BARACK OBAMA CAME TO OFFICE with a large agenda. His most important proposals required congressional approval, and the White House moved aggressively to obtain it. In this chapter, I examine the Obama White House’s efforts to lead Congress, focusing especially on its efforts to obtain bipartisan support and the president’s leadership of his own party.
These two approaches represent different strategies for governing. We saw in chapter 4 that the prospects for Republican support were quite limited. Nevertheless, the president pursued bipartisanship in an energetic effort to create opportunities for major changes in public policy by persuading some in the opposition to support his proposals.
We also saw in chapter 4 that keeping the large Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress unified enough to pass significant legislation was likely to pose a challenge for the White House. Leading his party and exploiting the opportunities these majorities offered the White House would be a core activity of Obama’s presidency.
Befitting a presidency seeking to pass a huge agenda, the Obama administration placed a high priority on recruiting personnel with congressional experience. The president was the first chief executive elected directly from Congress since John F. Kennedy took office nearly a half century earlier. Vice President Biden had served in the Senate since 1972. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was a rising star in the House. Four Cabinet secretaries and the head of the CIA also were former members of Congress.
Obama chose as his legislative director Phil Schiliro. President Bill Clinton’s first director of legislative affairs Howard Paster noted that Schiliro’s appointment as the chief liaison to Congress was announced within a week of the election, while his own appointment to that job did not occur until January 1993.1
Schiliro was for twenty-five years Henry Waxman’s closest aide. Waxman, the chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, was a central figure in drafting health care and climate change legislation. Lisa Konwinski, Schiliro’s deputy, spent nearly a decade working for Kent Conrad, the chair of the Senate Budget Committee.2 Melody Barnes, the domestic policy director, had been a trusted aide to Ted Kennedy. Emanuel hired Jim Messina, who was Senate Finance Committee chair Max Baucus’s chief of staff, as a deputy chief of staff at the White House.
Peter Orszag, the former director of the Congressional Budget Office, became head of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Rob Nabors, former majority staff director of the House Appropriations Committee, served in the number two position at OMB until he moved to the White House as a deputy chief of staff. Senior advisor Peter Rouse had worked for Obama in the Senate, and, equally important, had been Democratic leader Tom Daschle’s chief of staff. Many other former congressional aides served in departmental and agency legislative liaison posts.
Emanuel was well aware that many new appointees had pivotal friendships on the Hill that Obama could exploit, and he encouraged them to be constantly in touch with their old bosses and colleagues in Congress, advancing the president’s program and gathering intelligence from the halls of the Capitol. “That was a strategy,” he said. “We had a deep bench of people with a lot of relationships that run into both the House and Senate extensively. And so we wanted to use that to our maximum advantage.”3
From the first, Emanuel hosted a daily meeting in his White House office to review congressional business. Attendees included Schiliro and his congressional team, along with representatives of the policy, political, and press offices. Emanuel also maintained contact with committee chairs and ranking members to catch up on business before their panels. The president attended at least part of those sessions. Emanuel also met with all the major groups of Democrats, including the Blue Dog budget hawks, the moderate New Democrats, and the House freshman class. He spoke to House and Senate leadership aides multiple times every day, and consulted with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid several times a week. Even GOP lawmakers praised the White House attention. “He always takes my calls,” said Senator Olympia Snowe, a moderate Republican who was often the object of White House efforts at persuasion.4
In addition, the administration was ready to move rapidly with its legislative agenda. We don’t intend to stumble into the next administration,” Obama declared during the transition. “We are going to hit the ground running. We’re going to have clear plans of action.” To that end, emissaries of the president-elect met with every congressional committee chair. Obama worked the phones and sent Emanuel to the Hill. When Henry Waxman won a bitter contest to become the next chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Obama called to congratulate him.5 The White House’s goal was to have economic, health (the Children’s Health Insurance Program), and spending legislation on the new president’s desk soon after he took office.6
The administration was similarly prepared for the retirement of Supreme Court Justice David Souter. Emanuel had commissioned a strategy memorandum intended to dictate the process, declaring, “The day we get a vacancy, we want to have a short list of people ready.” The White House had full dossiers on nearly all the major candidates within days of Souter’s announcement.7
From the beginning, Barack Obama tried to strike a bipartisan pose. On the night of his election, he implored Democrats and Republicans alike to “resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long.” In his press conference on November 25, 2008, the president-elect declared, “it’s important . . . that we enter into the new administration with a sense of humility and a recognition that wisdom is not the monopoly of any one party. In order for us to be effective . . . Republicans and Democrats are going to have to work together.”8
Moreover, the president and his aides believed that a fair number of Republican lawmakers would rally behind the nation’s first African American president at a time of crisis.9 They saw his liberal programs drawing on Americans’ desire for action and also counted on Obama’s moderate, even conservative, temperament, to hurdle the ideological obstacles that had paralyzed Washington.10
Democratic activists agreed. “It is quite possible to see him as liberal and having an activist agenda, but being a type of leader who does not polarize partisans and finds ways of bringing people together to work on the things where they can find common ground,” said Stanley B. Greenberg, a pollster in Bill Clinton’s White House. “With this type of leader, the pent-up demand for action on the economy, health care and energy allows us to reach a series of big moments where many Republicans join the process and perhaps proposals pass with overwhelming majorities.”11
Any move toward bipartisanship would have been a major change from the orientation of George W. Bush. Early in his first term, Bush concluded that it would not be possible to obtain Democratic support, as he had as governor of Texas, so he made few efforts at bipartisanship. He rejected the approach of obtaining the support of a broad majority of Congress through consultation, collaboration, and compromise. Instead, he centered his legislative strategy on maximizing unity among Republicans. As one of his senior political advisors declared, “This is not designed to be a 55 percent presidency. This is designed to be a presidency that moves as much as possible of what we believe into law while holding fifty [percent] plus one of the country and the Congress.”12 The White House’s emphasis was to find the “right” solution and ram it through the legislature. During Bush’s first term, despite narrow Republican majorities on Capitol Hill, he enacted several of his key priorities, such as tax cuts and prescription drug coverage under Medicare, into law.
