president is willing to support is worth doing.

  • There are so many qualified, informed Democrats out there for the lazy, boneheaded, thumb-sucking media to call for a quote. Yes I’m sick and tired–of the same old hacks talking out of their asses about things they are completely out of touch with. As so many others have said so many times, the public is way ahead of the media!

  • It’s difficult to take Panetta’s comments seriously. Was he drunk?
    Sure. Compromise is a requirement of a functioning democracy. Duh!
    The problem isn’t that Democrats refuse to compromise. The problem is they have no one to compromise with. Bush’s notion of compromise is for congress to let him do anything that passes through his deformed noodle, while the most enduring aspect of Reagan’s legacy is the GOP’s contempt for the very concept of compromise.

    Tell us Mr Panetta. How on Earth do you compromise with people who relish the idea of cultural civil war? How do you compromise with people who set public policy per the highest private bidder?

    Compromise to arrive at pragmatic solutions is a good thing. Compromising with unethical bullies, just for the sake of compromise is retarded. What do you propse we do next, Mr Panetta? Compromise with the street level criminals? Legalized murder on Tuesdays and Thursdays with reduced sentences for armed robbery during leap years?

  • I couldn’t improve on it so I’ll start with Mr. Cleaver’s astute observation:

    Leon Panetta is just another of the pinstriped corporate public-suckers-and-swallowers who want to get back to power so they can continue to sell the country down the river like they did with NAFTA and all their other sellouts of what it means to be a Democrat when they were in power.

    If one follows this link: http://www.panettainstitute.org/

    They will arrive at Mr. Panetta’s fine think tank nicely tucked away up/down/over in lovely Monterey, CA. Nice little gig. And who is Mr. Panetta chuckling away with in the photo at the top of the page??? Why that must be the Dean of D.C. mushbrain punditry himself, David Broder.

    These guys label themselves all sorts of ways but they are the foot washed and feted of America’s power elite and they have no desire to rock their boat. Leon Panetta and Mitt Romney may not talk the same game but scratch ’em and they both bleed $$ green.

    ________________________________________

    Most Americans understand that compromise is necessary for a functioning government. Panetta specifically says that “they want both the president and Congress to start governing”.

    Comment by NeilS

    With all due respect, (really), Panetta can say that “the people” want our nitwit, jackass stubborn and profoundly incompetent president to start governing hand in hand with Congress. I could say it too.

    But if he, (Panetta), is so naive as to believe that ShrubCo/RepubCo/CorpCo is going to start turning into accommodating traitorous appeasers just to create a little legislation that might benefit the country as a whole and not just the top 3%, then I don’t have any idea where anyone would get the idea that his experience in politics and his exposure to recent history have taught him one damn thing.

    Shruby is the decider. The commander guy. He’d rather eat nails than compromise with the Democrat party. ShrubCo doesn’t want compromise. They want a fight. Every time. And their steadfast adherence to that stance is highlighted every hour of every day in their hearty F.U. to the principles, laws, rules and traditions of our gov’t institutions.

    Panetta can hope for high minded compromise. He can wish upon a star. They’ll both get him to the same place.

  • Panetta’s right!

    The only way this country can move forward after 2008 is if more Democrats are elected. Crashing the party into the rocks in 2007 with repeated attempts to stop a war that it can’t stop does the party no good.

    GET BACK TO THE AGENDA!

    http://www.theleftcoaster.com/

  • ***Crashing the party into the rocks in 2007 with repeated attempts to stop a war that it can’t stop does the party no good.***

    Asking citizens to put on a uniform, leave their families, travel several thousands of miles across the globe, and die in a foreign country so that “more Democrats can get elected” is the perfect way to give Bu$h his wish—and lay ownership of this war square in the laps of Democrats.

    Put the kool-aid down, Joe, and back away—slowly. This is NOT about “getting more Democrats elected.” This is NOT about 2008. This is about NOW—this moment in time. The Panetta mentality is about appeasing “the Commode Guy;” the lessons about appeasing a dictator apply just as much to “our Pennsylvania Avenue dictator” as they did when Churchhill compared appeasing a dictator to appeasing a crocodile, and the rape/pillage/burn policy of the Bu$h WH leaves the crocodile in the dust….

  • “Crashing the party into the rocks in 2007 with repeated attempts to stop a war that it can’t stop does the party no good.”

    While I see Steve’s point @ 26, there is some wisdom to JoeCHI’s excerpt above (from @ 25).

    What’s going on presently is just one battle in the larger war to defeat modern conservatism and preserve representative democracy. Democrats have a two-year window discredit modern conservatism’s ideologies, to expose its methods and its goal of one-party rule. If Dems don’t make significant progress in fighting modern conservatism, and Republicans should hold the WH or recapture a majority in either house of Congress, the USA we knew could exist only in our memories.

  • Democratic leaders inserted a minimum-wage agreement into a bill to fund the Iraq war, only to see it vetoed.

    That was some f***ed up thinking there.

    Dems should present issues to be signed on their own as much as possible. The minimum wage should not be tied to Iraq.

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