Tag Archives: Presidents:

Presidenting Is Hard

Mother Jones

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Poor Donald Trump. Being president is harder than he thought:

“I loved my previous life. I had so many things going,” Trump told Reuters in an interview. “This is more work than in my previous life. I thought it would be easier.”…Midway through a discussion about Chinese President Xi Jinping, the president paused to hand out copies of what he said were the latest figures from the 2016 electoral map.

“Here, you can take that, that’s the final map of the numbers,” the Republican president said from his desk in the Oval Office, handing out maps of the United States with areas he won marked in red. “It’s pretty good, right? The red is obviously us.”

There are three takeaways from this. First, Trump’s old life was pretty easy because other people ran his companies and he didn’t really do much. Second, he thought presidents just consulted their guts and made decisions, sort of like Celebrity Apprentice, and then stuff magically happened. Third, he still can’t maintain discussion of a real topic (Chinese President Xi Jinping) for more than a few moments before getting sidetracked by one of his obsessions (his huge victory in November). Here are the maps he handed out. He obviously had copies made just for the occasion:

But Trump still hasn’t learned his lesson. I’ve dealt with lots of people who will regale you endlessly with tales of how complicated their own business is, but the less they know about some other business the easier they think it is to fix. For example:

Sure, Donald. You can’t even get Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon to stop squabbling, but the Middle East? Piece of cake. There’s no reason to think this is a difficult problem that requires a lot of hard work. It’s just that all the presidents before you have been really, really stupid.

Still, they were all bright enough to know that if you want to get things done, you need to get people who support your agenda running the bureaucracy. Trump still hasn’t figured that out:

It’s hard to find Republicans to work in the federal government in the first place, and harder still to find Republicans willing to work for a man-child like Trump. Even at that, though, he’s barely even trying. Not counting cabinet positions, he’s managed to nominate about three people per week. That’s pathetic.

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Presidenting Is Hard

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The Not-So-Crazy Plan to Get Trump’s Taxes

Mother Jones

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Unless you filed for an extension, your federal tax returns are due Tuesday night before midnight. Traditionally, it’s around this time that presidents make their own tax returns public as well—in part because presidents have a vested interest in maximizing federal revenue by encouraging people to file their taxes. On April 15, 2016, for example, President Barack Obama posted his 1040 on WhiteHouse.gov, revealing that he and Michelle Obama had earned $436,065 the previous year and had paid $81,472 in taxes. We also learned that they gave $64,066 to various charities, including Habitat for Humanity, the Beau Biden Foundation, and Mujeres Latinas en Accion.

President Donald Trump, however, appears set to end this tradition. He refused to produce his tax returns during the presidential campaign, claiming that he couldn’t do so because he was under IRS audit. Trump has never produced a letter from the IRS that would confirm the audit. It wouldn’t matter anyway—an audit doesn’t preclude anyone from releasing their tax returns. Press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters at a briefing on Monday that Trump was already under audit for 2016. Fun fact: Presidents are audited by the IRS each year; it’s the law.

Maybe there’s another way, though. Lawmakers in more than two dozen states—mostly Democrats, but a few Republicans—have introduced bills intended to compel Trump to do what mass demonstrations and public shaming have thus far failed to accomplish. As written, the bills would require all candidates for president to release income tax returns in order to appear on that state’s ballot. New Jersey’s bill passed both houses of the state Legislature last month, although Republican Gov. Chris Christie is unlikely to sign it into law. The effort bears some similarity to a push by conservative lawmakers ahead of the 2012 election to force Obama to release his long-form birth certificate in order to appear on the ballot. (Obama had already taken the unusual step of releasing his short-form birth certificate, but many conservatives, including Trump, continued to insist that he may not have been born in the United States and might not, therefore, have been a legitimately elected president.)