In the 2004 presidential election, Republican strategists concluded that there was little pliability in the electorate. As a result, they felt they could not substantially broaden their electoral coalition. Instead, they focused most of their efforts in 2004 on energizing their partisan base and encouraging turnout rather than on changing the preferences of the electorate.13 As Republican political strategist Matthew Dowd put it, the presidential election was “about motivation rather than persuasion.”14
Bush’s partisan strategy incited impassioned resistance, making it difficult to advance legislative proposals such as reforming Social Security and immigration policy that required bipartisan support. Moreover, his unbending approach proved self-defeating because it provoked a backlash that helped deliver the government to his Democratic critics. Obama hoped to avoid the hostility that characterized the Bush presidency.
As president-elect, Barack Obama did not adopt a partisan posture during the transition or the early days of his presidency. “We don’t have Republican or Democratic problems. We have got American problems,” Obama said after meeting with congressional leaders from both parties in an effort to obtain support for his economic stimulus package. He listened as Republicans raised concerns about waste and transparency and agreed with a suggestion by House Republican Whip Eric Cantor that the White House put the entire contents of the legislation online in a user-friendly way so others could see how the money was being spent. Senate Minority Leader Republican Mitch McConnell later reported, “I thought the atmosphere for bipartisan cooperation was sincere on all sides.”15
Obama resisted inserting himself in the unresolved Senate contests in Georgia and Minnesota. Although he recorded a radio advertisement for the Democratic candidate in Georgia, he did not visit there to avoid appearing to be too political. The president-elect also won praise from conservatives for retaining Robert Gates as defense secretary, for naming General James L. Jones as his national security advisor, and for selecting the moderate Timothy F. Geithner, who helped draw up the Bush administration’s Wall Street bailout plan, as his Treasury secretary. He named three Republicans, including Gates, to his cabinet.
Shortly after being named White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel signaled to Republicans that the president-elect wanted to work alongside them. He met with Senate Republican leaders, gave them his cell phone number and personal e-mail address, and promised to return any communication within twenty-four hours. He told them to call at any hour if they needed to reach him, and he asked them to submit their ideas for the economic recovery plan and other issues of potential agreement.16
On ABC’s This Week on January 11, Obama hinted at an inclusive and interactive approach when he spoke of a “collaborative . . . process” that produces a great compromise in which “everybody is going to have to give” to confront gaping federal deficits. Rahm Emanuel declared that Obama was committed to “coupling” the public investment prized by liberals with “deadly serious spending reform” in areas from military procurement to entitlements that could appeal to conservatives.17
A few days before his inauguration, the president-elect was the guest of honor at a dinner at conservative columnist George Will’s Chevy Chase home. Others attending were some of the right’s most prominent commentators, including syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer, CNBC television host and commentator Lawrence Kudlow, Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, New York Times columnist David Brooks, Wall Street Journal editorial page editor Paul Gigot, Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan, and Fox News commentator Michael Barone.18 “Obama’s a man who has demonstrated he is interested in hearing other views,” said Krauthammer.
In yet another gesture of goodwill, Obama frequently sought John McCain’s advice on national security matters, including potential nominees, and kept him fully briefed on his thinking. Obama also made McCain the guest of honor at a dinner on the night before the inauguration.19
Rahm Emanuel and Lawrence H. Summers, Obama’s economic advisor, met privately with Senate Republicans the day before the Senate voted on freeing the remaining $350 billion in TARP funds. Even Republicans who were not persuaded by the consultation said they were impressed by the candor of the two men. “I think they have been pretty impressive,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader. “They are saying all the right things, and I think they did themselves some good in the briefing.” The president-elect also telephoned some senators, including Republican Olympia J. Snowe, urging them to release the money.20
Once he took the oath of office, Obama dispatched a top official to brief congressional Republicans before he issued executive orders on terrorism detainees. He also met with the leaders of both parties in Congress, in keeping with his campaign promise of bipartisanship. Yet in a polite but pointed exchange with House Republican Whip Eric Cantor, the president noted the parties’ fundamental differences on tax policy toward low-wage workers, and insisted that his view would prevail. “We just have a difference here, and I’m president,” Obama told Cantor. Obama was being lighthearted, and lawmakers of both parties laughed.21
The president went further on the stimulus bill. He made Republican-favored tax cuts a key component of his stimulus plan, at the cost of complaints from his fellow Democrats. At Obama’s urging, Democrats also stripped from the bill provisions such as aid for family planning services and restoration for the National Mall that Republicans had ridiculed as wasteful spending and unrelated to economic stimulus. The president met with congressional leaders of both parties at the White House. Most impressively, the day before the House voted on the bill, Obama traveled to Capitol Hill and spent three hours speaking, separately, to the House and Senate Republican caucuses. GOP members emerged saying nice things about him. White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel also met with eleven of the more moderate Republicans at the White House that evening.22
The day’s debate contrasted with the president’s conciliatory gestures, as did the lack of Republican support for the president. Nevertheless, Obama followed the House vote with a cocktail party at the White House for the House and Senate leaders of both parties.23 The president also met individually with Republican senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe,24 and he invited some members from both parties to the White House to watch the Super Bowl on the eve of the Senate debate.
