Stymied by a GOP House, Obama looks ahead to 2014 to cement his legacy. By Scott Wilson and Philip Rucker. Washington Post, March 2, 2013.
Obama’s Pelosi II Strategy. Wall Street Journal, March 4, 2013.
WSJ:
Old
Washington hands have been scratching their heads about the start of President
Obama’s second term, with its aggressive liberal priorities and attacks on
Republicans. Whatever happened to governing? Well, the answer arrived this
weekend as the Washington Post reported that Mr. Obama’s real plan for the next
two years is returning Nancy Pelosi as House Speaker in 2014.
“The
goal is to flip the Republican-held House back to Democratic control, allowing
Obama to push forward with a progressive agenda on gun control, immigration,
climate change and the economy during his final two years in office, according
to congressional Democrats, strategists and others familiar with Obama's
thinking,” reports the Post, which is hardly hostile to the President.
The
article says that shortly after finishing his speech on Election Night last
year, Mr. Obama called Mrs. Pelosi and Steve Israel, who runs the Democratic
House re-election campaign, to discuss 2014. The strategy fits Mr. Obama’s
unprecedented new effort to raise $50 million in $500,000 chunks to fund
Organizing for Action (OFA), which will spend millions in GOP-held districts.
Mr. Israel says he met in January with Jim Messina, Mr. Obama’s 2012 campaign
manager who now runs OFA, to discuss the 2014 races.
White
House press secretary Jay Carney pushed back against the article on Monday,
saying 2014 is “not a focus” for Mr. Obama. But that looks like an attempt at
damage control after the Post blew the White House’s cover. Mr. Obama has to
appear to want bipartisan deals even as he prepares the ground for blaming
Republicans in 2014 when those efforts fail.
This is
already clear on the budget, as Mr. Obama insists on a second tax increase that
Republicans can't accept. We’re also increasingly worried about White House
sabotage on immigration reform, as it pushes the bill left on a guest-worker
program and enforcement. Mr. Obama is doing exactly what you’d expect if he
doesn’t want a deal and plans to use the issue to drive minority turnout in
2014.
It’s
important to understand how extraordinary this is. Presidents typically try to
secure major bipartisan deals in their fifth or sixth years, before their
political capital ebbs. That’s what Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan did, and
George W. Bush tried on Social Security. Mr. Obama seems to think he can use
the next two years mainly to set up a Pelosi House that would let him finish
his last two years with a liberal bang.
The
next time you hear Mr. Obama, House Democrats or one of their media acolytes
talk about GOP “obstructionism,” refer them to the Washington Post article that
shows what they really intend for the current Congress. Bipartisan failure is
their strategy.
