Government by Faculty Lounge Subject to Repeal

Townhall.com ^ | January 6, 2017 | Michael Barone

[Kaslin]

resident Barack Obama went up to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to counsel congressional Democrats on how to save Obamacare. Or at least that's how his visit was billed.

But to judge from the responses of some of the Democrats, his advice was typical of the approach he's taken to legislation in his eight years as president -- which is to say disengaged, above the fray, detached from any detailed discussion of how legislation actually works.

He was "very nostalgic," said Louise Slaughter, a veteran of 30 years in the House and the ranking Democrat on the House Rules Committee. But, she added, he left it up to Hill Democrats to come up with a strategy to protect Obamacare.

This is in line with the standoffish relations Obama has had with members of Congress, even with Democrats who are inclined to be and capable of being helpful. Schmoozing with those he gives the impression of regarding as his inferiors has not been his style.

Nor has he ever seemed interested in the content of laws, even his trademark health care legislation. His February 2010 decision to move forward on Obamacare despite the election of Republican Sen. Scott Brown in Massachusetts meant accepting a bill with multiple flaws, many of them glaringly visible after passage.

But policy just hasn't been his thing. At the Hill meeting, Obama -- according to Massachusetts Democrat Bill Keating -- was "basically saying, 'Let's not get down into policy language.'" The key word there may be "down."

The problem with this approach has been apparent since the 9 o'clock hour on election night, when it became clear that Donald Trump was going to be elected president. In 2010, Obama assumed there always would be a Democratic Congress to repair any glitches in Obamacare. In 2016, he assumed that there would be a President Hillary Clinton to keep his pen-and-phone regulations and "guidances" in place.

It's apparent that Obama is thrashing around trying to keep his policies in place. But more than those of other outgoing presidents replaced by successors of the other party, they're in danger of being overturned.

One reason is that they were never firmly established in the first place -- and not just because the Democrats' 60-vote Senate supermajority existed for only eight months, from July 2009 to February 2010.

Rather, the Obama Democrats' policies, passed through slapdash legislation or through questionably legal regulations, never really captured the hearts and minds of the American people.

Obamacare was based on the shaky premise that mandating often expensive and limited health insurance would be seen as guaranteeing good health care. As a result, as historian Walter Russell Mead recently wrote for The American Interest, "it did not generate enough public support to protect itself from its opponents."

Regulations imposed on coal and other fossil fuel production -- instituted after Democrats, even with strong congressional majorities, were unsuccessful in passing cap-and-trade legislation -- failed to impress a population that did not share liberal elites' faith that climate change is certain to produce catastrophe.

And regulations legalizing the presence of millions of undocumented immigrants have failed to pass muster in federal courts, thanks to legal maneuverings as sloppy as the legislative legerdemain that shoved through Obamacare.

Public policies prove to be enduring when they address what people regard as genuine needs and thus create constituencies that politicians dare not defy. Social Security retirement benefits are a prime example. You can jigger the taxes and benefits, as a bipartisan majority did in 1983, but voters who believe they paid for their benefits will insist they not be taken away.

Policies that induce long-term reliance also tend to endure, a prime example being the home mortgage interest deduction. There's a good argument that this policy, like the Social Security benefit formula, unduly benefits the affluent. But that argument doesn't move most voters.

In my view, Obama owed his election and re-election to the feeling -- widely shared by Americans, including many who didn't vote for him -- that it would be a good thing for Americans to elect a black president.

What they didn't expect, but got, was a president who governed according to the playbook of campus liberals, imposing -- or attempting to impose -- policies that he believed would be good for people, whether they knew it or not.

This was governance that was both inattentive to detail and law and out of touch with how policies affect people's lives. That is why so many of these policies seem headed for the ash heap of history.

[lurk]

Many more post-mortems will be written of the Obama years. What they revealed primarily was an axiom long known, but now on full display, that politics is the wheeled vehicle that advances a world view.

At least for now, there are a whole bunch of Americans who are not ready for a world view of equality by force.

That may change. They still possess the education system end to end.

[Red Badger]

The Faculty Lounge is full of people who have never done a real day’s work in their lives.......................

[bravo whiskey]

Problem numero uno. Professional politician for 30 years. Does not matter which party.

[Red Badger]

Social Security retirement benefits are a prime example. You can jigger the taxes and benefits, as a bipartisan majority did in 1983, but voters who believe they paid for their benefits will insist they not be taken away.

Has Barone gone over to the Dark Side?...................

[freedumb2003]

>>In my view, Obama owed his election and re-election to the feeling — widely shared by Americans, including many who didn’t vote for him — that it would be a good thing for Americans to elect a black president.<<

He also ensured it will never happen again. Should a black person run in the future, everyone will say “remember what happened last time.”

It is human nature, not racism.

obozo was the worst thing to happen to democrats and blacks probably since Lincoln freed the slaves.

And he wus legacy will be erased. Promptly.

[SMARTY]

“What they didn't expect, but got, was a president who governed according to the playbook of campus liberals, imposing — or attempting to impose — policies that he believed would be good for people, whether they knew it or not.”

Paternalism from the WH and the cronies who surround the Liberal administration is NOT leadership.

Liberals believe that voters have no idea what is good for them, so it's necessary for the ‘President’ to make those decisions and force them on the population, no matter what.

Actually, copying the Russian monarchy, with their ‘little father’ the Czar who RULED for the good of all, was proved unworkable, long ago.

Liberals insist on maintaining and perpetuating these infantile myths to the very present day....we need to drag them kicking and screaming into the new millennium!!!

[FreedomNotSafety]

“In my view, Obama owed his election and re-election to the feeling — widely shared by Americans, including many who didn’t vote for him — that it would be a good thing for Americans to elect a black president.” Wow, he said it out loud.

That makes all the Obama voters Racists. Even favorable treatment, if based on race, is Racism.

[Buckeye McFrog]

Agreed. Obama has done a tremendous disservice to any Black American who wishes to run for POTUS in the future.

I have it on good authority (friend of a friend of a Congressman) that Obama treats members of Congress horribly. With arrogant dismissiveness.

[mywholebodyisaweapon]

So true, so true ...

And if anyone who has ever had a position of real responsibility dares to disagree with the armchair pundits, he is ostracized and marginalized.

I am so glad I voted for Trump, and that everyone had the freedom and opportunity to vote against the self-appointed intelligentsia.

[sphinx]

I think the answer is very simple. Let HHS assign all registered Democrats and everyone who contributes to Democratic candidates to Obamacare, and let it continue on its own, funded exclusively by its own enrollees. They can buy their policies on the Obamacare exchanges. Subsidies on the exchanges can be funded by a surtax levied on the above population. Trump could even appoint Obama as head of the system at a salary of $50,000 a year, as we don't want anyone involved with Democrat health care to have a profit motive.

Let everyone else opt out and move to a market-oriented system.

[aquila48]

I have this feeling that if it had been a conservative black running for president, the donkeys would have not voted for him. Politics trumps everything - even race.

[freedumb2003]

>>I have this feeling that if it had been a conservative black running for president, the donkeys would have not voted for him. Politics trumps everything - even race.<<

2 words:

Clarence.
Thomas.

[Terry Mross]

Supports my theory that he’s just a figurehead. Someone else pulls all the strings....Soros? Jarrett? The UN? Probably all of them and more. That’s why he wants to appear above the fray. If he says anything it would prove he has no idea what the hell he’s talking about.

[jeffc]

...policies that he believed would be good for people, whether they knew it or not.

Is that not the way of all totalitarians?