Category Archives: Political Science

DC Deadlock, the Perils of Paul in Iowa, and Tonight’s Debate

So little time, so much to blog about.  Today’s topics: deadlock in DC, the Perils of Paul in Iowa, and tonight’s debate.

To begin, as I predicted in this earlier post, the Obama administration has backed away from its veto threat in response to changes Congress made to the detainee provisions in the 2012 military authorization bill. Given the already tepid nature of that threat in the administration’s Statement of Policy (SAP), I didn’t think it would take much to persuade Obama to take the veto threat off the table.  As you might imagine, party purists on the Left are again voicing their displeasure with the President’s willingness to compromise, and human rights and civil libertarian groups continue to argue the bill cedes too much power to the military.  But although the concessions the congressional conference committee made in response to the administration’s objections may not have appeased the Left, they were evidently enough to provide political cover to Obama, and he is going to sign this bill.  This is another illustration of something that I refer to often on this blog, but which – surprisingly – is not accepted by all political scientists: that presidential power is really nothing more than persuasion, and that in practice, persuasion takes place through bargaining.  The negotiations I’ve described here regarding the military authorization bill are the latest illustration of this fact.  Purists, in contrast, view the exercise of presidential power as part of a zero-sum game, where the president either wins by getting everything he wants, or he loses.  But that’s not how it works in a system of shared powers. To get anything, presidents need to be prepared to give something up.

Meanwhile, another congressional donnybrook is brewing. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is now threatening to hold up the Senate vote on an omnibus appropriations bill until he gets Republican agreement to pass an extension of the payroll tax cut due to expire at the end of  the year. House Republicans are supporting their own version of a payroll tax cut extension that includes provisions expediting approval of the Keystone pipeline project.  So far, the Republican bill is a non-starter with Senate Democrats who are hoping to leverage the threat of a government shutdown to force Republican concessions.  In response, House Republicans have gone ahead an introduced their own omnibus spending bill. Their hope is to pass the bill by Friday, thus putting the screws on Reid instead, since Senate Democrats will be forced to either accede to Republican wishes or accept responsibility for failing to pass the spending bill and risking another government shutdown.

This latest round of legislative brinkmanship is sure to bring out the handwringers among the chattering class (and among academics too!) who will cite it as still another example of how our political system is broken.  As with the debt default crisis, however, I think this instead is the logical result of having two evenly matched, ideologically cohesive parties, each controlling one house of Congress.  As long as both sides see it is in their mutual interest to compromise, they will do so, but not before driving Congress to the legislative precipice in order to wring out every last feasible concession.  In this instance, neither Republicans nor Democrats see their brand name benefit by opposing a payroll tax cut, and so they will reach agreement on doing so.  Similarly, there’s not much payoff in shutting down the government, so I expect either some compromise on the omnibus spending bill, probably by decoupling it from consideration of the payroll tax extension, or a short-term spending extension while debate continues.   Obama, at least publicly, seems to want nothing to do with this confrontation, and who can blame him?  He received little credit for negotiating the debt default compromise.

It’s a messy way to legislate, to be sure.  But we should get used to it because, barring a return to unified government, it’s here to stay.

Turning to electoral politics, what are we to make of this Rasmussen automated poll of likely caucus voters in Iowa, which was in the field on Tuesday?  (Rasmussen surveyed 750 likely caucus voters. The margin of sampling error is +/- 4 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence)

2012 Iowa Republican Caucus

12/13/2011 11/15/2011 10/19/2011 8/31/2011 8/4/2011
Mitt Romney 23% 19% 21% 17% 21%
Newt Gingrich 20% 32% 9% 2% 5%
Ron Paul 18% 10% 10% 14% 16%
Jon Huntsman 5% 2% 2% 3% 2%
Herman Cain Withdrew 13% 28% 4% 4%
Rick Perry 10% 6% 7% 29% 12%
Michele Bachmann 9% 6% 8% 18% 22%
Rick Santorum 6% 5% 4% 4% Not Polled
Some other candidate 2% 1% 4% 0% 7%
Not sure 8% 6% 8% 10% 0%