All well and good—but would a tax return requirement be constitutional? A trio of experts—Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe; Norm Eisen, chairman of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington; and Richard Painter, the former ethics chief in George W. Bush’s White House and a CREW vice chair—penned an op-ed for CNN asserting that these bills would be legal. Although courts have held that states cannot add additional “qualifications” to races for federal office—for instance, a state can not impose its own term limits for senators—they do grant states some latitude in deciding which candidates’ names are printed on the ballot.

They write:

Unlike prohibited qualifications, these laws do not impose substantive requirements on candidates beyond those imposed by the Constitution itself; that is, these laws do not limit which candidates may run for office based on any particular information in their tax return. Thus, they do not create an insurmountable barrier in advance to any set of individuals otherwise qualified under Article II of our Constitution. Instead, these laws require federally qualified candidates to comply with a relatively minor process of tax disclosure.

In other words, mandating tax returns might be fine; any conditions about what those tax returns actually say would be too onerous.

But the constitutional question is hardly settled. Pepperdine University law professor Derek Muller wrote in the New York Times that such measures were “probably unconstitutional,” arguing that “the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that states can’t use the ballot as a political weapon.” And in some cases, as with the previous demands for a birth certificate, legislators aren’t even hiding their intentions. New York’s version of the tax-returns requirement is called the Tax Returns Uniformly Made Public Act—or TRUMP Act, for short.

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The Not-So-Crazy Plan to Get Trump’s Taxes

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"Why Obama Will Go Down as One of the Greatest Presidents of All Time"

Mother Jones

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As Barack Obama’s presidency winds down, I find myself wondering more and more how the history books will explain that we replaced him with Donald Trump. The indictments against the soon-to-be 45th president are well known and we’re about to spend the next four years prosecuting them so this week let’s take a moment to also focus on the often unheralded accomplishments of the 44th.

Each day this week I’m going to post highlights from a notable perspective on Obama’s legacy. Today we start with GQ editor-in-chief Jim Nelson, who earlier this year made a convincing case for Obama’s historic greatness:

Barack Obama will be inducted into the league of Great Presidents.

In so many ways, Obama was better than we imagined, better than the body politic deserved, and far, far better than his enemies will ever concede, but the great thing about being great is that the verdict of enemies doesn’t matter.

It may be hard to imagine now, but in the face of rising chaos, we’ll crave unity all the more, and in future years whoever can speak most convincingly of unity will rise to the top. (It’s also hard to imagine many beating Obama at the game.) This year’s carnival election, with Trump as a kind of debauched circus barker, only makes the distinction clearer. The absurdity and car-crash spectacle of it all have already lent Obama an out-of-time quality, as if he were a creature from another, loftier century. Whatever happens next, I feel this in my bones: We’ll look back at history, hopefully when we’re zooming down the Barack Obama Hyperloop Transport System, and think: That man was rare. And we were damn lucky to have him.

Go read the whole thing.

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"Why Obama Will Go Down as One of the Greatest Presidents of All Time"

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North America pledges to deliver 50 percent zero-carbon energy in less than a decade

U.S. President Barack Obama (R) and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hold a joint press conference in the Rose Garden of the White House. Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

North America pledges to deliver 50 percent zero-carbon energy in less than a decade

By on Jun 28, 2016Share

Climate change will be front and center at the North American Leaders’ Summit this week in Ottawa, the annual meeting between the prime minister of Canada and the presidents of Mexico and the U.S.

In addition to President Obama’s address on climate change, the leaders of the three nations will announce that Mexico will be joining an agreement between the United States and Canada to regulate methane leaks. They will also pledge to generate half of the continent’s electricity from clean energy sources by 2025. The target, up from 37 percent today, will require increasing include wind, solar, hydropower, nuclear energy, and carbon capture technology, according to the New York Times.

Environmentalists, however, are mixed on both nuclear energy and carbon capture technology, which doesn’t exist in any scalable way right now. There are only eight carbon-capture projects currently operating in the world, including a handful in the U.S and one massively expensive “clean coal” plant in Canada.

Still, the announcement coming Wednesday isn’t nothing. “This agreement means the United States will dramatically increase the amount of clean, renewable energy we get from sources like wind and solar within the next decade,” said Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune.

