I've got Friends in High Places

You nay-sayers beware, I have a crack team of historians available at my beck and call to provide the intellectual heft to back up my vituperative utterances.

New Deal stud Eric Rauchway (the "anti-Amity Shlaes") of the indispensable "Edge of the American West" explains FDR's 1938 campaign to try and purge conservative southern Democratic senators who opposed his legislative agenda.  FDR failed miserably and his defeat signaled the death knell of the New Deal.  (Noted liberal ally Hitler helpfully began making additional mischief in Europe around this time thereby giving FDR a new raison d'etre.)

Why is this relevant?  [Because I fucking well said so and you don't want me to have to stop this blog, mister!]  But in addition to that good and sound reason, it is illustrative of the limits of the power of even the most popular president, in the most difficult of circumstances, in terms of being able to impose party discipline on a sitting senator, particularly in places such as the southern U.S. (or say Nebraska).  Those who are calling on Obama to bring the hammer down on the party's mushy middlers are just not being clear-headed about the leverage that Obama actually possesses in places like Nebraska, Arkansas, or Louisiana, i.e. more or less none.  

And that's one of the reasons that the original Social Security Act passed under FDR "sold out" huge chunks of the southern, African-American work force by exempting agricultural and domestic workers from its coverage.   Even our most vaunted liberal president, blessed with huge majorities in both houses, winner of a crushing landslide victory that gave him a mandate to tackle the Great Depression, still had to count votes.  

Again, let's give Oama just a little bit more time before we denounce him as a sell-out and failure. 

   

Comments

[Mandos]

Someone confronted my "bad bill is better than no bill" litany very recently with a challenge: since when do bad/inadequate legislative measures lead to better measures later on. My first mental reaction was "ARE YOU KIDDING ME???" My second was to visit Cogitamus :)

Srsly, have American liberals learned nothing from the 30s years since the election of Ronnie Raygun? Conservatives/neocons know that plenty of fruit can be harvested from the rhetorical equity that stems from legislative measures that don't live up to their expectations!

[Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle]

Those who are calling on Obama to bring the hammer down on the party's mushy middlers are just not being clear-headed about the leverage that Obama actually possesses in places like Nebraska, Arkansas, or Louisiana, i.e. more or less none.

Problem with that statement is that we aren't asking for him to pass measures that are unpopular in those states. The public option was pretty popular in Arkansas(for instance) in the last polling I saw.

[Eric Wilde]

Can I still call Harry Reid a feckless bum?

[Sir Charles]

Calvin,

I am speaking electorally. Obama could not threaten to go out and campaign against Nelson, Lincon, or Landrieu because he is not more popular than any of them in their states. I am also skeptical of all polling on issues of this complexity -- both in terms of the public understanding of what they are being asked, but more importantly translating those attitudes into actual voting behavior. (I suspect the New Deal programs that Roosevelt supported were very popular in South Carolina and Georgia, which were both poor states -- it did not, however, trump the tribalism of the small white electorate that voted in the Democratic primaries at that time.)

Eric,

I never know from day to day what I think about Reid's leadership. In the end, he can only persuade his recalcitrant troops - he has not that many tools he can use to punish them.

I think one of the things that you have to realize is that legislative leaders, be it Reid or Pelosi or anyone else, operate for the most part in intimate settings out of the public eye. It's hard to assess their effectiveness from our distance -- their public utterances are not really the heart of what they do. I have heard varying accounts regarding Reid's skills and as I say, remain uncertain myself.

[Sir Charles]

Mandos,

Glad you thought of us. I'm sitting here watching C-Span where the Senate Republicans are forcing the reading of the full "manager's amendment" to HCR. It will eat up 6-7 hours of the day. Jesus I'd like to strangle Mitch McConnell. (It's on because my wife needs to watch -- I'd rather have needles driven into my eyes.)

