Washington Memo
Unshackling the Presidency to Fix the
Government
By PETER BAKER
Published: The New York Times National Edition, July 14, 2012, p. A12.
WASHINGTON — In all the discussion these days about how dysfunctional Washington has
become, attention usually centers on a fractious Congress riven by partisanship and paralyzed at
times by rules and obstruction. Often lost in that conversation is the possibility that the
presidency itself may need fixing.
At least that is the conclusion of a bipartisan group of former advisers to presidents and would-be
presidents who have drafted what they call a plan to make the presidency work better. With the
help of several former White House chiefs of staff, the group, called No Labels, has fashioned a
blueprint that would make whoever wins in November both more powerful and more
accountable.
The idea is to cut through some of the institutional obstacles to decisive leadership that have
challenged President Obama and his recent predecessors, while also erecting structures to foster
more bipartisanship, transparency and responsiveness. If the proposals were enacted, the next
president would have more latitude to reorganize the government, appoint his own team, reject
special-interest measures and fast-track his own initiatives through Congress. But he would also
be called on to interact more regularly with lawmakers, reporters and the public.
“There aren’t any magic answers to Washington’s problems,” said Dan Schnur, a former
Republican strategist who worked on several presidential campaigns and now directs the Jesse
M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California. “But what these reforms
do is make it easier for elected officials who are serious about solving problems to do so.”
Nancy Jacobson, a longtime Democratic fund-raiser who, like Mr. Schnur, is a co-founder of No
Labels, said the purpose of the plan was to find ways to make a difference, taking into account
the current atmosphere. “We’re trying to make the presidency more effective,” she said.
The plan is a follow-up to a similar blueprint from No Labels for making Congress work better.
Among those consulted by the group — which describes itself as a movement of Democrats,
Republicans and independents devoted to crossing partisan lines to solve problems — were
William Daley, a former chief of staff to Mr. Obama, and Joshua B. Bolten, who was the last
chief of staff to President George W. Bush.
The plan advances 11 proposals, some of them relatively minor but symbolically important and
others fairly sweeping in scope. Many of them may be unlikely to be adopted, but the authors
hope at least to prompt a debate about ways to address the dysfunction they see.
To build accountability, the plan calls on the next president to hold monthly news conferences
and twice-a-year citizen news conferences; meet quarterly with the Congressional leadership of
both parties; bill his political party for travel that involves fund-raising, rather than schedule
extraneous official events so that taxpayers pick up part of the tab; and submit to 90-minute
question-and-answer sessions each month on the floors of Congress, much as the British prime
minister does in Parliament.
To build presidential power, the plan proposes that the next president be given expanded
authority to send individual items in spending bills back to Congress for up-or-down votes. It
also proposes renewing presidential power that lapsed in 1984 to consolidate and even eliminate
parts of the federal government.
The next president would also have more freedom to appoint his administration, a process now
widely considered broken. The number of positions requiring Senate confirmation has grown to
1,400 from 280 in the last half-century, and the average confirmation time has increased from 2
½ months to more than 10 months, according to the group’s research.
To streamline that, the plan endorses a bill, which has passed the Senate and is awaiting House
consideration, to trim the number of midlevel posts requiring confirmation. It also proposes that
the winner of the election name a list of can’t-wait nominees who would be expedited, and that
all nominations be confirmed or rejected within 90 days. Any that were not acted on by then
would be confirmed by default.
Perhaps most provocative is a proposal to allow the president to send legislation to Congress
twice a year that could not be amended but only approved or rejected. That is patterned after
what is known as fast-track authority, often applied to trade agreements. By preventing
lawmakers from changing such legislation, a president could get yes-or-no answers on his top
priorities.
William A. Galston, an aide to President Bill Clinton who is now a senior fellow at the
Brookings Institution, suggested that one possible subject of fast-track authority could be the
bipartisan plan to reduce the deficit that was created by a presidential commission led by Alan K.
Simpson, a former Republican senator from Wyoming, and Erskine B. Bowles, a White House
chief of staff under Mr. Clinton. The Simpson-Bowles plan included a cornucopia of unpopular
tax increases and spending cuts, but under this proposal Congress would have to accept or reject
the whole plan.
Mark McKinnon, a Democratic media consultant who crossed lines to work for Mr. Bush’s
campaigns and later helped found No Labels, said that the fast-track idea “would be a big game
changer” by itself, but that the overall effect of the various proposals would go a long way
toward restoring faith in the presidency.
“In their parts, they’re effective, but cumulatively can have a huge impact,” he said. “The voters
are just hungry to see any problem solving. If they start to see action on any or all of these, I
think it will have a measurable impact.”
Shift on Executive Power Lets Obama Bypass
Rivals
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
Published: The New York Times National Edition, April 23, 2012, p. A1+
WASHINGTON — One Saturday last fall, President Obama interrupted a White House strategy
meeting to raise an issue not on the agenda. He declared, aides recalled, that the administration
needed to more aggressively use executive power to govern in the face of Congressional
obstructionism.