In addition, congressional Democrats allowed Republicans to offer amendments on the floor during debate, and the House Appropriations Committee held a formal mark-up session to deal with amendments to the economic stimulus bill. Democrats even convened a conference committee on the bill. Although it was largely irrelevant to the final agreement because its members met after Senate Democrats and three Republicans had already cut a deal on the plan, Republicans had yet another venue for expressing their dissent.25
The president also reached out to Republicans and conservative interests outside of Congress. He obtained the support of both the National Association of Manufacturers and the United States Chamber of Commerce for the stimulus bill. In addition, four Republican governors—California’s Arnold Schwarzenegger, Connecticut’s Jodi Rell, Florida’s Charlie Crist, and Vermont’s Jim Douglas—signed a letter calling for its enactment. Obama later felt he had failed to exploit properly the support he received on the stimulus from Republican governors and that he was courting the wrong Republicans (those in Congress).26
As I discuss in more detail in chapter 6, seeking bipartisan support did not prove to be a useful strategy for the president. By the second week in February, he had apparently given up on winning many Republican votes. Frustrated that debate over the stimulus bill was being dominated by Republicans’ criticism, and that his overtures had yielded little in the way of support from across the aisle, the president switched to publicly pressuring them, and rallying fellow Democrats, with a hard-line message about his unwillingness to compromise his priorities. Democrats began a radio advertising campaign in the districts of twenty-eight House Republicans, calling them “out of step.”
The president held his first prime-time press conference on February 9, three weeks into his tenure. Acknowledging that his effort to change the political climate in Washington had yielded little, he made it clear that he had all but given up hope of securing a bipartisan consensus behind his economic recovery package. The sharp tone at the news conference and at a rally in Indiana earlier in the day signaled a shift by the White House in the fractious debate over his stimulus package. With no Republicans in the House voting for the economic plan and just three in the Senate, Obama began a week of barnstorming stops that would also take him to Florida and Illinois to create momentum behind his program. Gone were the soothing notes of the previous three weeks. The president offered a barbed detailed critique of the Republican argument that his plan would just create more government jobs and authorize billions in wasteful spending.27
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel conducted a post-mortem analysis of the battle over the economic stimulus bill in which the president’s senior advisors concluded that a bipartisan approach to governing was unlikely to succeed; consequently, Obama began scaling back his appeals to congressional Republicans.28 Of necessity, the president would have to focus on managing and maintaining the support of members of Congress already inclined to support him.
The White House stopped hosting bipartisan “cocktail parties,” and the only Republican invited to the 2010 Super Bowl party was Representative Ahn Cao, the sole Republican in either chamber to support the health care bill. Republican leaders and the president spent little time together, and White House and congressional aides who witnessed the interactions described the encounters as “strained” and “scripted.”29 In March 2010, House Republican Whip Eric Cantor recalled, “When they first came into office, I could have a meeting or two with Rahm and talk with him about the stimulus bill. But the conversations have been few and far between over the last six months.”30
Nevertheless, the president wanted the legitimacy of bipartisan support—and the votes of Republicans—for his comprehensive health care reform plan. The White House focused on persuading moderate Republican Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe and lavished attention on the latter.31
In April 2009, the president renewed his call for bipartisan cooperation during a White House meeting with congressional leaders of both parties. However, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said the session did little to change the equation for Republicans. “We discussed bipartisanship and—of course—that will depend entirely on what the substance looks like,” he said.32 Yet the changes the Republicans demanded were not ones the president could make. His bipartisanship was more about collegiality and civility than it was about compromise on core issues.
Still, the president made efforts. Before he made his selection of Sonia Sotomayor to replace Justice David Souter, he called every member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “He asked if I had any suggestions for nominees,” said Republican Senator Charles Grassley. “This is the first time I’ve ever been called by a president on a Supreme Court nomination, be it a Republican or a Democrat.”33 He also called all the members of the committee in preparation for his second nomination to the Court.34
In October, former Senate Republican leader Bill Frist, George W. Bush health and human services secretary Tommy G. Thompson, Medicare chief Mark McClellan, California Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (a Republican turned independent) spoke favorably of overhauling the nation’s health care system (although they couched their comments with plenty of caveats regarding the details). Most of the endorsements came at the prompting of the White House, which immediately circulated and promoted the statements in e-mails and telephone calls.35
After Scott Brown won the special election in Massachusetts to replace Ted Kennedy in the Senate in January 2010, the Democrats lost their ability to defeat a filibuster and the president tried once again for bipartisan support. Obama made bipartisanship a key element of his State of the Union address eight days later. In a high-profile televised question-and-answer session at a Republican policy forum, the president sparred with House Republicans, earning praise for his agility during a gathering that was meant to put the spotlight on the minority party and force its leaders to provide alternative solutions rather than simply object to the president’s plans. Neither side gave much in terms of policy, even as they professed interest in moving past the bitterness of the past year and working together. Obama promised to invite Republican leaders to the White House once a month in 2010 to talk through issues with him and Democratic leaders.