Romney, who has been fading in most recent Iowa polls, is ahead here, albeit with a lead that is within the poll’s margin of error. Rasmussen does not provide crosstabs to nonsubscribers, so I can’t check the poll’s internals to gauge what lies behind the results. But a quick read of the topline results suggests that the real story is not that Romney is gaining in Iowa – it’s that some of Gingrich’s support has moved to Paul.  More generally, we see a tightening of the race in Iowa, almost certainly reflecting the media blitz targeting Gingrich issued by the Romney, Perry and Bachmann camps.  Note that all three candidates have registered small gains since the last Rasmussen poll.

In a video piece we have up at the Middlebury website, my colleague Bert Johnson argues that what pundits perceive as “momentum” coming out of Iowa and New Hampshire is really a function of the various factions solving a coordination problem; in effect, they use these early contests to decide which candidate to coalesce behind.   So, if there are two factions in Iowa – say, social conservatives and fiscal moderates – each group has to decide which candidate to support, or risk dissipating their influence.  To put this another way the reason we seem to think that a candidate gains momentum coming out of Iowa (or New Hampshire) is really a function of the winnowing process that eliminates second-tier candidates.   Their support has to go somewhere.   With only about 20 days to go before the Iowa caucuses, however, potential voters seem in no hurry to solve their coordination problem, to use Bert’s term. This is particularly true among social conservatives, who seem to have split their support among Gingrich, Perry, Santorum and Bachmann.  Newt has to hope he can get those voters to coalesce behind him.  Paul, meanwhile, draws his strongest support among independents, weak Democrats, and young voters.  It’s not clear whether he has hit his ceiling or not.

If the race is tightening in Iowa, it makes tonight’s Sioux City debate all the more crucial (and yes, I’ll be live blogging!)  The key question will be whether Newt now goes on the attack against Paul and Romney, and whether Perry, Santorum and Bachmann can turn in a second straight strong performance and move into the top four  to avoid getting culled from the field.

The debate is at 9 on Fox.  I’ll be on a bit earlier to set the table.  It is potentially the most significant debate of the campaign season to date so I hope those of you who aren’t studying for an exam  (you know who you are) can join me online.

My Cousin Veto and the Military Authorization Bill: A Lesson In Presidential Power

In this earlier blog post  I argued that it was unlikely that Obama would veto the fiscal 2012 military authorization bill that had just passed the Senate by overwhelming numbers, 93-7, despite objections from both progressives and conservatives that the bill, as worded, allowed military authorities to hold Americans indefinitely if they were suspected of engaging in terrorism on U.S. soil. Although Obama’s senior advisers were recommending a presidential veto, I noted that was not the same as Obama himself issuing a veto threat – a distinction that was sometimes lost in the impassioned debate over the bill that has consumed the blogosphere during recent days.

Yesterday, in  an effort to avoid provoking a presidential veto, members of the House and Senate armed forces committees, working in House-Senate conference,  apparently tweaked the fiscal 2013 military authorization bill by approving language clarifying that the bill would not affect the  FBI and other law enforcement’s national security authority. The revised bill also altered language to make it the President, rather than the Secretary of Defense, who can issue a waiver to move suspects from military to civilian custody.  The new language, which was included in a conference designed to iron out differences between the Senate and the House versions of the bill, must now pass muster again with both chambers, but it is likely to go in its current form to the President’s desk for his signature.  Civil libertarians are not mollified by the new language and are insisting that the President veto it. If he does, it will be only the third veto he has issued.