Doug Mills/The New York Times
President Obama speaking in Cleveland in January. Increasingly in recent months, the Obama administration has been seeking
ways to bypass Congress.
“We had been attempting to highlight the inability of Congress to do anything,” recalled
William M. Daley, who was the White House chief of staff at the time. “The president expressed
frustration, saying we have got to scour everything and push the envelope in finding things we
can do on our own.”
For Mr. Obama, that meeting was a turning point. As a senator and presidential candidate, he had
criticized George W. Bush for flouting the role of Congress. And during his first two years in the
White House, when Democrats controlled Congress, Mr. Obama largely worked through the
legislative process to achieve his domestic policy goals.
But increasingly in recent months, the administration has been seeking ways to act without
Congress. Branding its unilateral efforts “We Can’t Wait,” a slogan that aides said Mr. Obama
coined at that strategy meeting, the White House has rolled out dozens of new policies — on
creating jobs for veterans, preventing drug shortages, raising fuel economy standards, curbing
domestic violence and more.
Each time, Mr. Obama has emphasized the fact that he is bypassing lawmakers. When he
announced a cut in refinancing fees for federally insured mortgages last month, for example, he
said: “If Congress refuses to act, I’ve said that I’ll continue to do everything in my power to act
without them.”
Aides say many more such moves are coming. Not just a short-term shift in governing style and
a re-election strategy, Mr. Obama’s increasingly assertive use of executive action could
foreshadow pitched battles over the separation of powers in his second term, should he win and
Republicans consolidate their power in Congress.
Many conservatives have denounced Mr. Obama’s new approach. But William G. Howell, a
University of Chicago political science professor and author of “Power Without Persuasion: The
Politics of Direct Presidential Action,” said Mr. Obama’s use of executive power to advance
domestic policies that could not pass Congress was not new historically. Still, he said, because of
Mr. Obama’s past as a critic of executive unilateralism, his transformation is remarkable.
“What is surprising is that he is coming around to responding to the incentives that are built into
the institution of the presidency,” Mr. Howell said. “Even someone who has studied the
Constitution and holds it in high regard — he, too, is going to exercise these unilateral powers
because his long-term legacy and his standing in the polls crucially depend upon action.”
Mr. Obama has issued signing statements claiming a right to bypass a handful of constraints —
rejecting as unconstitutional Congress’s attempt to prevent him from having White House
“czars” on certain issues, for example. But for the most part, Mr. Obama’s increased
unilateralism in domestic policy has relied on a different form of executive power than the sort
that had led to heated debates during his predecessor’s administration: Mr. Bush’s frequent
assertion of a right to override statutes on matters like surveillance and torture.
“Obama’s not saying he has the right to defy a Congressional statute,” said Richard H. Pildes, a
New York University law professor. “But if the legislative path is blocked and he otherwise has
the legal authority to issue an executive order on an issue, they are clearly much more willing to
do that now than two years ago.”
The Obama administration started down this path soon after Republicans took over the House of
Representatives last year. In February 2011, Mr. Obama directed the Justice Department to stop
defending the Defense of Marriage Act, which bars federal recognition of same-sex marriages,
against constitutional challenges. Previously, the administration had urged lawmakers to repeal
it, but had defended their right to enact it.
In the following months, the administration increased efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions
through environmental regulations, gave states waivers from federal mandates if they agreed to
education overhauls, and refocused deportation policy in a way that in effect granted relief to
some illegal immigrants brought to the country as children. Each step substituted for a faltered
legislative proposal.
But those moves were isolated and cut against the administration’s broader political messaging
strategy at the time: that Mr. Obama was trying to reach across the aisle to get things done. It
was only after the summer, when negotiations over a deficit reduction deal broke down and
House Republicans nearly failed to raise the nation’s borrowing limit, that Mr. Obama fully
shifted course.
First, he proposed a jobs package and gave speeches urging lawmakers to “pass this bill” —
knowing they would not. A few weeks later, at the policy and campaign strategy meeting in the
White House’s Roosevelt Room, the president told aides that highlighting Congressional
gridlock was not enough.
“He wanted to continue down the path of being bold with Congress and flexing our muscle a
little bit, and showing a contrast to the American people of a Congress that was completely
stuck,” said Nancy-Ann DeParle, a deputy chief of staff assigned to lead the effort to come up
with ideas.
Ms. DeParle met twice a week with members of the domestic policy council to brainstorm. She
met with cabinet secretaries in the fall, and again in February with their chiefs of staff. No one
opposed doing more; the challenge was coming up with workable ideas, aides said.
The focus, said Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director, was “what we could do
on our own to help the economy in areas Congress was failing to act,” so the list was not
necessarily the highest priority actions, but instead steps that did not require legislation.