It is extremely difficult to deal with such a bloody minded opposition -- a party that has effectively amended the Constitution sub silencio by turning the Senate into a body that requires a super majority to conduct even the most routing business.

I think there has to be some thought given to punishing select Republicans like McConnell, Kyl, and a few others via the budget process next year. I would like to see goodies for their states stripped from appropriations and the cause for such moves made clear.

For the moment, though, I remain convinced that we need this bill, that it accomplishes important things, and that it can be improved down the road if we can keep showing up for elections and winning them.

[big bad wolf]

SC, you are ignoring the vast power of the internet masses that fdr did not have at his disposal.

[oddjob]

Nelson's in, but only as long as there are no significant changes during conference.

[Davis X. Machina]

It is extremely difficult to deal with such a bloody minded opposition

It all makes sense if you accept the premise that no Democratic administration is, or can ever be, a legitimate administration.

The Congressional GOP's present position is analogous to the Orleanists and Bonapartists in the French assemblies of the 19th century.

A royalist party in a parliament has no real interest in cooperating with the small-r republican parties in governing. It's note even interested in increasing its share of votes in that body. Its purpose for being is to shut the parliament down, and make the republic ungovernable so that there can be a restoration.

They have no interest in the smooth functioning -- any functioning -- of a body whose legitimacy they fundamentally do not accept. They only want a rapid transition back to the monarchy.

The weirdest transformation of political terminology hasn't been what happened to the word 'liberal' since John Stuart Mill -- it's what happened to the word 'republican' since 1980 or so. Republicans aren't republicans.

[oddjob]

Republicans aren't republicans.

TRUTH!!

[Sir Charles]

To paraphrase my political mentor "how many divisions does the Great Orange Satan have?"

DXM,

Indeed. It's a really troublesome phenomenon. They did it to Clintona and they are doing it to Obama. That's part of why I am arguing for hanging in there with him. We need to overcome this once and for all.

[oddjob]

More farce from The Children That Are The Senate:

After months in which the senate health care bill was held up over efforts to find some form in which she would agree to sign on to it, Sen. Snowe (R-ME) now says she will oppose it because it is being "rushed."

[Sir Charles]

I just read that -- it made me want to vomit.

[ikl]

I did too, but then I reflected that since Reid has 60 votes now, Snowe isn't needed and she probably has lots of reasons not to want to burn bridges with Republicans in the Senate. So perhaps we shouldn't take Snowe's comments here too seriously. The real question is whether she would have been the 60th vote if Nelson had defected. I hope that pro-choice groups have enough sense not to endorse her in 2012 - she could have made Nelson irrelevant.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

DXM: I prefer the Croatian Agricultural parties between the wars that literally destroyed the Yugoslav Parliamentary Republic and forced the king to set up a 'royal dictatorship' to have any functioning government at all.

[Davis X. Machina]

My theory with the Maine ladies is that her staffers and Collins’ staffers have bet a pizza on it. “Wait. Susan pulled an arbitrary round number out of her ass that the stimulus could not exceed? We’ll have Olympia pull an arbitrary date out of her ass that the HCR vote can’t happen before!”

"Yeah, Susan won't vote will vote for a jobs package unless the draft circulates in a green folder."

"Yeah, or Olymia wil bail on the climate bill unless the PDF of the bill uses only Caslon fonts."

[MR Bill]

I suspect the New Deal programs that Roosevelt supported were very popular in South Carolina and Georgia, which were both poor states -- it did not, however, trump the tribalism of the small white electorate that voted in the Democratic primaries at that time.)

I actually wrote a paper in a poli-sci class once, on the campaign of Sen. Walter George against Eugene Talmadge and the Roosevelt candidate (Camp? It's been years..), playing both the racist and ole chip on the shoulder waving of the 'bloody shirt' of Southern resentment of Nawthern interference. He trounced them both in the Dem. Primary (tantamount to election).