Here’s hoping.

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North America pledges to deliver 50 percent zero-carbon energy in less than a decade

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Bobby Jindal’s Disaster in Louisiana Shows Why You Shouldn’t Bet on Fossil Fuels

Mother Jones

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This story originally appeared in Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The state of Louisiana has fallen on hard times, and its situation offers some hard lessons. First, don’t let a right-wing ideologue cut your budget to the bone. Second, don’t hang your whole economy on fossil fuel extraction.

The Washington Post reports on the state’s budget crisis:

Already, the state of Louisiana had gutted university spending and depleted its rainy-day funds. It had cut 30,000 employees and furloughed others. It had slashed the number of child services staffers…

And then, the state’s new governor, John Bel Edwards (D), came on TV and said the worst was yet to come. …

Despite all the cuts of the previous years, the nation’s second-poorest state still needed nearly $3 billion—almost $650 per person—just to maintain its regular services over the next 16 months. …

A few universities will shut down and declare bankruptcy. Graduations will be canceled. Students will lose scholarships. Select hospitals will close. Patients will lose funding for treatment of disabilities. Some reports of child abuse will go uninvestigated.

For eight years, under former Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-La.), Louisiana slashed taxes and played tricks to fill budget holes. Jindal claimed that the tax cuts he pushed through would promote miraculous economic growth and make up for the lost revenue. That didn’t work, of course, just as it didn’t work on a national level under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. The Post writes:

Many of the state’s economic analysts say a structural budget deficit emerged and then grew under former governor Bobby Jindal, who, during his eight years in office, reduced the state’s revenue by offering tax breaks to the middle class and wealthy. He also created new subsidies aimed at luring and keeping businesses. Those policies, state data show, didn’t deliver the desired economic growth. This year, Louisiana has doled out $210 million more to corporations in the form of credits and subsidies than it has collected from them in taxes.

The current Republican presidential frontrunners are running on a similar program of massive tax cuts tilted towards the wealthy—which would likely lead to a similar budget crisis on a nationwide scale. (Jindal’s ill-fated presidential campaign had its own gigantic regressive tax cut proposal.)

When government budgets collapse, environmental protection takes a big hit. This is particularly worrying in Louisiana. The state is filled with severely climate-threatened low-lying regions such as the Bayou and New Orleans, and its coastline is disappearing under the rising sea, so it should be investing heavily in climate adaptation. The state’s poverty also intensifies its aching need for improved mass transit. Huge spending cuts at the federal or state level, never mind both, are putting the state’s populace at greater risk.

Louisiana’s budget problems also demonstrate that fossil fuel extraction may be less an economic boon than a massive liability. Louisiana, with its oil refineries and offshore rigs, has the third worst poverty rate in the nation—and that is sadly typical of fossil fuel–heavy states. West Virginia and Kentucky, for example, are among the top three states for coal production and among among the 10 poorest states overall. And these states ranked dismally on poverty metrics even when oil, gas, and coal were booming. Now that they’re not, things are even worse.

Politicians from all of these places, even Democrats, argue that fossil fuel production is a needed economic engine. But fossil fuel extraction is inherently temporary: one day, the well will run dry—if the market doesn’t dry up first. Commodity prices are inherently volatile, and when they fall, the first thing you see is a loss of revenue to that industry and a decline in tax revenues. What comes next in many places may be even worse: with lower prices making harder-to-reach deposits unprofitable to extract, the industry cuts back on production. Workers get laid off, and the hard times ripple throughout the economy.

For Louisiana, where the oil and gas is offshore and therefore more expensive to drill than the oil right under the Saudi desert, this is just what has happened. As the Post notes, “The price of oil and natural gas fell off a cliff, causing a retrenchment in an industry that provided the state with jobs and royalties.”

Louisiana is not the only state experiencing this. Declining oil prices have forced Alaska to cut $1 billion in spending from its budget over the last two years. Now it faces a $4 billion deficit. And low coal and natural gas prices have West Virginia facing a $466 million budget gap.