Republican lawmakers watched warily. One of Mr. Obama’s first “We Can’t Wait”
announcements was the moving up of plans to ease terms on student loans. After Republican
complaints that the executive branch had no authority to change the timing, it appeared to back
off.
The sharpest legal criticism, however, came in January after Mr. Obama bypassed the Senate
confirmation process to install four officials using his recess appointment powers, even though
House Republicans had been forcing the Senate to hold “pro forma” sessions through its winter
break to block such appointments.
Mr. Obama declared the sessions a sham, saying the Senate was really in the midst of a lengthy
recess. His appointments are facing a legal challenge, and some liberals and many conservatives
have warned that he set a dangerous precedent.
Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate Democratic leader, who essentially invented the pro
forma session tactic late in Mr. Bush’s presidency, has not objected, however. Senate aides said
Mr. Reid had told the White House that he would not oppose such appointments based on a
memorandum from his counsel, Serena Hoy. She concluded that the longer the tactic went
unchallenged, the harder it would be for any president to make recess appointments — a
significant shift in the historic balance of power between the branches.
The White House counsel, Kathryn Ruemmler, said the Obama administration’s legal team had
begun examining the issue in early 2011 — including an internal Bush administration memo
criticizing the notion that such sessions could block a president’s recess powers — and
“seriously considered” making some appointments during Congress’s August break. But Mr.
Obama decided to move ahead in January 2012, including installing Richard Cordray to head the
new consumer financial protection bureau, after Senate Republicans blocked a confirmation
vote.
“I refuse to take ‘no’ for an answer,” Mr. Obama declared, beneath a “We Can’t Wait” banner.
“When Congress refuses to act and — as a result — hurts our economy and puts people at risk, I
have an obligation as president to do what I can without them.”
The unilateralist strategy carries political risks. Mr. Obama cannot blame the Republicans when
he adopts policies that liberals oppose, like when he overruled the Environmental Protection
Agency’s proposal to strengthen antismog rules or decided not to sign an order banning
discrimination by federal contractors based on sexual orientation.
The approach also exposes Mr. Obama to accusations that he is concentrating too much power in
the White House. Earlier this year, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, delivered a
series of floor speeches accusing Mr. Obama of acting “more and more like a king that the
Constitution was designed to replace” and imploring colleagues of both parties to push back
against his “power grabs.”
But Democratic lawmakers have been largely quiet; many of them accuse Republicans of
engaging in an unprecedented level of obstructionism and say that Mr. Obama has to do what he
can to make the government work. The pattern adds to a bipartisan history in which lawmakers
from presidents’ own parties have tended not to object to invocations of executive power.
For their part, Republicans appear to have largely acquiesced. Mr. Grassley said in an interview
that his colleagues were reluctant to block even more bills and nominations in response to Mr.
Obama’s “chutzpah,” lest they play into his effort to portray them as making Congress
dysfunctional.
“Some of the most conservative people in our caucus would adamantly disagree with what
Obama did on recess appointments, but they said it’s not a winner for us,” he said.
Mr. Obama’s new approach puts him in the company of his recent predecessors. Mr. Bush, for
example, failed to persuade Congress to pass a bill allowing religiously affiliated groups to
receive taxpayer grants — and then issued an executive order making the change.
President Bill Clinton increased White House involvement in agency rule making, using
regulations and executive orders to show that he was getting things done despite opposition from
a Republican Congress on matters like land conservation, gun control, tobacco advertising and
treaties. (He was assisted by a White House lawyer, Elena Kagan, who later won tenure at
Harvard based on scholarship analyzing such efforts and who is now on the Supreme Court.)
And both the Reagan and George Bush administrations increased their control over executive
agencies to advance a deregulatory agenda, despite opposition from Democratic lawmakers,
while also developing legal theories and tactics to increase executive power, like issuing signing
statements more frequently.
The bipartisan history of executive aggrandizement in recent decades complicates Republican
criticism. In February, two conservative advocacy groups — Crossroads GPS and the American
Action Network — sponsored a symposium to discuss what they called “the unprecedented
expansion of executive power during the past three years.” It reached an awkward moment
during a talk with a former attorney general, Edwin Meese III, and a former White House
counsel, C. Boyden Gray.
“It’s kind of ironic you have Boyden and me here because when we were with the executive
branch, we were probably the principal proponents of executive power under President Reagan
and then President George H. W. Bush,” Mr. Meese said, quickly adding that the presidential
prerogatives they sought to protect, unlike Mr. Obama’s, were valid.
But Jack L. Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor who led the Justice Department’s Office of
Legal Counsel during the George W. Bush administration, said the Obama administration’s
pattern reflects how presidents usually behave, especially during divided government, and
appears aggressive only in comparison to Mr. Obama’s having been “really skittish for the first
two years” about executive power.
“This is what presidents do,” Mr. Goldsmith said. “It’s taken Obama two years to get there, but
this has happened throughout history. You can’t be in that office with all its enormous
responsibilities — when things don’t happen, you get blamed for it — and not exercise all the
powers that have accrued to it over time.”