But, in my view, he won’t veto the bill.  If he doesn’t progressives undoubtedly will again criticize him for sacrificing principle on the altar of political expediency. However, this bill has bipartisan support and it includes a variety of other issues that have strong backing of key legislators in both congressional chambers.  Historically, presidents don’t veto military authorization bills in large part because of their omnibus nature; they usually contain something for everybody.   So while much of the attention is focused on the detainee section, the bill also has other key provisions agreed to in bipartisan deliberations headed in the Senate by the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee Carl Levin and the ranking Republican John McCain.  Those provisions include restrictions on transferring Guantanamo detainees to the mainland for another year, freezing aid to Pakistan pending that nation’s cooperation on military matters, and a host of military-related pork barrel items pertaining to weapons production, base closings and other local matters of concern to influential legislators focused on bringing the bacon back home.  Getting 93 votes also meant that some senators lost out on key issues. McCain, for instance, was unhappy with a provision that would place the head of the National Guard on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Given the tepid nature of Obama’s “veto threat” in the administration’s Statement of Policy, it seems inconceivable to me that he will veto this bill. But that doesn’t mean his veto talk was cheap.  Instead, the language used in the SAP was enough to persuade members of Congress to change the bill’s language to provide Obama with the political cover he needs to sign the bill into law.  By political cover, I don’t mean that it was mere window-dressing – the modified language, while perhaps not enough to please everyone, did provide enough substantive clarity to at least meet some of the administration’s objections, even if it did not go as far as Obama’s aides might have liked.

We are sometimes tempted to judge a president’s influence on the legislative process by the number of vetoes he issues; a “strong” president will veto bills that do not conform to his preferences. But a better indicator is how Congress reacts to veto threats.  After all, if the president feels compelled to veto a bill, it is an indication that his threats were not effective. The distinction is a useful reminder of Richard Neustadt’s famous adage that presidential power – his effective influence on outcomes –  is rooted primarily in a president’s formal powers – including the veto.  However, because those powers are shared in our constitutional system, presidents cannot rely on formal authority alone to get what they want.  Indeed, the use of formal powers as the final option – think issuing a veto – often reflects presidential weakness.  But this doesn’t mean formal powers aren’t useful.  As Neustadt argues, “presidential ‘powers’ may remain inconclusive when a president commands, but always remain relevant when he persuades.”   And how does he persuade?  The answer, in Neustadt ’s classic phrase: “The power to persuade is the power to bargain.”  Formal powers such as the presidential veto, then, give the President a vantage point from which to influence the legislative process, even if those powers cannot determine the outcome.  This is precisely what we see happening with the military authorization bill.  Obama used his formal power – or more precisely, the threat of using it – to nudge the bill a bit closer to his preferred outcome. We shall find out, probably by the end of this week, whether it was moved close enough to avoid a veto.

Do Ya Feel Lucky, Punk? Obama, Vetos, and SAP’s

When is a veto threat not a veto threat?  That’s the question one needs to ask in light of the recent media stories and blog posts suggesting that President Obama has threatened to veto a recently passed military authorization bill for the next fiscal year because it includes language that could be construed as limiting the President’s flexibility to hold suspected terrorists in civilian custody.  The bill also contains provisions restricting Obama’s power to relocate enemy combatants now held at Guantanamo Bay, another detail that did not sit with the Obama Administration.  Despite the administration’s apparent veto threat, however, the bill passed the Senate by overwhelming numbers (93-7), and was supported by most of the Senate Democrats as well as Republicans. And yet, as I discussed here, the President apparently is persisting with his veto threat – a tactic that is both surprising, since Obama has only vetoed two bills so far, and risky, since it would appear that there would be enough votes in both the Senate and the House to override a presidential veto.

So what explains the President’s veto threat?  Why has he apparently stiffened his spine? The answer is that, despite my and others’ loose choice of words, Obama has not issued a veto threat.  His advisers have.

Let me explain.