[Sir Charles]

MR Bill,

One of the things that really struck me when I was studying voting behavior in the southern United States was how small the vote totals were for senators in general elections throughout the deep south during the 1930s to 1960s. They were just a fraction of the votes that were beng cast in the north at the same time.

[MR Bill]

Well there was not much black vote (some 30-40% of the population not voting) and I gather a lot of sharecroppers and folks at the bottom end of the economic spectrum, i.e. most of the state, tended to see voting as irrelevant, and would not do so without some incitement(a pint of whiskey is said to have been one such: leading to the closure of alcohol sales on Election Day until the '90s..)If you weren't part of the local machine, you might find it in your interest to be seen as neutral.

[TB]

Re: Snowe:

Has anybody else been thinking that we dodged a bullet in not depending on her?

I mean, maybe in the end she really WAS part of the vast rightwing conspiracy -- the mole whose assignment was to SEEM as though she supported HCR. In fact she would always need more time. Given the Dems love for "reasonable" Repug, it would have been midterms before we noticed what she was doing . . . See Chait's piece up at The Trestment.

[Sir Charles]

TB,

I'm not sure but you might be right.

I think of her as the greatest waste of skin on the planet -- someone who will never really be there when we need her. Someone who is less reliable than Ben Nelson for Christ's sake, even though she is from a pretty liberal place.

[oddjob]

However, given that she's more or less viewed as the latest incarnation of Margaret Chase Smith the rest of the nation is stuck with her.

[Eric Wilde]

I never know from day to day what I think about Reid's leadership. In the end, he can only persuade his recalcitrant troops - he has not that many tools he can use to punish them.

There's this thing called leadership that leaders are supposed to have. Make a bold and public goal, then rally people to your cause. It doesn't have to be about punishment, though punishment is a tool that really helps at times as well.

I think one of the things that you have to realize is that legislative leaders, be it Reid or Pelosi or anyone else, operate for the most part in intimate settings out of the public eye.

Rallying people to your cause requires both private and public persuasiveness. Reid may be good at private discussion - I've yet to see much proof since positive results from the Senate under his leadership are few - but he's a total flop at public leadership.

- their public utterances are not really the heart of what they do

Um, yes, they are. This seems so blatantly obvious that I'm surprised at your comment. Sure, there is a ton of work required behind the cameras and in the offices of colleagues; but, these are public officials meant to lead our public government. One central facet of what they must do is lead in a public fashion. That includes in front of the cameras. Look at the last administration for examples of how to lead the public and its affect on the Senate. Why the hell did the Dems cave in to the Bushies time and time again if not for the (albeit woefully misguided) public leadership brought to bear?

[ikl]

Eric, name some effective Senate majority leaders and evaluate how effective they were at "public leadership".

LBJ, for example, was an effective majority leader, but pretty much everything was done behind the scenes in private. LBJ was not a particuarly effective figure on television, at least relative to his persuasiveness in private. It certainly arguably that things have changed since then, but I'm having a hard time thinking of counter-examples.

Frist was a pathetic majority leader as far as I can tell (could be wrong about this because it is hard to evaluate what goes on behind closed doors). Lott might have been more effective, but not because of his "public utterances." So I'm not sure what "public leadership" in the Senate you are referring to. Moreoever, I question the premise of the argument. Bush got stuff done by agreeing not to pay for any of it. Obviously this is much easier than what is being attempted in this case.

[Sir Charles]

Eric,

Think about the Speakers of the House of the last fifty years and name one who was an effective public spokesperson. Possibly Gingrich, if you like that sort of thing. But I'm pretty confident that's it.

Majority leaders possibly a few more -- Howard Baker was pretty telegenic and Dole wasn't awful. Daschle was okay. But Mike Mansfield, whom the Kennedys considered one of the greatest poltiicians in America, was not appreciably better than Reid.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

Dirksen? Hugh Scott? George Mitchell? Even Byrd -- a different style, but still effective for the right audience.