Trying to Turn Obama Voters Into
Tax Allies
Nathan Weber for The New York Times
The Obama campaign headquarters in Chicago in October. The administration is drawing on supporters for help in other areas.
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR
Published: The New York Times National Edition, November 26, 2012, A1, A16.
WASHINGTON — When Tea Party activists swamped town hall-style meetings about health
care in the summer of 2009, President Obama’s army of campaign volunteers largely stayed
away, seemingly less interested in fighting for legislation than they had been in electing the
nation’s first African-American president.
Now, Mr. Obama is seizing a second chance to keep his election-year supporters animated.
With lawmakers scheduled to return to work on Monday to begin intense discussions before
a looming fiscal deadline, Mr. Obama’s aides are trying to harness the passions that
returned him to the White House, hoping to pressure Republicans in Congress to accept tax
increases on the wealthy. The president’s strategists are turning first to the millions of email
addresses assembled by the campaign and the White House.
Already, supporters are being asked to record YouTube videos of themselves talking about
the importance of raising taxes on the rich. Aides said those videos would be shared on
Facebook and Twitter and would be forwarded to centrist Democrats, as well as to
mainstream Republicans, who they hope will break with their Tea Party colleagues.
An e-mail last week urged activists to share with their friends a graphic explaining the
president’s tax argument. And Mr. Obama’s campaign manager sent an e-mail appeal asking
supporters to fill out a survey about issues they would like to stay involved in.
The president is planning rallies in influential states to remind supporters of the need to
keep the pressure on lawmakers during the fiscal talks. And should negotiations break
down, Mr. Obama’s team is arranging for Republican lawmakers to hear from of tens of
thousands of riled-up activists through angry Twitter posts, e-mails and Facebook messages.
“If Republicans refuse to move, if they refuse to cooperate, then you’ve got to be willing to
engage the American public,” said Representative Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat
and important Obama ally. The campaign machinery, he said, “will respond to the president
calling upon it to get engaged.”
As Mr. Obama tries to motivate his army of supporters, his rivals will be working to do the
same. Republicans have acknowledged that they did not match Mr. Obama’s campaign
operation, but in the tax fight, the party and its allies will also be using technology.
The Republican National Committee has turned to Twitter regularly to talk about the impact
of tax increases on small businesses, using the hashtag #StopTheTaxHike. And theU.S.
Chamber of Commerce has begun a multimedia campaign that it says is intended to prevent
a financial disaster if Congress and the president do not reach an agreement.
The chamber’s site has a “Fiscal Cliff Countdown” clock, a calculator to determine “your
post-taxmageddon taxes” and links to e-mail members of Congress.
Republicans in Congress will not have access to the kind of national list that Mr. Obama
does. And yet it is not certain that Mr. Obama and his allies will be any more successful in
motivating his followers than they were during the postelection period four years ago.
The fiscal negotiations are taking place behind closed doors, and to reach a deal with
Speaker John A. Boehner, Mr. Obama will probably have to make compromises that could
undermine the fervor of his most ardent supporters.
“The big issue they are going to have to figure out with the list is that activists want to fight
for issues they can believe in,” said Eddie Vale, a spokesman for Protect Your Care, a liberal
advocacy group. “A call to cut a bipartisan deal — that’s not going to cut it.”
At the same time, the White House needs to avoid overplaying its hand and antagonizing
Republicans to the point where a deal becomes impossible.
Obama aides view keeping their grass-roots supporters energized as important to the
president’s second-term success on broader tax changes, an immigration overhaul and
efforts on climate change.
In his first term, Mr. Obama’s yearlong battle over health care failed to inspire the millions
of activists from his 2008 campaign to put pressure on Republican lawmakers.“We were
stunned that it never showed up,” said a senior member of a pro-health-overhaul interest
group, who asked for anonymity to avoid angering the White House. “They had this thing
built, and we were waiting for them to turn it on, and it just never came.”
Later on, Mr. Obama’s team did more to rally pressure on his adversaries. The president
succeeded in fights with Republicans to extend the payroll tax cut in 2011 and to change
student loans.
“There’s always a challenge between rallying cry issues and the challenge of governing,” said
Neera Tanden, the president of the Center for American Progress, a liberal research group.
“It’s one that I’m confident he can navigate.”
The first test of the mobilization efforts will come quickly, as the president pushes the tax
issue during the lame-duck session of Congress. The idea, aides say, is to marry oldfashioned
phone calls to the offices of wavering lawmakers with the latest social media tools.
Unions and progressive groups have made a Web site, theaction.org, calling for an end to
“the Bush tax cuts for the richest two percent.” Supporters are encouraged to download an
“action kit” that includes materials needed to make signs, letterheads and Web site banner
ads — all arguing for an end to the tax cuts.
One sign that can be printed out says “Middle Class Over Millionaires.” Another says
“Fairness & Progress from Congress.” A typical banner advertisement that supporters can
download and post on their Web site says “End the Bush Tax Cuts for the Wealthy.”