Presidents typically issue a threat to veto pending legislation by issuing a SAP – a Statement of Administrative Policy. (Technically, these are issued by the Office of Management and Budget on the President’s behalf). Presidents issue SAP’s not just to signal their intent to veto; they may also be used to voice support for a bill, or to recommend that it be altered.  Frequently the SAP will say that the President opposes a bill, but it will stop short of threatening a veto. So, for example, today the administration  issued this SAP regarding legislation now being debated on Capitol Hill to extend the payroll tax cut, which is due to expire on Jan. 1.  In it, the Obama administration says it opposes one version of the bill now under consideration in the Senate, but supports another version.  However, it does not threaten to veto the less desirable bill.

On the other hand, here’s the language used in the Administration’s SAP regarding the House’s bill H.R. 2 which would repeal the Affordable Health Care Act:  “If the President were presented with H.R. 2, he would veto it” with the “would” underscored in the original document.

That is an unmistakable veto threat, one that does not leave the President with much wiggle room. More generally, SAPs serve as a signaling device.  They are a means by which the President can convey information to Congress regarding his legislative preferences.  Congress can then decide how to respond.    Political scientists have spent extensive time unpacking the logic of these signaling games, focusing in particular on veto threats and vetoes, in large part because these tactics are amenable to the type of deductive reasoning that rational choice theorists employ, and because it is easy to test some of the logical implications of these models.  I won’t delve too deeply into these models here, except to say that they can get very complicated depending on the assumptions one incorporates into them. The important point to remember is that the particular phrasing a president uses in a SAP is actually crucial to the signaling game; words convey not only a President’s preferences, but also the intensity with which he holds those preferences.

So, what does the Obama Administration’s SAP dealing with the military authorization bill actually say?  Here’s the opening line:  “The Administration supports Senate passage of S. 1867, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year (FY) 2012.”  That’s right – the bill that most media and blogging outlets (including mine) are reporting that Obama is threatening to veto actually had the administration’s support, at least as of November 17! But wait – there’s more; further down the SAP contains this language:

“The Administration strongly objects to the military custody provision of section 1032, which would appear to mandate military custody for a certain class of terrorism suspects. This unnecessary, untested, and legally controversial restriction of the President’s authority to defend the Nation from terrorist threats would tie the hands of our intelligence and law enforcement professionals. Moreover, applying this military custody requirement to individuals inside the United States, as some Members of Congress have suggested is their intention, would raise serious and unsettled legal questions and would be inconsistent with the fundamental American principle that our military does not patrol our streets.”

And finally – and this is the crucial passage: “Any bill that challenges or constrains the President’s critical authorities to collect intelligence, incapacitate dangerous terrorists, and protect the Nation would prompt the President’s senior advisers to recommend a veto” (italics added).

So, to be clear, unlike the wording of the SAP stating the President’s reaction to the bill proposing to repeal Obamacare, the President has – as yet – not issued a SAP saying he will veto the military authorization bill.  In fact, he has left his final decision unclear, although he has noted that his advisers will be pressing him to veto.  Senators – including members of Obama’s own party – were forced to decide what the President would do if this bill passes in its current form.  Evidently most concluded that either the President will not act on his advisers’ recommendation to veto the bill, or that if he does they have the votes to override it. Or perhaps they expect the veto to be sustained, but still felt it in their own political interest to vote for the bill.  Note that there may be a range of motives in play, and not all of them are necessarily equally applicable to each Senator.

This is where the notion of “professional reputation”, a phrase coined by presidency scholar Richard Neustadt, comes into play.  Simply put, in trying to anticipate what the President might do, senators look in part Obama’s prior actions for clues regarding his likely behavior in this case. How many veto threats did he issue before? In how many cases did those threats come to fruition?

If we put ourselves in their shoes and examine Obama’s prior veto threats, what do we find?