[Sir Charles]

Jim,

I don't remember Dirksen really. I don't think George Mitchell was terribly dynamic -- no more so that Reid or Daschle. And my recollections of Hugh Scott are not all that favorable, but I think that could be because he was out toadying for Nixon during Watergate.

[Corvus9]

Gotta agree with Sir Charles on this one, Eric, especially in the case Majority Leaders. Whether in the House or the Senate, Majority Leaders are just the guys responsible for making sure the Caucus has their business in order. Everything they do is internal, and more secretarial than dictatorial.

The Speaker of the House is a slightly different situation. The Speaker runs the entire body, while the Majority Leader just oversees their caucus. The Speaker is modeled after the prime minister (in much the same way the President is modeled on the King and the Senate on the House of Lords, And yeah, it says a lot about the Senate that the House of Lords has now basically become as Neutered as the King. God imagine what our country would be like if Pelosi was our Head of State!), so you would somewhat expect that office to have a more public face. Notice that this kind of was the case during the 90's, when the Speaker and the President were from opposite parties, but when the offices are homogenous, the Speaker tends to fade behind the actual Head of State.

[oddjob]

It also was the case during much of the 80's, when Speaker Tip O'Neill was as often as not the public face of Reagan's opposition. Not by any means the most telegenic guy in the world, or the best public speaker for that matter, but he did well enough.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

I do remember Dirksen, Scott, and Mitchell, and while every one was different, they all were miles ahead of the current group. Dirksen was dynamic, with is old-fashioned, florid oratory, his hair, he could have seemed like a cariacture -- and today would be. But he was a beilliant negotiator, and could always be counted on to come down on the 'right side' (meaning correct, not conservative). But not until he squeezed every drop he could out of you in return. But it was his speech that turned the '52 convention to Eisenhower instead of Taft, who made sure there were enough Republicans willing to pass the Civil Rights Act, etc. If he were in the ML role today, there would have been half a dozen votes for HCR -- and probably a new hospital in every Republican district in the country.

Scott was much more the 'professional.' In fact he was more 'moderate' than Dirksen, but far more the Republican Leader. Did he 'shill' for Nixon? Yes, but given his position, did he have any other choice -- and his discomfort at doing it was obvious. (Compare that with the Kennedys' shilling for McCarthy, when he wasn't even of their party. John could have spoken up, Bobby could have quit working for the Committee, but they didn't. In fact, John -- who was in the hospital -- never said how he would have voted on the censure.)

But it was Scott who probably was most responsible for Nixon's resignation, simply because he was the professional, the vote-counter.

Scott would have had the Ladies from Maine and about sixmore votes supporting HCR because he knew it would be better for the Party.

And Mitchell might not have been 'dynamic' but his negotiating skills were unmatched, and his absolute integrity and the respect he had across the spectrum more than made up for it. When he talked, people paid attention, because of his simple presence -- something which neither Daschle or Reid has. He was partisan, sure, but you never felt his partisanship would overcome his integrity, and it wouldn't.

With any one of the three in office today, there wouldn't be the change of 'the rules of politics' we are suffering through today. Or, for that matter, the change in the filibuster.

[Mandos]

Manual trackback.

[Eric Wilde]

- their public utterances are not really the heart of what they do

Um, yes, they are. This seems so blatantly obvious that I'm surprised at your comment.

It seems history proves me wrong. Or at least, I don't have anywhere near the same knowledge of Senate majority leaders past nor any spare time to research them.

The nature of the job as many here see it, and apparently the Democratic caucus as well, is to only build a consensus. That's apparently how the job has mainly been done in the past. However, I still maintain that it was the strong public leadership of the Rs during the past decade that convinced many in the Senate to approve some of the worst legislation of our lifetimes. The Dems were so terrified of standing up against the Rs public drive toward war, torture, tax cuts and a host of other nonsense that 60 votes weren't even needed by the Rs. We may have gotten by without strong public leadership in the Senate past, but it would do a world of good now.