Most significantly, the president hosted a bipartisan summit on health care at the Blair House, across the street from the White House. Obama felt that such an event could be an antidote to the cynicism about Washington expressed by voters and perhaps provide an opportunity to woo a few Republicans. Some White House allies said the session proved critical in putting health care back on the national agenda. The event enabled Obama to claim the high ground on bipartisanship; after Brown’s victory, he needed to be seen as reaching out to the other side. He also wanted to force Republicans to put their ideas on the table, so that the public would see the debate as a choice between two ways to attack a pressing problem, not just a referendum on what Republicans derisively called “ObamaCare.”36
On February 25, 2010, Obama and twenty-eight lawmakers squeezed around a square of tables in the Garden Room of Blair House. After more than seven hours of discussion, the president lingered behind, shaking hands, making one last pitch for his stalled initiative. “There were some good things that came out of that,” he told advisors in the Oval Office afterward. He said he wanted the final legislation to incorporate a handful of ideas Republicans raised during the session. A few aides protested, asking if the White House should not extract a few votes in return. Yet Obama still held out hope for a couple of converts. “We’re going to accept some of these,” he replied.37
The president sent a letter to congressional leaders of both parties on March 2, 2010, offering to address some of the concerns expressed by Republicans in the health care debate. Obama said that he was open to four specific ideas raised by Republicans at the daylong health care forum the previous week, including encouraging the use of tax-advantaged medical savings accounts and increasing payments to doctors who treat Medicaid patients.38
Administration officials made overtures to several Republicans. They spoke to Peter Roskam. They conferred with John Shadegg about ways to sell insurance across state lines and with Tom Coburn regarding his idea to hire under-cover Medicare fraud investigators. The president spent hours courting Olympia Snowe. Even so, Republicans denounced the summit as an 11th-hour publicity stunt and declared that they would not help pass Obama’s health care bill, even if it did include some of their proposals.39 To maintain the integrity of his proposal, the president could not accept key suggestions of even moderate Republicans like Susan Collins.40
On March 20, 2010, the day before the final House vote on health care reform, Obama told House Democrats that the bill was a compromise measure including many Republican ideas, even though congressional Republicans were all opposing it. “This bill tracks the recommendations not just of Democrat Tom Daschle, but also Republicans Bob Dole and Howard Baker,” the president declared.41
After the passage of health care reform, the White House focused on financial regulation. Once again, he met with Republican leaders and sought their support. Once again, however, they rejected his overtures. For example, during a meeting with leaders of Congress from both parties at the White House, Republicans, and notably their leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, declined to support the measure offered by Senate Democrats, arguing that it would only make bailouts of gigantic, risk-laden institutions more likely.42
On May 25, 2010, the president had a private 75-minute session with Senate Republicans at their weekly luncheon. Obama and the senators engaged in spirited and at times confrontational exchanges over immigration, spending, White House tactics, and other issues.43 Nevertheless, Republicans aggressively opposed the president’s jobs creation measures, plan for regulation of financial institutions, and what was to be a bipartisan deficit-reduction commission.
The president had more success with Republicans on two important issues during the lame-duck session of the 111th Congress. First, he was able to negotiate a deal on the extension of Bush-era tax cuts, largely by agreeing to the extension, which is what the Republicans wanted the most. To obtain ratification of the New START treaty, Obama mounted an intensive five-week campaign that included a war room on Capitol Hill and an active role for Vice President Biden, who had at least fifty meetings or phone calls with senators. The White House sent reassuring letters to senators concerned about missile defense and the modernization of the nation’s nuclear stockpile. The president met with many senators and activated luminaries ranging from Henry Kissinger to Angela Merkel.44 In the end, thirteen Republicans voted for ratification.
In addition to the centrifugal forces of ideology and polarized partisanship, the natural tension between gaining political advantage and obtaining Republican votes made it difficult to cultivate bipartisan cooperation. For months, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham worked with Democratic Senator John Kerry and independent Joseph Lieberman to craft climate change legislation by reconciling the needs of the business and environmental communities. Graham had also visited the White House nineteen times since Obama took office.45 The senators sounded out key legislators, business groups, advocacy organizations, and others interested in the issue. In an effort to convince wavering senators to embrace the package, the senators focused on lining up support among business interests the bill would impact, holding dozens of closed-door meetings with groups ranging from the American Gas Association to the National Mining Association and the Portland Cement Association.
They planned to announce their bill with considerable fanfare on the morning of April 26, 2010. On April 24, however, Graham sent a sharply worded letter to his two colleagues announcing that he would no longer participate in negotiations on the energy bill. Graham’s participation was essential because his support was needed to try to obtain support from other Republicans. As a result, the announcement was canceled.
Graham was troubled by reports that the Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid and the White House were planning to take up an immigration measure before the energy bill. (Graham had worked with Democrats in the past on immigration matters and was expected to be an important bridge to Republicans on that issue as well.) Graham argued that any Senate debate on the highly charged subject of illegal immigration would make it impossible to deal with the difficult issues involved in national energy and global warming policy. He said in his letter that energy must come first and that Democrats appeared to be rushing to take up immigration because of rising anti-immigrant sentiment, including a harsh new measure signed into law in Arizona a few days before.
Graham had taken a substantial risk to be the lone Republican actively working on climate change legislation. He was infuriated that it looked like the Democrats were going to leave him hanging. “I’ve got some political courage, but I’m not stupid,” Graham declared in an interview. “The only reason I went forward is, I thought we had a shot if we got the business and environmental community behind our proposal, and everybody was focused on it. What’s happened is that firm, strong commitment disappeared.”46 Graham also feared being labeled as supporting a gas tax. “I won’t introduce a bill and have the majority leader . . . say, ‘I can’t support that gas tax.’ I will not let this get blamed on me. It would be the worst thing in the world to take the one Republican working with you and make him own the one thing you don’t like.”47
Unlike an immigration bill, a climate change bill had passed the House in 2009. However, Harry Reid was running for reelection in a state with a large Hispanic population. In addition, Republicans in Arizona gave Democrats a gift when they passed what many viewed as an extreme anti-immigration bill that received national attention. Some Democratic strategists saw the chance to cement relations with Hispanics. Nevertheless, after fellow Democrats voiced skepticism, Reid backed off from his pledge to fast-track an overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws on April 27.
The president tried to revive the bipartisan effort. On June 29, he invited twenty-three senators, of both parties, to the White House to try to find some way out of the impasse on climate change legislation. He repeated his call for putting a price on climate-altering pollution through a cap-and-trade system or some other sort of emissions tax. A White House account of the meeting noted, “Not all of the senators agreed with this approach, and the president welcomed other approaches and ideas.”48 There was no reconciling the differences, however, and the bill never came to a floor vote. The well of bipartisanship had been poisoned.