Owen Witek looked through all of the Obama SAP’s listed on the White House website  that have been issued since he took office to see how many contained veto threats.  In this case, Owen used a rather broad definition of a veto threat; he counted any language suggesting a potential veto, even if issued by Obama’s advisers, as a real veto threat. (Note: these were SAP’s dealing with nonappropriation-related legislation.)  Interestingly, in the first two years of his presidency, Obama expressed opposition to only four bills being considered in the 111th Congress, and he threatened to veto three of those bills. He eventually issued two vetoes, but they were not directed to any of the bills that were the subject of veto threats. (One was an appropriations bill, so it wouldn’t have made Witek’s list.)

Since the Republican takeover of the House, however, the number of nonappropriation-related veto threats, as defined here, has jumped dramatically; in the first session of the 112th Congress, Witek counts 52 SAP’s that contain language saying Obama opposes all or a portion of pending legislation.  Thirty-one of those statements contain veto threats.  Since Witek made his count, the President has apparently issued at least one more veto threat (although I’ve yet to see the SAP for it on the White House website), this time objecting to efforts by House Republicans to package a plan to support the controversial Keystone oil shale pipeline with legislation extending the payroll tax cuts that are now due to expire Jan. 1.  Despite Obama’s threat, House Republican leaders seem intent on including the provision, which they see as necessary to win over Tea Party-backed Republicans.  These Republicans fear that by extending the payroll tax cut they are jeopardizing entitlement programs funded through these funds.  The House bill also includes other sweeteners designed to appease Republicans, including restrictions on illegal immigrants receiving tax benefits and reducing long-term unemployment benefits.

So, what does this record suggest about Obama’s likely response to the military authorization bill if it reaches his desk?  Frankly, it’s hard to tell without going into a deeper study of Obama’s SAPs, the context in which they were issued, and the reaction to his veto threats.  My best guess that Obama is not likely to veto it, his advisers’ recommendations to the contrary notwithstanding.  The Keystone rider to the payroll bill, on the other hand, is an entirely different matter – here it is Obama who has personally and publicly issued the veto threat, daring the Republicans to call his bluff.  It’s inconceivable to me that if it somehow passed the Senate in its current form (it won’t) and came to the President’s desk for his signature, he would not veto it.

Looking ahead, it seems clear to me that by the end of this congressional session his current veto total is likely to increase beyond the current two.  Note that neither George W. Bush nor Bill Clinton vetoed any bills in their first two years in office – in fact, Bush didn’t issue his first veto until after his reelection to a second term.  But Clinton ended up issuing 36 vetoes – all after the Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, and Bush ended up with 12 vetoes, 11 coming when the Democrats captured the Congress in 2006. In issuing these vetoes, Bush was overturned 4 times, Clinton just twice.

Whenever the Congress and the President are involved in a veto game, they have to ask themselves: what do I think I know about the other actor’s reputation?  Are their threats credible?  Or are they bluffing?  And perhaps most crucial: what are the consequences if I’m wrong? Sometimes the consequences can be quite costly, which is why presidents are very judicious in the wording they use in their SAP’s.

In any type of negotiation like this, of course, the key is not to misjudge one’s opponent….punk.

 

 

The Audacity of Nope: Why Obama is No Rough Rider

In what some billed as the most important economic speech of his presidency, President Obama traveled to  Osawatomie, Kansas yesterday to deliver a highly publicized address meant to highlight the major themes of his reelection campaign.  The site, of course, is where Teddy Roosevelt gave his famous “New Nationalism” speech in 1910 – one that laid out many of the progressive ideals TR would run on as a third-party candidate two years later.  In choosing the location of yesterday’s speech, the Obama administration hoped to draw a historical parallel between the themes of Obama’s reelection campaign and Roosevelt’s call for a “square deal”  based on economic fairness (a comparison that historian Doris Kearns Goodwin first raised on Meet the Press  two weeks ago).   In Roosevelt’s words from 101 years ago : “But when I say that I am for the square deal, I mean not merely that I stand for fair play under the present rules of the game, but that I stand for having those rules changed so as to work for a more substantial equality of opportunity and of reward for equally good service. “

But while many pundits have noted the thematic parallels between the two addresses, what I found far more telling was what TR’s address contained that Obama’s lacked. Where Roosevelt proposed a number of progressive – radical? – policies for redressing economic inequality, Obama pushed almost none.  That difference shows not just a distinction between TR and Obama, but more importantly how dramatically the political context has been transformed in recent decades – a transformation that today makes it less likely that Obama will suggest the more far-reaching policies embraced by TR, never mind try to implement them.