Visitors to the site are also given the option of expressing their support for Mr. Obama with
a single click that creates a Twitter message: “The election is over. Don’t rest. Join the
action. The action to end the Bush tax cuts for the rich. #theaction.”
Another button on the site takes visitors to a Facebook page that can be used to organize
meet-ups for the tax fight.
“People just spent five years winning two presidential elections together,” Jim Messina, the
president’s campaign manager, told Politico last week in his first extended interview since
the election. “They’re now not going to walk away and not help him become the change that
they want to see.”
In the survey e-mail that came from Mr. Messina shortly after the election, supporters were
asked to identify issues they would be willing to volunteer on, including the economy,
education, immigration, jobs and trade, tax fairness, urban community issues and climate
change.
Among the questions on the survey: Would supporters like to continue to volunteer in their
community as part of an Obama organization? And if so, the survey asked, how many hours
a week could they work?
“They built these tools,” Mr. Messina said. “They’re the people that know how to do them.
And I think what they want to use them on now is to continue to help the president advocate
for his agenda.”
The president himself has vowed to take the lead by continuing a campaign-like presence in
communities across the country as he battles for the tax increases on the wealthy and what
he calls a “balanced” approach to spending cuts and deficit reduction.
If Mr. Obama succeeds in the fight over the tax cuts because of help from energized activists,
his advisers hope the victory will embolden those supporters even more.
“Success begets success,” Ms. Tanden said. “If they are able to take this argument and
mobilize them on the fiscal cliff, then I believe he will have success on immigration reform
and future issues.”
Obama’s Backers Seek Big Donors to
Press Agenda: A Goal of $50 Million
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
Published: The New York Times National Edition, February 23, 2013, A1, A3.
Doug Mills/The New York Times
President Obama has said that his public campaign against Republicans is not producing results.
President Obama’s political team is fanning out across the country in pursuit of an ambitious goal:
raising $50 million to convert his re-election campaign into a powerhouse national advocacy
network, a sum that would rank the new group as one of Washington’s biggest lobbying operations.
But the rebooted campaign, known as Organizing for Action, has plunged the president and
his aides into a campaign finance limbo with few clear rules, ample potential for influencepeddling,
and no real precedent in national politics.
In private meetings and phone calls, Mr. Obama’s aides have made clear that the new
organization will rely heavily on a small number of deep-pocketed donors, not unlike the
“super PACs” whose influence on political campaigns Mr. Obama once deplored.
At least half of the group’s budget will come from a select group of donors who will each
contribute or raise $500,000 or more, according to donors and strategists involved in the
effort.
Unlike a presidential campaign, Organizing for Action has been set up as a tax-exempt
“social welfare group.” That means it is not bound by federal contribution limits, laws that
bar White House officials from soliciting contributions, or the stringent reporting
requirements for campaigns. In their place, the new group will self-regulate.
Officials said it would voluntarily disclose the names of large donors every few months and
would not ask administration personnel to solicit money, though Obama aides will probably
appear at some events.
The money will pay for salaries, rent and advertising, and will also be used to maintain the
expensive voter database and technological infrastructure that knits together Mr. Obama’s 2
million volunteers, 17 million e-mail subscribers and 22 million Twitter followers.
The goal is to harness those resources in support of Mr. Obama’s second-term policy
priorities, including efforts to curb gun violence and climate change and overhaul
limmigration procedures. Those efforts began Friday, when thousands of Obama supporters
were deployed through more than 80 Congressional districts around the country to rally
outside lawmakers’ offices, hold vigils and bombard Congress with e-mails and phone calls
urging members to support stricter background checks for gun buyers.
“There are wins we can have on guns and immigration,” Jon Carson, the group’s new
executive director, told prospective donors on a conference call on Wednesday, according to
people who participated. “We have to change the conventional wisdom on those issues.”
But those contributions will also translate into access, according to donors courted by the
president’s aides. Next month, Organizing for Action will hold a “founders summit” at a
hotel near the White House, where donors paying $50,000 each will mingle with Mr.
Obama’s former campaign manager, Jim Messina, and Mr. Carson, who previously led the
White House Office of Public Engagement.
Giving or raising $500,000 or more puts donors on a national advisory board for Mr.
Obama’s group and the privilege of attending quarterly meetings with the president, along
with other meetings at the White House. Moreover, the new cash demands on Mr. Obama’s
top donors and bundlers come as many of them are angling for appointments to
administration jobs or ambassadorships.
“It just smells,” said Bob Edgar, the president of Common Cause, which advocates tighter
regulation of campaign money. “The president is setting a very bad model setting up this
organization.”
Mr. Obama’s new organization has drawn rebukes in recent days from watchdog groups,
which view it as another step away from the tighter campaign regulation Mr. Obama once
championed. Over the past two years, he has reversed course on several campaign finance
issues, by blessing a super PAC created by former aides and accepting large corporate
contributions for his second inauguration.