Graham had also been working closely with the White House on legislation that would close the military detention center at Guantánamo Bay, move some of the war-on-terror prisoners there to the U.S. mainland, and create a system to detain al Qaeda members captured later. Graham thought they were close to a deal. Indeed, he later said the meetings were better than he had ever had with the Bush administration. Nevertheless, in early May, and shortly after the ruckus over climate change legislation, the line of communication, in Graham’s words, “went completely dead.”49
No matter what other resources presidents may have at their disposal, they remain highly dependent on their party to move their legislative programs. Representatives and senators of the president’s party usually form the nucleus of coalitions supporting presidential proposals and provide considerably more support than do members of the opposition party. Thus, every president must provide party leadership in Congress, countering the natural tendency toward conflict between the executive and legislative branches that is inherent in the government’s system of checks and balances.50
Rahm Emanuel concluded that previous White House teams tended to focus almost entirely on the handful of leaders of each caucus rather than on building relationships with individual members. “If I think of one thing that we did that was a mistake under President Clinton,” he said, “it was that early on it was just too driven through a couple of committee chairmen.”51
Obama adopted a different approach, holding countless one-on-one meetings with lawmakers. His calls to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Supreme Court nominations took the “advise” part of “advise and consent” to a new level.52 On the economic stimulus bill, he met with lawmakers in the Capitol, made dozens of phone calls, and held several private meetings with Republicans and Democrats in the Oval Office, the residence of the White House, and aboard Air Force One.53 With regard to his budget, the president, Vice President Biden, and a cadre of advisors arrived on Capitol Hill to talk to a group of sixteen centrist Democrats who wanted to pare the spending proposals.54 Later, he emphasized health care reform in his personal meetings, sometimes meeting alone and at other times including aides such as Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, health czar Nancy-Ann DeParle, or Legislative Affairs Director Phil Schiliro.55 The president called or met with dozens of Senate and House Democrats regarding the extension of the Bush-era tax cuts in late 2010.56
Like most presidents, Obama did not use high-pressure tactics or engage in arm twisting when he met with members of Congress. He made his positions clear but did not force the issue. Instead, he engaged in a discussion, sometimes in detail, of policy, and spent as much time probing their views and reasoning as in expressing his own. He often seemed to be looking for ways to address a member’s concerns without compromising his own views.57
He did, however, show himself willing to exercise his presidential muscle when he thought it was necessary. In April 2009, Senator Kent Conrad, the Budget Committee chair, balked at the idea of having the Senate consider health legislation under the fast-track process known as reconciliation, which could avoid a Republican filibuster. At a private meeting, Obama pressed him on it. “I want to keep it on the table as an option,” he told the senator. Not long after that, Emanuel visited Conrad on Capitol Hill. Conrad was not convinced, but decided not to stand in the way. “The Budget Committee chairman does not top the president of the United States,” he said.58
In the final push for health care reform in March 2010, Obama engaged in a round-the-clock effort in which he delved into arcane policy discussions, promised favors, and mapped out election strategy. He met with or called dozens of lawmakers,59 including ninety-two in the week before the final House vote in March 2010.60 As one Washington reporter put it, “Some fence-sitters nearly drowned in presidential attention.”61
When members of Congress visited the White House to talk to Rahm Emanuel, the chief of staff often choreographed “spontaneous” presidential drop-bys so Obama could say hello personally.62 One of Emanuel’s targets in the run-up to the 2009 budget vote was Representative Marion Berry, an Arkansas Democrat who opposed Obama’s proposal to save nearly $10 billion over ten years by cutting federal payments to large farms. Berry still seemed agitated after a brief session in Emanuel’s office, so the chief of staff played his trump card. “I walked him down to the Oval” and introduced Berry to Obama, Emanuel recalled. The two traded farm jokes and agreed to talk later in the year about a comprehensive review of federal agriculture policy. Berry, a longtime Clinton ally, said he “really did appreciate” the attention and was relieved that Obama appeared willing to back off the cuts, at least for now. When the House voted, he was a yes.63
Obama worked hard for the climate change bill, as did senior White House officials, including Emanuel and energy and environment policy coordinator Carol Browner. They focused their efforts on persuading undecided Democrats. A few were taken in to speak to the president. Obama also hosted a Hawaiian-style luau for lawmakers on the south lawn of the White House, providing an opportunity to cajole lingering undecideds over spit-roasted pork and pineapple.64
The president doused a brush fire with organized labor over changes to a new excise tax that unions did not like. In a chance encounter in an aide’s office that was actually well planned out, Obama pulled AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka into the Oval Office. “We’re at the one-yard line. We’ve just got to get the ball in the end zone,” the president said, imploring Trumka to hold his complaints for another day. “Rich, you’ve got to stay with me.”65
At other times, the president made his appeals to larger groups of Democrats. In November, he traveled to the Capitol to urge wavering House Democrats to approve a health care overhaul as the House opened debate on legislation that would transform the nation’s health insurance system. Obama’s rare appearance on the Hill was part of an all-out Democratic effort to rally Democrats.66
On March 20, 2010, the day before the final vote on health care reform, the president again traveled to Capitol Hill to speak to House Democrats, making a forceful case for the legislation on both policy and political grounds. He told them they were on the verge of making history. Opening with a quote from Abraham Lincoln, “I am not bound to win but I am bound to be true,” he exhorted them to approve the legislation and argued that it was the right thing to do even if it did not win Democrats political points.67
According to Emanuel, the Obama White House was well aware of special amenities that it could use to encourage or reward legislative support, and it tracked their use carefully. These amenities included the White House theater, where guests can watch movies and sporting events; formal state dinners; smaller gatherings in the first family’s residence, which spouses can join; tickets to the Easter-egg roll for kids; and tickets to the White House tours that members like to give out to their constituents.68 Almost all such amenities went to Democrats.69
There were plenty of complaints about the White House’s treatment of party colleagues, however. State party leaders felt slighted and viewed the White House as a hapless and inattentive political operation. Some congressional Democrats and Democratic donors found Obama distant and did not forget Obama’s lack of availability for pictures, handshakes, and the like at presidential events. On their own, each misstep or slight may have been trivial, but the cumulative effect did not help the president win the goodwill of many of the constituencies that is required to achieve success in Washington.70
More important than social amenities, of course, were concessions to Democrats for themselves or their constituencies. As the House and Senate debated the budget in 2009, Emanuel’s West Wing office took on the feel of a legislative bazaar. Forty-six wavering Democrats filed in individually and in groups seeking audiences and expressing concerns. For some, the issue was farm payments; for others, veterans benefits. Fiscal conservatives balked at the $1.2 trillion deficit. One House member wanted to discuss a new federal building in his district. Another sought an appointment with the commerce secretary. On April 2, Emanuel’s hospitality paid off. All but three of his visitors voted in the House or Senate for a $3.5 trillion blueprint that preserved Obama’s ambitious domestic policy goals.71
Three months later, the House voted on the most ambitious energy and climate-change legislation in history. To win the votes of wavering lawmakers and the support of powerful industries required compromises and outright gifts. The biggest concessions went to utilities, which wanted assurances that they could continue to operate and build coal-burning power plants without shouldering new costs. They also won a weakening of the national mandate for renewable energy. A series of compromises was reached with rural and farm-state members that would funnel billions of dollars in payments to agriculture and forestry interests. Automakers, steel companies, natural gas drillers, refiners, universities, and real estate agents all got in on the action. The deal making continued right up until the final minutes, with the bill’s co-author, Henry Waxman, doling out billions of dollars in promises on the House floor to secure the final votes needed for passage.72
On health care, moderate Senate Democrats such as Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln, and Mary Landrieu milked the issue for all it was worth.73 Indeed, Nelson was so successful in obtaining funds for Nebraska that even Nebraskans viewed it as outrageous.