[Sir Charles]

Eric,

Don't get me wrong -- I don't think strong public leadership would be a bad thing at all. I would much rather have a Dick Durbin or a Chuck Schumer speaking for the Dems in front of the public. And I think it would be an asset to have such people out in front.

I was merely noting that historically these jobs go to people who are skilled largely in small group and one on one types of relationships -- skills which are often unapparent to we the voting public.

The Republicans have for at least two decades had substantially better party discipline than the Dems and a total willingess to be obstructionist in a way that the Dems have never been comfortable with. I can't say exactly why, but yes, it's definitiely the case.

To the point, where, as I have argued, they have effectively amended the Constitution.

[Sir Charles]

Mandos,

I don't suspect invoking me over at Ian's place is going to get you a long way, but thanks for the link.

Your metaphor was amusing -- but I think we both agree the patient needs to get this out of its system.

[Eric Wilde]

Don't get me wrong -- I don't think strong public leadership would be a bad thing at all. I would much rather have a Dick Durbin or a Chuck Schumer speaking for the Dems in front of the public. And I think it would be an asset to have such people out in front.

Yep, I got your point.

Part of the fun of reading this blog is that there are so many individuals with a better grasp of US political history than me.

[oddjob]

I can't say exactly why

I'm going to speculate that it has something to do with many of them having been representatives in the House at a time when the only way to have any real hope of having an impact in the minority was to be bastards.

For instance, wasn't Trent Lott on the House Judiciary Committee when they were considering articles of impeachment for Nixon?

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

For me, the ideal choice -- though I do like the idea of Schumer and Durbin -- is too valuable where he is now. But if there were a replacement for him as head of Judiciary, I'd pick Leahy. He's smart, liberal, and well-respected, and is capable of making the same points as either Schumer or Durbin, but without being quite as abrasive.

But anyone but Reid -- or the Virginians or Bayh of even conceivable choices. (It's a shame that Ted Kaufman isn't staying in the Senate. He's impressed me very much from the little I've seen of him -- maybe the next SCOTUS vacancy?)

[Sir Charles]

Jim,

I like Leahy, but I don't think he is any more forceful or dynamic than Reid really.

Ted Kaufmann went the wrong way on a one of the Nelson related votes last week (the attempt to incorporate Stupak into the Senate bill). That was really disappointing and kind of gutless.

Kaufmann's too old for the Court at this point -- I want another youngish woman -- hopefully African-American or Hispanic to really drive the right wild. (Ooh, I am starting to sound like them.)

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

Hadn't realized how old Kaufman was, or the Stupak vote. As for Leahy, I think you are making the same mistake you made with Mitchell. You don't have to be loud or abrasive to be forceful. I think Leahy can be, but another possibility might be Jack Reed of RI. I didn't think much of him at first, but he's solid, can be 'loud' enough for you, and has consistently voted the right way. Looking around at other possibilities, the only ones I see as far as voting records go might be Bingaman -- who I know nothing of as far as personality -- or Levin -- who might be too old. Others are just too junior or have other problems.

[Sir Charles]

I like Jack Reed -- and he's got the West Point thing too. But I think Durbin is probably the best we've got. He's smart, likeable, articulate, and pretty liberal. But I don't think he would produce different results than Reid -- he'd still need to get 60 votes. I just think he'd be a better public face.

[big bad wolf]

i also think leahy not forceful or dynamic enough. his handling of the judicial nominations, both as senior minority person and chair, has struck me as lackluster

[Sir Charles]

bbw,

Absolutely. The fault lies between him and the administration -- both of them have been characterized by a lack of urgency.

[Corvus9]

I think the main liability for Durbin might be that he would be seen as too close to the president, in a way that might call into question the autonomy of his leadership. The main positive is that he is super-safe. There would be no fear of the majority leader ouster in the president's homestate.