Well the 111th Congress is coming to a rapid close and after a year in which the Republicans stymied the Democrats through the constant, unprecedented use of the filibuster, there has been a brief crack in the discipline of Senate Republicans. As a result, the President and Harry Reid will have the solace of major victories on Don't Ask, Don't Tell repeal and the START Treaty. It takes a little bit of the disappointment away from a year in which major initiatives on climate change, alternative energy, rolling back the tax cuts for the wealthy, and even the basic appropriations bill, among other things, were blocked by Senate Republican intransigence. Lindsey Graham has actually been whining about the "capitulation" of the Republicans over the last two weeks. (Okay that is a bit laughable.)
One gets the sense that what happened in the last couple of days, with surprising numbers (and simply surprising -- Richard Burr and John Ensign voting for DADT repeal? Lamar! and Johnny Isakson backing START) of Republicans breaking ranks to allow both DADT and START to pass, was something that both the President and Reid envisioned happening far more than it did. The ability of Mitch McConnell to keep his troops in line on almost all procedural votes over the last two years was clearly not how the White House imagined things going when they took power in January 2009.
I am not sure why at this point the crack in the ranks appeared. Strangely enough it may be that on these final two matters of the Congress that some Republicans felt free to vote their convictions, but why now? And what would possess someone like Burr to vote for DADT repeal? It's puzzling indeed.
My guess is that these were two discrete areas where breaking party discipline seemed to have limited consequences to those who finally deserted the ranks. It's a shame that it's only at this late date that such a thing occurred.
It does, however, leave the 111th Congress having done significant things in the area of health care, the economy (financial regulation and the stimulus), the promotion of equality (Lily Ledbetter and DADT repeal), and now, with START, in foreign policy. It's really not a bad record of accomplishment. It is only disappointing because we expected much more and because our major problem areas -- unemployment and the real estate crisis -- remain largely untreated.
In the end, Obama's administration has made two major miscalculations -- one, to overestimate the willingness of individual GOP members in the Senate to be reasonable, and two, and the more profound one, the failure of his economic team to really understand the depths of our problems and the steps that would need to be taken to overcome them. Both of these were hugely consequential mistakes in a very unforgiving environment. Sadly, it means that the next two years will largely be fought as rearguard actions against the worst elements in American politics, emboldened by their electoral success and utterly unmoored from reality. I get the sense that we will soon be quite nostalgic for the 111th Congress.