Whole countries are feeling the same pinch. Russia, which depends heavily on gas and oil exports, is looking at a national budget that will be shorn of over $38 billion in income.

Instead of just relying on a short-term, unreliable, and polluting industry, states such as Louisiana need to diversify into industries that draw on human capital—whether it’s computer programming or solar panel manufacturing—and can provide a more stable source of revenue. Microchip prices don’t fluctuate wildly. And the high-tech sector doesn’t just fall apart when demand slackens for current products; companies innovate new ones. Louisiana can&’t innovate its way out of its current problem by inventing a new fossil fuel that just happens to be under its feet.

Perhaps, instead of cutting taxes and education spending, Jindal should have invested in a more educated workforce. But then his support for creationism might not have gone over as well.

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Bobby Jindal’s Disaster in Louisiana Shows Why You Shouldn’t Bet on Fossil Fuels

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Obama Understands That Presidents Can’t Make Empty Threats

Mother Jones

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Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank is upset at President Obama’s “passivity” in foreign affairs. Specifically, he’s upset that Obama hasn’t threatened Iran with reprisals for its sham trial of his colleague Jason Rezaian on charges of spying.

I don’t blame Milbank. If I were in his shoes I’d be plenty enraged too. And yet, that still doesn’t make this right:

Obama said … nothing. He didn’t go to the briefing room and make a statement. He didn’t even release a written statement.

….Where was the demand that Iran immediately release Rezaian and the two or three other Americans it is effectively holding hostage? Where was the threat of consequences if Tehran refused? How about some righteous outrage condemning Iran for locking up an American journalist for doing his job? Even if Obama’s outrage came to nothing, it would be salutary to hear the president defend the core American value of free speech.

There are times when presidents should vent a little outrage, and maybe Obama should do it more often.1 But the fundamental truth about threats is that you don’t make them unless you’re willing to carry them out—and that goes double for presidents. If Obama had done what Milbank asked, and then failed to follow up, he’d open himself up to justified contempt. But if he did follow up, he’d be allowing America’s foreign policy to be dictated by the fate of a single person. Like it or not, a president can’t operate like that. He has bigger responsibilities than Donald Trump does.

Since neither of these options is acceptable, all that’s left is to take the course Obama has decided on: say nothing and allow his State Department to work behind the scenes. That’s not very emotionally satisfying, but it’s the right thing to do.

1Though Obama has publicly called for the release of all American prisoners in Iran on more than one occasion. “We are not going to relent until we bring home our Americans who are unjustly detained in Iran,” he said shortly after the Iran nuclear deal was announced. “Journalist Jason Rezaian should be released. Pastor Saeed Abedini should be released. Amir Hekmati, a former sergeant in the U.S. Marine Corps, should be released.”

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Obama Understands That Presidents Can’t Make Empty Threats

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It’s Time for Another Obama Apology Tour

Mother Jones

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Here’s our latest “crisis”:

French President Francois Hollande held a crisis meeting of the country’s Defense Council on Wednesday after newspapers published WikiLeaks documents showing that the United States eavesdropped on him and two predecessors.

After the meeting, the council issued a statement lambasting U.S. spying as “unacceptable” and declaring that France had demanded two years ago that the National Security Agency stop snooping on its leaders. The latest WikiLeaks revelations, published by the daily newspaper Liberation and the investigative news website Mediapart, claim the NSA eavesdropped on telephone conversations of former Presidents Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy as well as Hollande.

Look, can’t we just assume the NSA has been spying on every world leader around the globe? Clearly, the answer is for President Obama to put this finally to rest by embarking on an apology tour of the entire planet—except for leaders we don’t like and plan to keep spying on. This will accomplish two things: (a) it will take care of the whole spying thing all at once, instead of having it dribble out every month or two, and (b) Obama really would go on an apology tour, which would make Republicans deliriously happy. Finally they’d be able to accuse him of going on an apology tour and they wouldn’t even have to lie about it. How cool is that?