By my count, Obama’s speech contains exactly two substantive policy proposals for achieving economic fairness along with a couple of reminders of what Democrats had already accomplished toward this end and some rhetorical jawboning on related issues.  First, he advocated an extension of the payroll tax cut due to expire at the end of the month. This will almost certainly occur, mostly because Republicans do not want to be seen advocating for a tax increase, even if extending the tax cut is of dubious economic benefit. Second, the President recommended restructuring the tax system and implied that this should include raising the top tax rate to the level in place during the Clinton administration.  Although Republicans in Congress are dead set against raising the top rate, they have signaled a willingness to work for tax reform so there is a glimmer of a possible compromise here.

Beyond these two measures, however, I didn’t hear much more in the way of substantive policy proposals to actually reduce economic inequity.  To be sure, Obama did push other proposals, urging the Senate to confirm Richard Cordray to head the recently created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and reminding his audience that he supported the Dodd-Frank legislation (although he didn’t mention it by name) designed to tighten banking regulations. He also urged  banks to ease loan restrictions to make borrowing easier although I didn’t see a specific proposal to make this happen. Don’t get me wrong – these are all proposals worth considering, but they are hardly the rhetoric of a trust-buster.  Note also that he found time to remind listeners that he supported cutting government programs and that he backed regulatory reforms “that will save businesses billions of dollars.”  Match that, TR!

My point is not to criticize these proposals.  It is to say they fall far short of the progressive policies TR proposed in his New Nationalism speech from 1910.  Consider what TR recommended: the list includes his call to prohibit “the use of corporate funds directly or indirectly for political purposes” which he described as “one of the principal sources of corruption in our political affairs.” Ever the trust-buster, Roosevelt complained that efforts to prohibit “combinations in industry” had completely failed. “The way out lies, not in attempting to prevent such combinations, but in completely controlling them in the interest of the public welfare. For that purpose the Federal Bureau of Corporations is an agency of first importance. Its powers, and, therefore, its efficiency, as well as that of the Interstate Commerce Commission, should be largely increased.”  (The FBC was an investigatory agency within the then-named Department of Commerce and Labor; it was a forerunner to the Federal Trade Commission).

Roosevelt also criticized the power of “special interests” to get Congress to pass tariffs that, through political logrolling, sacrificed the public interest for private gain.  The solution, he suggested, “must be an expert tariff commission, wholly removed from the possibility of political pressure or of improper business influence. Such a commission can find the real difference between cost of production, which is mainly the difference of labor cost here and abroad. As fast as its recommendations are made, I believe in revising one schedule at a time.” There would be no more legislative logrolls when it came to passing tariffs.

He also sought higher and more progressive taxes, including an inheritance tax on the very rich: “Therefore, I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and in another tax which is far more easily collected and far more effective-a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion, and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate.”

To protect labor, he called for “comprehensive workman’s compensation acts, both State and national laws to regulate child labor and work for women, and, especially, we need in our common schools not merely education in book-learning, but also practical training for daily life and work. We need to enforce better sanitary conditions for our workers and to extend the use of safety appliances for workers in industry…”

But wait, there’s more! Turning toward politics, he advocated the use of the directly primary to loosen party control over the nomination process in order to “make our political representatives more quickly and sensitively responsive to the people whose servants they are. “ He also reiterated his support for campaign finance regulation: “It is particularly important that all moneys received or expended for campaign purposes should be publicly accounted for, not only after election, but before election as well. Political action must be made simpler, easier, and freer from confusion for every citizen.”

