The Big Question: What lessons should Obama use to move jobs bill?

Some of the nation’s top political commentators, legislators and
intellectuals offer their insight into the biggest question burning up the
blogosphere today.

Today’s question:

What lessons should President Barack Obama have learned during the
healthcare reform push that might help him move a jobs bill forward quickly?

Hal Lewis, professor of Physics at UC Santa Barbara, said:

I thought he already knew what it takes; if you have the US Treasury behind you you can buy enough votes to win anything. On the takeover of health care he bought just enough votes in the House, but misjudged the Senate and underbid. It is an auction; all he needs to do is raise the bid. (Do you detect a note of cynicism here?)

Frank Askin, professor of law at Rutgers University, said:

Stop trying to play footsie with the Republicans; they are the party of NO…. He can try to challenge them in a few states where the voters can put pressure on the few remaining moderate Republicans to abandon the GOP conspiracy to wreck the Obama program …. If the Democrats cannot use reconciliation, and they can’t change the filibuster rule (that’s worth a try), then make the Republicans, actually filibuster around the clock and make fools of themselves on 24-hour TV. I would start that with a jobs bill, which is probably more popular at the moment than a health-care bill. 

John Feehery, Pundits Blog contributor, said:

The component pieces of a package are sometimes more marketable and understandable than the package as a whole.  He would be better of passing those pieces first, which would undoubtedly garner bipartisan support, and then tie it together later, than trying to jam a big package through first.

Justin Raimondo, editorial director of Antiwar.com, said:

The chief lesson to be learned by the president from the healthcare debate — or is that debacle? — is not to turn the jobs bill — or is that boondoggle? — over to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. If he wants to employ his philosophy of big govenrment “pragmatism” in the service of solving the jobs crisis, then he should start building things, real things: bridges, railroads, dams, the bigger the better. While this won’t solve the problem — indeed, it will only make it worse — it will at least look like he’s solving the problem, or trying to, at any rate. And it will make Chris Matthews happy.

As to what the rest might learn from that debate — including our all-knowing Washington- and New York-based media — it is that the American people aren’t quite as decadent and Europeanized as the “progressive” wing of the Democratic party would like to imagine. There are still millions of Americans who want their old republic back, and who are willing to go to the barricades when they think their liberty is at risk.

Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said:

Keep it simple.

Peter Navarro, professor of economics and public policy at U.C. Irvine, said:

A bill that is simple, easy to understand, and truly deficit-neutral would be a great start. A centrist bill would be a bonus.

Bernie Quigley, Pundits Blog contributor, said:

The lesson is that he needs to come up with some original thinking and not leave politics to the rank-and-file as he left healthcare to Pelosi and Reid. When Bill Clinton said, “The age of big government is over,” he was making an observation about history. The role that Democrats had played in the 1930s with Roosevelt and in the 1960s with Jack Kennedy and Johnson completed a long and successful political history. Today, applying those same strategies to our situation is foolhardy. We are a nation now of matured economic regions where we were a forest 100 years ago, a nation of small businesses where we were universally factory and field hands in the 1930s. A symptom of the cluelessness of the Obama people can be seen up here in the woods of northern New England where Ed Asner is performing in local theater the character of FDR.

The Obama Democrats today are much like the South was in the 1940s, trapped by Confederate nostalgia while the people and the economy of the South were ready to move ahead. FDR’s solutions to the 1930s and the FDR nostalgicos in office now are irrelevant to today’s America. Obama appears to have no background in economic reality and his personal advisers seem steeped in Alinsky, but the sudden appearance of Paul Volker is heartening. Roosevelt, Kennedy and Reagan brought in all new people to start new political eras. Obama needs to do the same. Europe is abandoning us and so is the East; our position in the world is crumbling. He drastically needs new people, new faces: I’d suggest Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia for looking inward (replacing Rahm Emanuel, who is going to quit anyway), and Jon Huntsman Jr. for looking outward (replacing Hillary, who will probably quit soon as well, probably to bring a primary challenge against Obama for president).

Brad Delong, professor of economics at U.C. Berkeley, said:

Do everything through reconciliation. If you don’t use reconciliation, it just will not happen.