Then, when it’s all over, we can go back to spying on everyone, except more carefully. I mean, you didn’t really think we were going to stop spying on these guys, did you?

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It’s Time for Another Obama Apology Tour

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Joe Biden Blasts Republicans for Letter to Iran

Mother Jones

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Joe Biden’s pissed. Yesterday, 47 GOP senators sent a letter to Iranian leaders suggesting that the negotiations with President Obama over their nuclear program were essentially a waste of time, stating: “The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen…and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.” Biden, who served in US Senate for 36 years, responded with his own blistering rebuttal, writing that the senators’ letter is “beneath the dignity of an institution I revere.”

He wrote:

The senator’s letter, in the guise of a constitutional lesson, ignores two centuries of precedent and threatens to undermine the ability of any future American President, whether Democrat or Republican, to negotiate with other nations on behalf of the United States. Honorable people can disagree over policy. But this is no way to make America safer or stronger…

Since the beginning of the Republic, Presidents have addressed sensitive and high-profile matters in negotiations that culminate in commitments, both binding and non-binding, that Congress does not approve. Under Presidents of both parties, such major shifts in American foreign policy as diplomatic recognition of the People’s Republic of China, the resolution of the Iran hostage crisis, and the conclusion of the Vietnam War were all conducted without Congressional approval….

In thirty-six years in the United States Senate, I cannot recall another instance in which Senators wrote directly to advise another country—much less a longtime foreign adversary— that the President does not have the constitutional authority to reach a meaningful understanding with them. This letter sends a highly misleading signal to friend and foe alike that that our Commander-in-Chief cannot deliver on America’s commitments—a message that is as false as it is dangerous.

Iran’s response to the GOP letter, which was spearheaded by Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton who previously argued that the US should seek “regime change” in Iran rather than conduct negotiations, was similarly dismissive. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif on Monday chalked it up to little more than “a propaganda ploy” that had “no legal value,” adding: “I wish to enlighten the authors that if the next administration revokes any agreement with ‘the stroke of a pen,’ as they boast, it will have simply committed a blatant violation of international law.”

Biden goes on to note that the senators have offered “no viable alternative” to the diplomatic negotiations, and the letter seeking to undermine them sends a message to the international community that is “as false as it is dangerous.”

Here’s Biden’s letter in full:

I served in the United States Senate for thirty-six years. I believe deeply in its traditions, in its value as an institution, and in its indispensable constitutional role in the conduct of our foreign policy. The letter sent on March 9th by forty-seven Republican Senators to the Islamic Republic of Iran, expressly designed to undercut a sitting President in the midst of sensitive international negotiations, is beneath the dignity of an institution I revere.

The senator’s letter, in the guise of a constitutional lesson, ignores two centuries of precedent and threatens to undermine the ability of any future American President, whether Democrat or Republican, to negotiate with other nations on behalf of the United States. Honorable people can disagree over policy. But this is no way to make America safer or stronger.

Around the world, America’s influence depends on its ability to honor its commitments. Some of these are made in international agreements approved by Congress. However, as the authors of this letter must know, the vast majority of our international commitments take effect without Congressional approval. And that will be the case should the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia, China, and Germany reach an understanding with Iran. There are numerous similar cases. The recent U.S.-Russia framework to remove chemical weapons from Syria is only one recent example. Arrangements such as these are often what provide the protections that U.S. troops around the world rely on every day. They allow for the basing of our forces in places like Afghanistan. They help us disrupt the proliferation by sea of weapons of mass destruction. They are essential tools to the conduct of our foreign policy, and they ensure the continuity that enables the United States to maintain our credibility and global leadership even as Presidents and Congresses come and go.

Since the beginning of the Republic, Presidents have addressed sensitive and high-profile matters in negotiations that culminate in commitments, both binding and non-binding, that Congress does not approve. Under Presidents of both parties, such major shifts in American foreign policy as diplomatic recognition of the People’s Republic of China, the resolution of the Iran hostage crisis, and the conclusion of the Vietnam War were all conducted without Congressional approval.