Finally, “I believe that every national officer, elected or appointed, should be forbidden to perform any service or receive any compensation, directly or indirectly, from interstate corporations; and a similar provision could not fail to be useful within the States.”

Along with these specific proposals, Roosevelt hinted at even more radical efforts to increase government intervention into the marketplace:  “The absence of effective State, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power. The prime need is to change the conditions which enable these men to accumulate power which it is not for the general welfare that they should hold or exercise… This, I know, implies a policy of a far more active governmental interference with social and economic conditions in this country than we have yet had, but I think we have got to face the fact that such an increase in governmental control is now necessary.”

This hint of what some commentators at the time described as advocating socialism created such a stir that TR was force to backtrack somewhat in later comments to make clear that was not what he was proposing.

My point here is not to chastise Obama for failing to propose a program that matched TR’s in substance and not just in theme.  In fairness, TR held no office in 1910 and thus was much freer to propose a radical program to redress economic inequities.  And, many of his proposals are now in place. Moreover, we ought not to forget that when he did run for President in 1912 on the New Nationalism platform, he lost to the Democrat Woodrow Wilson, who advocated a milder form of many of TR’s proposals as part of his New Freedoms campaign.

Nonetheless one cannot helped but be struck by – when one digs beneath the repeated thematic references – just how much milder Obama’s speech was compared to TR’s.  Is it tempting to blame the difference on Obama’s more conservative beliefs and pragmatic temperament.  But, while I have long argued that Obama was by temperament and training not one to push radical policies, I think the larger reason for his pulling his punches in yesterday’s speech is his realization that he is distinctly limited in terms of the policy options that could actually redress economic equality and get through Congress.  Today’s equivalent of the audacious economic platform TR proposed – nationalizing the banks? A public health care system? Forty percent marginal tax rates, or higher? – might play well with the progressive wing of the Democratic party but it would go nowhere in the House or Senate given Republican strength and it’s not even clear it would help in the general election, given the level of public distrust with government and the Tea Party-based opposition to “big government”. Put another way, I’m not sure TR would have proposed much more than Obama did yesterday – not if he was running for reelection.

It is all well and good for historians to urge Obama to channel his inner TR, or FDR, or LBJ.  But the reality is that given the current economic and political climate, these transcendent historical figures are perhaps less relevant to Obama than are other presidents – think, alas, of Jimmy Carter. With Carter’s electoral fate in mind Obama, I surmise, would do far better to uncover his own core principles, and fashion a program and strategy for achieving them, than he will searching history for a dubious analogue.  Until he channels his inner-Obama, he is in for a rough ride of his own.

Will You End Up in Guantanamo Bay Prison?

The focus on the Republican nomination battle threatens to overshadow a fascinating debate that unfolded this past week on Capitol Hill – one that crossed party lines and raised the possibility of a rare presidential veto.  The dispute centers on provisions in the $662 military authorization bill that lays out military policy and related spending parameters for the next fiscal year.  In an unusual coalition, libertarian-minded Senate Republicans including Rand Paul joined with liberal Democrats such as Diane Feinstein to fight a provision in the bill that would allow the military to hold suspected terrorists indefinitely, without the right to trial – even if they are American citizens captured on American soil.  Senators backing the provision, including Republicans Lindsey Graham and John McCain, and Democrat Carl Levin who chairs the Senate Armed Services committee, said its inclusion signified recognition that the War on Terror was taking place here at home as well as overseas. As Graham put it: “It is not unfair to make an American citizen account for the fact that they decided to help Al Qaeda to kill us all and hold them as long as it takes to find intelligence about what may be coming next. And when they say, ‘I want my lawyer,’ you tell them, ‘Shut up. You don’t get a lawyer.’” That view, they argue, is consistent with the Supreme Court ruling in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld allowing the government to hold Americans as enemy combatants. But critics including Paul argue that allowing the military to hold Americans captured within the United States without trial is a dangerous expansion of police powers and a violation of civil liberties.