Many traditional advocacy organizations, including the Sierra Club and the National Rifle
Association, are set up as social welfare groups, or 501(c)(4)’s in tax parlance. But unlike
those groups, Organizing for Action appears to be an extension of the administration,
stocked with alumni of Mr. Obama’s White House and campaign teams and devoted solely
to the president’s second-term agenda.
Robert K. Kelner, a Republican election lawyer who works with other outside groups, said
the arrangement “presents a rather simple loophole in the otherwise incredibly complex
web of government ethics regulations that are intended to insulate government officials
from outside influence.”
The closest precedents for Organizing for Action exist at the state level. In New Jersey, a
501(c)(4) called the Committee for Our Children’s Future, set up by friends of Gov. Chris
Christie, has run hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of advertising praising Mr.
Christie’s proposals.
In New York, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo encouraged the formation of a nonprofit group, the
Committee to Save New York, that is run by business leaders allied with him, and it has
raised millions of dollars from corporations, private sector unions, and individuals. The
group supported Mr. Cuomo’s agenda — but it also thrust him into controversy when The
New York Times revealed that gambling interests poured $2 million into the group as Mr.
Cuomo was developing a proposal to expand casino gambling.
Organizing for Action said it would accept unlimited personal and corporate contributions,
but no money from political action committees, lobbyists or foreign citizens. Officials said
they would focus — for now — on grass-roots organizing, amplified by Internet advertising.
Friday’s “day of action” involved half a million dollars’ worth of targeted Internet ads and
events in Florida, Maine, Pennsylvania and California, among other states.
“O.F.A.’s first day of action was about bringing the issue of closing background-check
loopholes into communities across the country that feel very strongly about supporting the
president’s plan to reduce gun violence,” said Katie Hogan, a spokeswoman for the group.
Organizing for Action has also promised to steer clear of electoral politics, unlike the
politically active nonprofit groups like the right-leaning Crossroads Grassroots Policy
Strategies and Americans for Prosperity. Such groups spent hundreds of millions of dollars
on advertising during the recent election campaign season, ostensibly for issue advocacy,
spurring a wave of lawsuits, ethics complaints from campaign watchdogs and criticism from
Mr. Obama himself.
But the distinction between campaigning and issue advocacy may be hard for Organizing for
Action to maintain in the prelude to the 2014 elections, especially if it continues its
emphasis on pressing lawmakers on delicate issues like immigration and guns.
In Wednesday’s conference call, Mr. Carson said the group hoped to form partnerships with
other 501(c)(4) groups on the left, including America Votes, which was at the center of
Democratic efforts to defeat President George W. Bush in 2004 and now serves as a
coordinator for progressive advocacy organizations. He also said Organizing for Action
wanted to be a counterweight to grass-roots organizations on the right, like the N.R.A.,
according to people who took part in the call.
There should be “as much of a price to pay if you tick off the gun violence people” as there is
for angering the N.R.A., Mr. Carson said, according to those people. “Let’s build an
organization that means that Republicans are embarrassed to have climate change deniers
running for office.”
In Latest Campaign, Obama Takes
Deficit Battle to the Public
Doug Mills/The New York Times
President Obama took in a roller coaster at a toy factory in Pennsylvania. Mr. Obama has framed the issue of averting a year-endfiscal
crisis in terms of extending the Bush-era cuts for families with income under $250,000.
By PETER BAKER and JONATHAN WEISMAN
Published: The New York Times National Edition, December 1, 2012, A15.
HATFIELD, Pa. — The blue “Forward.” signs with the lonely period were gone. But U2’s
“City of Blinding Lights” once again blared over the loudspeakers, and some in the audience
broke into a chant of “fired up, ready to go!”
President Obama doffed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. Someone shouted, “We love
you,” and he gave his typical “I love you back” response. Then, sounding like he was still a
candidate, he said he was “fighting” for the middle class and called on the crowd to enlist in
the battle.
If Mr. Obama’s visit to a toy factory here on Friday felt like a time warp back to the
campaign trail, then get used to it. The lesson he drew from four years of often-frustrating
relations with Congress was that sit-down negotiations with the opposition do not work
unless he turns up the public heat on lawmakers. And so, just weeks after his re-election,
Mr. Obama has made it clear that the campaign will continue.
The goal at this point is not winning re-election but instead promoting his plan to raise taxes
on the wealthy and avert a year-end fiscal crisis. While House Republicans have signaled a
willingness to generate additional tax revenue, they are still resisting raising rates on higher
income.
Mr. Obama framed the issue in terms of extending the Bush-era cuts for families with
income under $250,000, which would have the effect of allowing them to expire on income
above that level for the 2 percent of Americans who earn more. Without agreement, the
Bush-era cuts will expire at the end of the year for all taxpayers.