Early in Obama’s presidency, the White House assumed it was possible to translate the presidency’s strong approval numbers into legislative action. It hoped to provide what Rahm Emanuel called “air cover” for lawmakers to support the president’s proposals. “Obviously,” Emanuel said, “the president’s adoption of something makes it easier to vote for, because he’s—let’s be honest—popular, and the public trusts him.”74
When all else failed, Obama painted a grim portrait of what a weakened presidency would mean for Democrats and their lofty legislative ambitions. For example, during a closed-door meeting with Senate Democrats on March 25, 2010, Obama presented his basic political argument to the moderates, telling them that if voters viewed him as an effective president, then Democrats would likely do well in the 2010 elections. “If we don’t get health care, and we don’t do energy, and we don’t take care of these priorities,” Obama reportedly said, “I don’t care how far you distance yourself from me. I don’t care how many times you say I’ve gotten too liberal, it’s just not going to do you any good. It’s just not going to help you any.”75
In 2009, the president met separately with House and Senate Democrats to urge support for his budget. He told them that their collective political standing and their ability to execute an aggressive agenda depended on remaining united. “We’re all in this together,” the president said.76 As Emanuel put it at another point, voting for a health bill might be difficult politically, but doing nothing would be worse. “When a party fails to govern, it fails electorally,” he declared.77
In his private sessions with lawmakers, the president drew the consequences for himself in the starkest terms. “If we fail at this,” he told one congressman, “it’s going to be harder for us to pull the line on this other stuff. It is going to weaken our presidency.”78
On March 15, 2010, Obama rode in his private cabin on Air Force One with liberal Congressman Dennis Kucinich on a flight to a health care reform rally in Strongsville, Ohio. They cordially debated the substance of the bill but remained at loggerheads. Finally, the president recalled that it was Kucinich, during the Iowa caucuses, who directed his delegates to back Obama on a second ballot. “Dennis, you were the only candidate to do that,” he said. Now, Obama said, his presidency was on the line. This was not about him, “but about our ability to get anything done.”79
Obama gave his personal commitment to lawmakers who made tough votes for it that he would not abandon them at election time. David Axelrod said the president was eager to “campaign for folks who showed the courage to stand up,” adding, “I think he’ll do it with a special relish.”80 In a televised session with Senate Democrats on February 3, 2010, Obama delivered a message of solidarity, assuring the beleaguered lawmakers: “I’m there in the arena with you.” The White House also signaled to lawmakers that assistance for midterm elections—for example, presidential visits and fund-raisers—would be prioritized for those who supported the bill.81
Nevertheless, by July 2010, House Democrats were lashing out at the White House, venting long-suppressed anger over what they saw as President Obama’s lukewarm efforts to help them win reelection. The Washington Post reported that a widespread belief had taken hold among Democratic House members that they had dutifully gone along with the White House on politically risky issues—including the stimulus plan, the health care overhaul, and climate change—and were left to defend their votes on the campaign trail without much help from the White House. Moreover, the president did not push the climate change bill in the Senate. Many of them were angry that Obama had actively campaigned for Democratic Senate candidates but had done fewer events for House members. The boiling point came on July 13 during a closed-door meeting of House Democrats in the Capitol. Speaker Nancy Pelosi excoriated White House press secretary Robert Gibbs’s public comments the previous weekend that the House majority was in doubt. Attempting to quell the uprising, Obama met privately with House Democratic leaders the next evening to reassure them of his support.82
Some congressional Democrats also complained that petty slights, dropped promises, poor communications, messaging mismanagement, the failure to inform Congress in advance of important policy or personnel decisions, and an occasional lack of White House engagement strained relationships between the president and Capitol Hill.83
“One of the mistakes of the past is that when presidents arrive on Capitol Hill with legislation chiseled into stone, it’s not well received,” reflected David Axelrod, one of Obama’s most influential advisors. “You have to give people a sense of ownership.”84 Thus, the White House ceded Congress ample freedom. “The president set parameters or general principles of what he wants done,” Axelrod said. “He’s given them the latitude on how to achieve those ends.”85
Although Obama’s policy advisors had detailed plans for the economic stimulus package, it decided to offer only a vague outline to Congress, not wanting to appear to dictate to the legislative branch. The White House was surprised when aides to House Appropriations Committee chair David Obey soon complained that the Obama plan lacked enough detail. The suspicion in the House was that Obama was not really being sensitive to congressional prerogative when he punted on the details; instead, he was trying to dump the whole spending bill—and the potentially onerous responsibility for throwing around billions in taxpayer money—on lawmakers, so he would not have to own it. “There’s a cognitive dissonance there,” a senior administration official complained. “On one hand they want to feel like they’re in charge, but then on the other they also want guidance and political cover.” Ultimately, the White House understood that it could not simply depend on Congress to pass the legislation. “We realized we had to go out and sell it,” declared deputy chief of staff Jim Messina.86
Obama defended his decision not to send a detailed blueprint to Congress, letting lawmakers figure out the specifics themselves. “Part of the reason that we did not simply design our own plan and try to jam it down the throats of Congress is we want them to see some of the contradictions in their own positions and, over time, you know, sort through some of those tensions, make some tough choices, working with us,” he said.87 White House aides also argued that if the new administration put a full plan on the table, both parties would inevitably have picked it apart. Moreover, Obama directed his staff members to set a respectful tone, keeping in mind that Republicans would be needed on future issues like energy and health care reform.88
Some members of Congress said Obama’s team would have been better off taking a much stronger hand in writing the original House bill, keeping out provisions that Republicans would later use to portray it as stuffed with pork and programs that had little to do with the economy.89
When negotiators for the two chambers met to reconcile the differences in their bills and a bipartisan group of senators led by Ben Nelson and Susan Collins had secured enough votes to hold up final approval of the bill until it was scaled back to under $800 billion, the White House, led by Rahm Emanuel and budget director Peter Orszag, inserted itself as arbitrator and effectively took charge of the process. It repeated a similar routine in the battle over the president’s budget and the omnibus spending bill. In each case, once the two chambers passed their versions of the bills, the White House stepped in to referee a compromise.90
