Brookings Institution congressional scholar Thomas Mann is hardly known as a partisan bomb-thrower. A frequent co-author of books and articles on Congress and American politics with the American Enterprise Institute’s Norm Ornstein, Mann is a model of sober and intelligent commentary, calling things as he sees them.
That reputation makes his recent comments on the state of our politics particularly noteworthy. In an interview with Time’s Jay Newton-Small, here’s what Mann had to say:
There is simply no basis for meaningful bipartisan leadership meetings today. Republicans are determined to defeat Obama in 2012; they have no interest in negotiating with him in order to provide him any sort of victory. This is a partisan war and the Republicans are playing to win. The only question is how long it will take Obama to accept this reality and act accordingly.
To hear, say, bloggers vent this way would be expected; to hear Mann, a scholar ensconced in the establishment, speak so plainly underscores the enormity of the problem. Our politics is broken and Mann, correctly, identifies Republican cynicism as its primary cause. Today’s GOP has become slave to the Rush Limbaughs, Glenn Becks, and Sarah Palins. Where are the Olympia Snowes, the Susan Collinses, the George Voinoviches? Why aren’t they banding together with the moderates and liberals on the other side of the aisle to demand a restoration of reasonable discourse? Are the imperatives of electoral politics so strong as to short-circuit any attempt at good-faith governance? (The question, perhaps, answers itself.)
In a follow-up exchange with Greg Sargent, Mann offered a more specific vision of what Obama should do:
With no expectations of passing important new legislation or of garnering anything from Republicans in Congress but political bait, he should pursue his substantive agenda where he can act on his own and use Congress as a place to submit a genuinely serious set of proposals to deal with the country’s more serious challenges (with no expectation that any will pass) and couple them with high visibility straight talk to the American people about the course he is proposing.
If the last two years are any indication, the next two will bring only further distress and disappointment for that vanishing few in Washington who still believe in that old dream of deliberative democracy. But gridlock need not be inaction, and Mann’s advice is spot-on. For the President to regain control of his presidency, he needs to engage in that thing he seems to have been averse to thus far: politics. Use the bully pulpit. Engage in a bit of gamesmanship. Promote his vision of the good society – and make explicit why the conservative vision is the wrong one for the country. Shifting the dynamic between a feral House and a technocratic White House is one of two prerequisites (the other being an improved economy) if we are to preserve any hope of advancing progressive priorities in the time that remains in his first term.