The president mentioned spending cuts only in passing, and without specifics. “I’ve been
keeping my own naughty and nice list for Washington,” he told workers on a factory floor
featuring a series of K’NEX construction toys assembled in the shapes of roller coasters, a
merry-go-round and an American flag. If Republicans refuse to go along, he said, then
everyone could end up paying more next year. “That’s sort of like the lump of coal you get
for Christmas. That’s a Scrooge Christmas.”
Mr. Obama’s return to the hustings seemed to irk Republicans. “Campaign-style rallies and
one-sided leaks in the press are not the way to get things done here in Washington,” the
House speaker, John A. Boehner of Ohio, complained on Thursday. Hours later, Republican
aides leaked Mr. Obama’s opening bid in the fiscal negotiations.
On Friday, Mr. Boehner again rejected that bid, a $4 trillion, 10-year deficit-reduction
package with $1.6 trillion in new taxes and $50 billion in immediate stimulus spending.
“There’s a stalemate. Let’s not kid ourselves,” he said. “Right now we’re almost nowhere.”
Mr. Boehner did not offer a counterproposal, but he made it clear that Republicans stood
firm in favor of extending the tax cuts across the board. “Increasing tax rates draws money
away from our economy that needs to be invested in our economy to put the American
people back to work,” he said.
With a few cracks developing in Republican solidarity, Democrats are increasing the
pressure on Mr. Boehner to take up a Senate-passed bill extending middle-class tax cuts.
Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader, called on him to schedule
a vote for next week. If not, she would circulate what is known as a discharge petition to
force a vote if it draws 218 signatures. That remained a long shot, but Democrats were
increasingly confident they were playing a winning hand.
Mr. Obama’s trip here evoked many of the atmospherics of the campaign. As if seeking
volunteers for Election Day, Mr. Obama asked supporters to engage in the tax fight directly.
“I want you to call, I want you to send an e-mail, post on their Facebook wall,” he said. The
White House even set up a special hashtag word for Twitter users to express their support.
Minutes after Mr. Obama spoke at the factory, the White House sent its e-mail list a letter
from David Plouffe, an Obama senior adviser, that had the tone and feel of a fund-raising
letter, albeit without asking for money.
“You’re changing an entire policy conversation. And we have to keep it up,” he wrote.
“There’s no denying the power of your voices,” he added.
“Will you speak out today?”
The strategy stemmed from what the White House saw as successful public campaigns to
press Congress to renew a temporary payroll tax cut a year ago and to extend lower
federal student loan rates this summer. In both cases, Republicans complained that the
president was more interested in campaigning than negotiating, but he ended up getting
what he wanted and, in his team’s view, he scored political points too.
In some ways, Mr. Obama’s actions are reminiscent of those of presidents like Ronald
Reagan, who went over the heads of a Democratic House to rally public support for his
legislative priorities.
“Public persuasion by the president as part of Congressional negotiations can be an effective
tactic,” said Frank J. Donatelli, the White House political director under Mr. Reagan. The
difference, he said, was that Mr. Obama seemed to be neglecting the negotiation side of the
equation.
“Public pressure can help to close differences, but cannot be a substitute for the negotiations
themselves,” Mr. Donatelli said. “Reagan compromised with Democrats to win his tax bills
in 1981 and 1986 and in negotiations to save Social Security in 1983. Thus far, we have seen
very little give in Obama’s positions.”
That may change as the end-of-the-year deadline gets closer. Few people, if any, in
Washington expected the two sides to show their hands so early. If nothing else, the
president and House Republicans have strong incentives to fight, or at least look like they
are fighting, right up until the last minute to convince their respective liberal and
conservative bases that they resisted as long as possible whatever concessions they
ultimately decide to make.
“In Washington, nothing is easy,” Mr. Obama said in the one statement of the day that both
sides could agree on. “So there is going to be some prolonged negotiations. And all of us are
going to have to get out of our comfort zones to make that happen.”
Peter Baker reported from Hatfield, Pa., and Jonathan Weisman from Washington.
As World Boils, Fingers Point
Obama’s Way
By PETER BAKER, The New York Times National Edition, August 16, 2014, A1, A9.
WASHINGTON — In this summer of global tumult, the debate in Washington
essentially boils down to two opposite positions: It is allPresident Obama’s fault,
according to his critics; no, it is not, according to his supporters, because these are
events beyond his control.
Americans often think of their president as an all-powerful figure who can command the
tides of history — and presidents have encouraged this image over the years because the
perception itself can be a form of power. But as his critics have made the case that Mr.
Obama’s mistakes have fueled the turmoil in places like Syria, Iraq and Ukraine, the
president has increasingly argued that his power to shape these seismic forces is actually
limited.
“Apparently,” he said in frustration the other day, “people have forgotten that America,
as the most powerful country on earth, still does not control everything around the
world.”
While as a statement of fact Mr. Obama’s assertion may be self-evident, it was seen by
adversaries as a cop-out and even by more sympathetic analysts as a revealing moment
for a president whiplashed by international instability.