In thirty-six years in the United States Senate, I cannot recall another instance in which Senators wrote directly to advise another country—much less a longtime foreign adversary— that the President does not have the constitutional authority to reach a meaningful understanding with them. This letter sends a highly misleading signal to friend and foe alike that that our Commander-in-Chief cannot deliver on America’s commitments—a message that is as false as it is dangerous.

The decision to undercut our President and circumvent our constitutional system offends me as a matter of principle. As a matter of policy, the letter and its authors have also offered no viable alternative to the diplomatic resolution with Iran that their letter seeks to undermine.

There is no perfect solution to the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program. However, a diplomatic solution that puts significant and verifiable constraints on Iran’s nuclear program represents the best, most sustainable chance to ensure that America, Israel, and the world will never be menaced by a nuclear-armed Iran. This letter is designed to convince Iran’s leaders not to reach such an understanding with the United States.The author of this letter has been explicit that he is seeking to take any action that will end President Obama’s diplomatic negotiations with Iran. But to what end? If talks collapse because of Congressional intervention, the United States will be blamed, leaving us with the worst of all worlds. Iran’s nuclear program, currently frozen, would race forward again. We would lack the international unity necessary just to enforce existing sanctions, let alone put in place new ones. Without diplomacy or increased pressure, the need to resort to military force becomes much more likely—at a time when our forces are already engaged in the fight against ISIL.

The President has committed to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. He has made clear that no deal is preferable to a bad deal that fails to achieve this objective, and he has made clear that all options remain on the table. The current negotiations offer the best prospect in many years to address the serious threat posed by Iran’s nuclear ambitions. It would be a dangerous mistake to scuttle a peaceful resolution, especially while diplomacy is still underway.

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Joe Biden Blasts Republicans for Letter to Iran

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Assignment Desk: Is Obama More Polarizing Than Past Presidents?

Mother Jones

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Paul Waldman notes a recent poll that shows declining public support for the idea of giving undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship. In a familiar dynamic, though, this is mainly because Republican support has cratered since President Obama announced his executive order on immigration:

Before this latest immigration controversy, Republican voters were at least favorably inclined toward a path to citizenship. But then Barack Obama moves to grant temporary legal status to some undocumented people (and by the way, nothing he’s doing creates a path to citizenship for anyone, but that’s another story). It becomes a huge, headline-dominating story, in which every single prominent Republican denounces the move as one of the most vile offenses to which the Constitution has ever been subjected.

….What the Quinnipiac poll suggests — and granted, this is only one poll and we won’t know for sure until we get more evidence — this process also ends up shifting people’s underlying beliefs about the issue. In this case, the controversy makes Republicans more conservative

This, of course, is something that we’ve seen over and over, and it presents President Obama with an impossible dilemma. If he says nothing about an issue, he forfeits the chance to move public opinion. But if he speaks out, the subject instantly morphs into a partisan battering ram. Republicans will oppose his proposal regardless of how they felt about it before.

But I’m curious about whether this dynamic is stronger under Obama compared to other presidents. I figured Social Security privatization might be a good test, but I wasn’t able to dig up consistent poll information about it from before and after George Bush’s big push following the 2004 election. However, this is from Gallup’s Frank Newport in February 2005:

Basic support for the idea of privatizing Social Security has been at the majority level for well over a decade….But in the much more politicized environment of the last several months, survey questions asking about Social Security privatization show widely varying support levels.

….It is important to note that the privatization issue is rapidly becoming more partisan. The concept is now being actively promoted by a Republican president, and widely criticized by his Democratic congressional opposition. This suggests that public opinion on Social Security could devolve into nothing more than a referendum on the president.