Ultimately, the differences were papered over by an amendment that appears to give the president some flexibility to move suspected terrorists from military to civilian custody and which states that nothing in the legislation would alter existing law when it came to military detention of U.S. citizens and those captured on American soil.

Despite the overwhelming Senate support for passage (the bill passed 93-7 and will be reconciled with a House version. Senators voting nay included three Democrats, three Republicans and one independent), however, President Obama is still threatening to veto the bill in its current form.  However, if administration spokespersons are to be believed, Obama’s objection is based not so much on concern for civil liberties as it is on preserving the president’s authority and flexibility in fighting the war on terror. According to White House press secretary Jay Carney, “Counterterrorism officials from the Republican and Democratic administrations have said that the language in this bill would jeopardize national security by restricting flexibility in our fight against Al Qaeda.”  (The administration also objects to language in the bill that would restrict any transfer of detainees out of Guantanamo Bay prison for the next year.)  For these reasons, the President is still threatening to veto the bill, which now goes to the Republican-controlled House where it is unlikely to be amended in a way that satisfies the President’s concerns.  If not, this sets up an interesting scenario in which the President may have to decide whether to stick by his veto threat and hope that partisan loyalties kick in to prevent a rare veto override.

The debate over the authorization bill is another reminder of a point that you have heard me make before: that when it comes to national security issues and the War on Terror, President Obama’s views are much closer to his predecessor’s George W. Bush’s than they are to candidate Obama’s.  The reason, of course, is that once in office,the president – as the elected official that comes closest to embodying national sovereignty – feels the pressure of protecting the nation from attack much more acutely than anyone else. That pressure drives them to seek maximum flexibility in their ability to respond to external threats, and to resist any provision that appears to constrain their authority.  This is why Obama’s conduct of the War on Terror has followed so closely in Bush’s footsteps – both are motivated by the same institutional incentives and concerns.

The Senate debate, however, also illustrates a second point.  We often array elected officials along a single ideological line, from most conservative to most liberal. Think Bernie Sanders at one end and Jim DeMint at the other.  In so doing, we are suggesting that those individuals at the farthest ends of the spectrum have the greatest divergence in ideology.  But on some issues, including this authorization bill, that ideological model is misleading.  Instead, it is better to think of legislators arrayed in a circle, with libertarian Republicans and progressive Democrats sitting much closer together, say, at the top of the circle, joined together in their resistance to strong government and support for civil liberties.  At the “bottom” of the circle are Republicans like Graham and Democrats like Levin who share an affinity for strengthening the government’s ability to protect the nation’s security.

For Obama, however, the central  issue is not the clash of civil liberties and national security – it is the relative authority of the President versus Congress to conduct the War on Terror. That explains why he has stuck by his veto threat despite the legislative compromise.  And it raises an interesting test of power. To date he has issued only two presidential vetoes, by far the lowest number of any President in the modern era. His predecessor George W. Bush issued 12, and saw Congress override four – a historically high percentage of overrides.  On average, presidential vetoes are overridden about 7% of the time. These figures, however, underplay the use of veto threats as a bargaining tool.  In the 110th (2007-08) Congress alone, Bush issued more than 100 veto threats. I’ve not calculated Obama’s veto threats, but it is easy enough to do by going to the White House’s website and looking under its Statements of Administrative Policy (SAP’s) listings. Those should include veto threats. Note that most veto threats are relatively less publicized and often are issued early in the legislative process.  This latest veto threat, in contrast,seems to have attracted quite a bit of press attention.  It will be interesting to see whether, if the current authorization language remains unchanged, Obama will stick to his guns.

Meanwhile, keep those election predictions coming – there’s a free t-shirt at stake!