Obama In Context: Some Data on LBJ

Is Obama blowing his big lead? My friend Ivan passes on some contextual data from the Lyndon Johnson years.

First: Johnson came out of the 1964 election with far bigger Congressional majorities than Obama brought home in 2008--a full two thirds in the Senate (the last time that happened)--also two thirds of the seats in the House, achieved via a stupendous pickup of 36 seats. Ivan reports:

In 1965 the first session of the Eighty-ninth Congress created the core of the Great Society. The Johnson Administration submitted eighty-seven bills to Congress, and Johnson signed eighty-four, or 96%, arguably the most successful legislative agenda in U.S. Congressional history.

But it didn't last. In 1966, the Dems followed up on their 36-seat gain with a 48-seat loss. They retained a majority in the House, but greatly depleted. Remarkably, they lost only three seats in the Senate and retained a 64-36 seat edge. And for what it is worth: the three Republican newcomers were Mark Hatfield of Oregon, Charles Percy of Illinois and Howard Baker of Tennessee--any one of who would probably qualify as a bomb-throwing lefty revolutionary by the standards of today's GOP.

Ivan adds: "if you are going to lose big anyway, isn't it better to have given America the Voting Rights Act, Medicare, Head Start, food stamps, NEA, PBS, the Wilderness Act?"

Obama and the Costs of Centrism

  "Come, let us reason together," said Lyndon Johnson (quoting, I believe, the prophet Isaiah). And so he did, although when Lyndon Johnson reasoned, you could usually hear the crushing of a few bones.

Barack Obama didn't use the Johnson phrase, but he did make it clear that he wanted to be the conciliatory President, the the centrist, the man willing to work with his worst enemy.

I suspect Obama himself is surprised and dismayed at how utterly he has failed in his campaign for centrist cooperation. I feel for him, but I for whatever it may be worth, I offer an insight. That is--obviously the Republicans have decided they have to destroy this guy, just as they tried so hard to destroy Bill Clinton. Since Obama doesn't seem to have a zipper problem, they have to look for something else.

Under this light, it is perhaps natural that they would plunge in for the kill so directly on what he seems to value most: his desire for a kind of post-partisanship. Perhaps this helps to show his weakness; perhaps it pulls the keystone out of a grand architecture. Or perhaps they are doing it because trying to destroy Democrats is just fun (I love the smoke of filibusters in the morning!).

But whatever the particular goal, perhaps a primary reason for the stonewall strategy ihe wants cooperation so much. It's an unprovable counterfactual, but could it be tht things might have gone better--even more collegially--if he had simply stuck his thumb in their eye?

[There might also be a larger strategical insight here, and if true, I hope it's not too late. Specifically, one thing you do as a good negotiator is to offer something you really don't care about very much as if you cared about it absolutely. Then you let your enemies wear themselves out fighting aginst something for which you really don't give a damn. I really don't think that was what Obama was doing with the collegiality ploy, but I kind of wish it had been.]

Public Option: Kaput?

Lyndon Johnson famously said "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost America."

Now this.

[h/t Joel.]

Mitt and Lyndon and Doggiegate

Just realized one advantage of Romney and doggiegate; it gives me a chance to revive one of my favorite stories from the Johnson Administration. Anyone watching TV tonight will have been reminded that Lyndon Johnson used to pick up his beagles by the ears. “My momma used to pick up me by the ears,” said Lyndon in defense, “and nobody raised a fuss.”



But there was the case of Victor Borge, the Copenhagen-born pianist who gave the term “Scandinavian humor” real content. Borge said he went to the White House once; Johnson picked him up by the ears and said:

“You, sir, are truly a great Dane.”

Johnson v. Delay

Last week I laid on a bit of snark about Lyndon Johnson and Tom Delay (link). Underbelly’s Alabama bureau, drawing on long experience ‘tweendecks in Washington, weighs in:

Seems to me comparing Delay with LBJ doesn’t work because one was using presidential power while the other was using house position power. Different powers. If the comparison was to LBJ as Senate leader and Delay as House leader I'm sure there are comparisons. But LBJ was noted for bringing in everyone he could to work a deal -- civil rights legislation, for instance -- and Delay's tactic was to freeze the Dems out -- out of conferences when final versions are written, for instance. … Delay gloated when he cut a fellow Republican’s nuts, LBJ didn’t get pleasure out of damaging a Democrat.

Remembering Bill Bradley

Roasting the Easter lamb on Sunday while CNN droned in the background, I heard former Congressman Jim Leach interviewing former Senator Bill Bradley. I admit I have always felt a bit ambivalent about Bradley. I know he’s a serious guy but he was an awful presidential candidate—he seemed to expect the presidency as a bestowal, one of the worst cases of pompous presumption I’d seen since Arthur Goldberg ran for governor of New York.

But like I say, I concede he is a serious guy. And he said three things that stick in my mind.

One: he said—proudly—that his father, the small-town banker, foreclosed on no mortgages during the Great Depression.

Two: Leach questioned him about Lyndon Johnson and Tom Delay. What, exactly did Delay do that he didn’t learn from Johnson? Well, said Bradley, it wasn’t illegal when Johnson did it.

But the third point was perhaps the most interesting. Bradley recalled the palmy days of the 50s and 60s when people got a raise every year. The modern day equivalent, he remarked, is the home equity loan…