This suggests, unsurprisingly, that Bush polarized public opinion in the same way Obama does. Perhaps all presidents do. Still, it sure seems as if Obama polarizes more than any previous president. I can think of several reasons this might be true:

Something to do with Obama himself. This could be anything from underlying racism to the nature of Obama’s rhetoric.
Our media environment has become increasingly loud and partisan over time, and this naturally polarizes opinions more than in the past.
The Republican Party has simply become more radicalized over the past decade or so.
In the past, liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats acted as natural brakes on viewing everything through a purely partisan lens. But party and ideology have been converging for decades, and this naturally makes every issue more partisan.

In any case, this would be an interesting project for someone with access to high-quality polling data that reaches back over several decades. Is the partisan response to President Obama’s proposals more pronounced than it was for previous presidents? If so, is it a little more pronounced, or a lot? Someone needs to get on this.

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Assignment Desk: Is Obama More Polarizing Than Past Presidents?

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John Boehner May Plan to Sue Obama Over Immigration

Mother Jones

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Fine. Washington is consumed with trivia. So let’s talk trivia. A couple of weeks ago, when John Boehner announced he would sue President Obama over his refusal to “faithfully execute the laws of our country,” he listed several issues of particular concern:

On matters ranging from health care and energy to foreign policy and education, President Obama has repeatedly run an end-around on the American people and their elected legislators, straining the boundaries of the solemn oath he took on Inauguration Day.

At the time, I wrote that I was surprised Boehner didn’t include immigration in this list, since this is one of the tea party’s biggest hot buttons. Was this just an oversight, or was it deliberate? Well, on Sunday, Boehner wrote an op-ed for CNN that said this:

The President’s habit of ignoring the law as written hurts our economy and jobs even more. Washington taxes and regulations always make it harder for private sector employers to meet payrolls, invest in new initiatives and create jobs — but how can those employers plan, invest and grow when the laws are changing on the President’s whim at any moment?

I don’t take the House legal action against the President lightly. We’ve passed legislation to address this problem (twice), but Senate Democrats, characteristically, have ignored it.

Wait a second. Which problem? What is Boehner talking about here? Brian Beutler, who apparently reads tea leaves better than I do, suspected Boehner may have been signaling an interest in immigration, so he called Boehner’s office to ask about that:

Boehner didn’t name the two bills in the article. But his staff confirms that they are the ENFORCE the Law Act and the Faithful Execution of the Law Act, both of which were drafted with an eye toward reversing DACA. The former would expedite House and Senate lawsuits against the executive branch for failing to enforce the law. The latter would compel government officials to justify instances of non-enforcement.

DACA is the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals directive, which Obama signed in 2012. It instructs immigration officials to stop trying to deport children who arrived in the United States at an early age and are still undocumented.

This is potentially interesting. If you’d asked me, I would have said that Boehner’s best bet for the first couple of lawsuits would be Obama’s unilateral extension of both the employer mandate and the individual mandate in Obamacare. Politically it’s a winner because it’s Obamacare, and the tea party hates Obamacare. Legally, it’s a winner because Boehner has a pretty good case that Obama overstepped his authority.

But if Beutler is right, he may instead be targeting DACA, the so-called mini-DREAM Act. This is peculiar. True, the tea party hates it, so it has that going for it. However, it was a very popular action with the rest of the country. It was also, needless to say, very popular with Hispanics, a demographic group that Republicans covet. And legally, this puts Boehner on tricky ground too. Presidents have pretty broad authority to decide federal law-enforcement and prosecutorial priorities, so Obama will be able to make a pretty good case for himself. It’s not a slam-dunk case, and it’s certainly possible he could lose. But he sure seems to be on more solid ground than with the Obamacare mandate delays.

We’ll see. ENFORCE and FELA both cover more ground than just DACA, so we’re still in the dark about what exactly Boehner plans to sue Obama over. Mini-DREAM sure seems like a loser to me, though. Do Republicans really want to put a final nail in the coffin of their efforts to expand their reach in the Hispanic community? This would do it.

Source: 

John Boehner May Plan to Sue Obama Over Immigration

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