The Helping Families Save Their Homes Act lost its centerpiece: a change in bankruptcy law the president had championed that would have given judges the power to lower the amount owed on a home loan. Twelve Democrats joined thirty-nine Republicans to vote against the measure. Administration officials barely participated in the negotiations, a factor that lobbyists said significantly strengthened their hand.91
Many Democrats drew lessons from President Clinton’s health care reform effort,92 which failed to receive a vote in either chamber of Congress—and which was followed by large Republican electoral gains in the 1994 midterm elections and the Democratic loss of both houses of Congress. The Clinton administration took nearly a year to prepare a plan behind closed doors while lobbyists marshaled their forces and then unveiled a 1,342-page proposal of comic complexity that befuddled even its allies. The detailed plan also stoked resentment among Congress’s proud Democratic committee barons.
“The lesson we learned from 1994 is that it didn’t work for the Clinton administration to come with a set plan,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said. “It’s necessary to build this from the bottom up.”93 Thus, Obama provided just an outline of broad themes and fairly specific directives and invited lawmakers to fill in the details. “Had we put a plan out, the entire debate would have been changes to the plan,” said Emanuel. “It would have been how the president is failing or succeeding.”94 The White House’s vagueness also may have kept some key players from being angered early in the process and may have given members of Congress more sense of ownership of the bill.95
When Obama weighed in on questions of policy and strategy, the discussion pivoted mainly on broadly shared goals rather than the concrete means of achieving them.96 Senate Finance Committee chair Max Baucus agreed with this approach, wanting the White House to back off and let the Senate worry about the details.97 He spent months negotiating with Republicans Charles Grassley and Olympia Snowe.
There were costs to Obama’s according Congress so much latitude to craft health care policy. The White House thought the congressional process would play out and then it would sell the bill to the public.98 Yet the hands-off approach increased the chances for protracting the legislative process. The president opposed House Energy and Commerce Committee chair Henry Waxman’s decision to move the climate change bill before dealing with health care, concluding that making representatives cast a tough vote for climate change legislation and then it not passing in the Senate would make it more difficult for them to support health care later. Moreover, because the Energy and Commerce Committee also had jurisdiction over health care, focusing first on climate change held up the health care bill.99
The president’s critics suggested that he should have been more assertive to put his stamp on the process and the legislation.100 More time considering the health care reform bill meant more stories focused on opposition to health care and also on the inability of Democrats to agree. A lengthy process also gave opponents more time to organize. The lack of guidance from the White House allowed the House, where vigorous liberals were in charge, to work its will and pass legislation that was too far to the left for the Senate and the country. This product increased criticism from the right and helped inspire Tea Party activists.
Critics, especially on health care, argued that Obama’s approach gave Congress too much latitude to engage in backroom deal making and expedient trade-offs. Moreover, the months of delay, closed-door negotiations, and special deals—like the so-called Cornhusker kickback that would have given Nebraska extra money to pay for Medicaid—tarnished the effort and the president who won office by promising to change the way Washington operates. By the time of Scott Brown’s election, the administration was coming to the conclusion that its fatal mistake had been giving up so much control to Congress.101
Obama and his top aides were more actively engaged in the Senate on health care102 and immersed themselves in the Senate Finance Committee process. The president talked to committee chair Max Baucus several times a week and also had a few calls and meetings with the panel’s ranking Republican, Charles Grassley. There were yet other White House meetings, and presidential advisors held long evening and weekend meetings with Finance Committee staff members.103
In early 2010, before the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts, the White House became the center of negotiations between the House and Senate, with the president as chief mediator.104 White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina guided a team of party strategists. Fed by information from lobbyists, Hill aides, and others, they tracked how every lawmaker intended to vote and prepared a television and radio campaign to counter the bill’s opponents, who were spending lavishly.105
The administration was always heavily involved in developing legislation for financial regulation. Aides met weekly in the White House legislative affairs office to propose reforms and consider the best way to achieve them, and White House and Treasury officials were in congressional offices nearly every day following the president’s inauguration, discussing how to shape regulatory legislation. The day after he signed the health care legislation into law, Obama brought Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher J. Dodd and his counterpart in the House, Rep. Barney Frank, to the Oval Office, signaling he was ready to begin the final push. Nevertheless, having learned its lesson, the White House spent little time trying to woo individual senators with sweetheart deals such as the ones that provoked controversy during the health care negotiations.106
From the beginning, the Obama team worked closely with Democratic Party leaders. Top congressional leadership communications aides coordinated daily with the White House communications director, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s chief of staff spoke to Rahm Emanuel and legislative liaison chief Phil Schiliro regularly.107
Obama had the great advantage of working with an extraordinarily energetic and skilled Speaker of the House in Pelosi.108 The president’s sparse early involvement in health care reform added to Pelosi’s legislative burden,109 but she pulled it through. As Richard Cohen summed up the initial passage of the bill in the House,
She was the player most responsible for guiding the complex measure to passage—not President Obama or White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, and not the committee chairmen. She engaged in constant deal making, in several dozen caucus meetings and perhaps thousands of phone calls and hallway conversations with Democratic members. Whether out of courtesy or desperation, she revisited some members who had made their opposition to the bill clear. “She is talking to everyone who is not a ‘yes,’ even if they have been ‘no’,” a senior Pelosi aide said two days before the vote.110
One of her most difficult tasks was pushing through a controversial amendment related to abortion that brought moderate Democrats on board.
After Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts, the Speaker was still determined to press ahead. “We’re in the majority,” Pelosi told the president. “We’ll never have a better majority in your presidency in numbers than we’ve got right now. We can make this work.” At a news conference on January 28, 2010, she declared, “We will go through the gate. If the gate is closed, we will go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we will pole vault in. If that doesn’t work, we will parachute in. But we are going to get health care reform passed.”111
The health care summit reassured some jittery Democrats that Obama was fully engaged in the fight and also gave the Democratic leadership time to consider their parliamentary options. In Pelosi’s case, it gave her the opportunity to soothe her members’ jangled nerves and to work on convincing recalcitrant members of her caucus that it would be politically disastrous for them simply to walk away.112
As the final vote drew near and dozens of House Democrats were still wavering, many concerned that a vote for the bill would cost them their jobs, House leadership aides brought Pelosi a list of sixty-eight lawmakers to lobby, turn, or bolster. The aides presumed the Democratic leadership would divvy up the names. “I’ll take all sixty-eight,” the Speaker declared.113 It is no wonder that Vice President Biden later lauded her as “the single most persuasive, the single most strategic leader I have ever worked with” and referred to her as “the mother of health care.”114
In addition, the Democratic leadership helped to coordinate the committees with jurisdiction over health care. Once Bill Clinton delivered his plan to Capitol Hill, three major House committees and two Senate panels began work. They moved in separate directions and with muddled outcomes, and these parochial efforts crippled the White House’s proposal. Under Obama, congressional leaders made sure the committees set aside their jurisdictional rivalries to produce health care legislation that could obtain the caucuses’ support.115
The Democratic leadership was not always an effective partner for the White House, however. During the lame-duck session of Congress following the substantial Democratic losses in the midterm elections, Obama concluded that the Democratic leadership lacked a viable plan to move forward regarding the expiring Bush-era tax cuts. Thus, in addition to negotiating with the leaders of his party, the president quietly sent Vice President Biden to pursue a parallel line of negotiations with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.116
Organized interests play a critical role in Washington. For example, more than 1,750 companies, trade groups, and other organizations spent about $1.2 billion and hired about 4,525 lobbyists to influence health care reform in 2009. There were about eight lobbyists for each member of Congress.117
The Obama administration conducted extensive outreach to business groups. Business executives formed a new coalition called Business Forward to support his proposals on energy, health care, financial regulation, and other hot-button issues. Initial members included AT&T, Facebook, Hilton, IBM, Microsoft, Pfizer, and Time Warner.118
In 1993–1994, the health care industry opposed Bill Clinton’s reform bill, mounting an advertising blitz—including the infamous “Harry and Louise” television spots—to kill the effort. In contrast, the Obama White House rejected the Clintons’ industry-bashing populism and gave the health care industry a hand in writing the bill. The president reached early deals with for-profit hospitals and the drug manufacturers. The administration also agreed with the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) to eliminate the gap in Medicare coverage of prescription drugs. The White House even brought the insurance industry on board, offering millions of new customers in exchange for reforms in insurance coverage. The American Medical Association and nurses’ groups also supported the president. On May 11, 2009, groups representing insurers, drug and device makers, doctors, and hospitals appeared with Obama to announce they would commit to helping reduce the growth of health care costs over the next decade.
In the final push for passage in March 2010, the coalition of about fifty groups, from the AARP to labor unions, held daily conference calls. They isolated three dozen lawmakers and had influential people in their communities—doctors, insurance agents, business owners—reach out to them.119
At the same time, many Democratic lobbyists complained that the president not only vilified their profession but also froze them out of discussions on key issues. This attitude may have cost the president valuable advice, political intelligence, and institutional backup. Business leaders reacted strongly negatively to what they saw as the White House’s anti-corporate, confrontational rhetoric and its lack of effective diffuse outreach.120
Barack Obama actively sought Republican support for his legislative initiatives. He thought that by reaching across the aisle he could create opportunities for change by expanding his coalition. Republicans met his overtures with confrontation rather than cooperation, however, frustrating his strategy. Given the limited prospects for bipartisanship that we discussed in chapter 4, we should not expect the president to have had much success in obtaining Republican support for his major proposals.
To transform policy, it was likely that the president would have to rely almost exclusively on effectively exploiting the predispositions of the large Democratic majorities to support his initiatives. Thus, the White House invested heavily in party leadership. Devoting personal attention, making common cause with his party colleagues, letting Congress take ownership of issues, and working closely with party leaders characterized the Obama presidency. We should also expect that the diversity of constituencies and ideologies among Democrats would make Democratic resistance a prominent obstacle to fashioning winning coalitions.
The next chapter examines the White House’s success in obtaining congressional support.