PLAY VIDEO|1:31
Obama Makes a Statement on Iraq
“At least since World War II, presidents have been unwilling to discuss deficiencies in
capability because they’re expected to do everything, and they like that sense of
omnipotence,” said Jeremy Shapiro, a former Obama State Department official now at
the Brookings Institution. “Obama has been trying to change that in the last year
because he senses that the requirements of omnipotence have gotten so far out of whack
with what he can actually accomplish that he needs to change the expectations.”
The risk, naturally, is that the president looks as if he is simply trying to excuse his own
actions, or inactions, as the case may be.
“It’s become a refrain to the point where I think people are becoming quite critical that
that’s his response to everything,” said Daniel L. Byman, a former member of the Sept.
11 commission staff now teaching at Georgetown University. “He’s not differentiating
between things he can influence and those that he can’t.”
The bill of particulars against Mr. Obama is long. In the view of his critics, he failed to
stanch the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria when he rejected proposals to arm
more moderate elements of the Syrian resistance. He left a vacuum in Iraq by not doing
more to leave a residual force behind when American troops exited in 2011. And he
signaled weakness to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, encouraging the Kremlin to
think it could intervene in Ukraine without fear of significant consequence.
“I certainly do not think President Obama is responsible for all of the world crises that
have taken place during his time in office,” said William C. Inboden, a former national
security aide to President George W. Bush and executive director of the William P.
Clements Jr. Center on History, Strategy and Statecraft at the University of Texas. “But
he is responsible for actions and attitudes he took that have contributed to some of those
crises — and he is also responsible for how he responds, or fails to respond.”
Republicans are not the only ones voicing such sentiments. In her interview with The
Atlantic that caused a recent furor, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton
said “the failure” to build up moderate Syrian rebels left a vacuum for the more ruthless
forces of ISIS to fill.
In a Wall Street Journal opinion article on Friday, Gen. James L. Jones, the retired
NATO commander and Mr. Obama’s first national security adviser, said the president
should have left some troops in Iraq, retaliated against Syria for crossing his “red line”
by using chemical weapons, and pressured the Baghdad government to arm the Kurds.
Such criticisms exasperate Mr. Obama and his team. In some cases, they argue, the
crises that have emerged were wholly unforeseen. In others, they said, the solutions
proffered by critics would not have worked and, in fact, may have made things worse.
And besides, they often add, Mr. Obama inherited a situation that was broken when he
got it, pointing to Mr. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in the first place.
In his recent interview with Thomas L. Friedman of The New York Times, Mr. Obama
said “it’s always been a fantasy” to think providing arms to moderate Syrian rebels
would have helped them against hardened Islamic extremists. And he said if he had left
troops in Iraq, “The difference would be we’d have 10,000 troops in the middle of this
chaos as opposed to having a much more limited number.”
Former Representative Lee H. Hamilton, Democrat of Indiana, said presidents can
influence but not dictate events. “Americans have a very strong tendency to think that
whatever we do is the most important thing happening everywhere, and we have so
much power and so much clout that we can control events everywhere,” said Mr.
Hamilton, now director of the Center on Congress at Indiana University. “That’s part of
what he’s wrestling with here.”
As it happens, Mr. Obama’s policy of restraint seems to match the public mood — polls
find little appetite for robust American intervention in Ukraine, Syria or Iraq. And yet,
there is a palpable sense of disappointment with Mr. Obama’s leadership on the world
stage as well. Fifty-eight percent of Americans in a recent New York Times/CBS News
poll disapproved of his handling of foreign policy, the highest of his presidency.
Presidents often find their popularity suffers when the world seems off kilter and they
are held responsible even for events that may be beyond their sway. The who-lost-China
debate during the early Cold War has been replicated repeatedly ever since in various
forms.
Strobe Talbott, president of the Brookings Institution and a former deputy secretary of
state under President Bill Clinton, said what makes this period different is the diffusion
of power from states to nonstate forces, the rapid spread of technology and the rise of
Islamic extremism.
“We have an overall contagion of diffusion which makes it much harder to advance the
cause of regional and global governance,” he said.
Some Democrats said Mr. Obama’s challenge has not necessarily been his approach to
these crises, but his ability to explain and sell it.
“What he’s come up with in Iraq and in Ukraine are sensible strategies,” said former
Representative Jane Harman of California, now president of the Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars. “He now needs to link them with a narrative that
explains to the American people why we have to re-engage in foreign policy matters, and
I hope he does that.”
Tom Donilon, another former national security adviser to Mr. Obama, said the president
has had to exercise leadership in situations he inherited as well as in others that were
not of his making, but added that to avoid letting them consume his remaining time in
office, he should set the agenda for positive international initiatives.
“With almost two and a half years left in his presidency,” said Mr. Donilon, “it’s
important to get beyond the incoming of crises around the world and look to a set of
strategic initiatives that the United States can pursue that can bring change of a
permanent nature.”