A spokesman for Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) recently dismissed Obama’s proposal to raise taxes on capital gains to fund increases in middle-class tax credits as not serious. I’m far from enamored with the man from Wisconsin, but his stand-in is spot on. Ever since calling the 2010 midterm elections a “shellacking,” President Obama has been focusing on grandstanding and trying to present the progressive face he did when he campaigned against Hillary Clinton in 2008, instead of presenting congressionally passable proposals to deal with real issues — and his State of the Union address last Tuesday was true to form.
Since demographics oscillate between elections and substantially alter outcomes, the 2014 election can’t really be called an incredibly strong mandate for Republicans to impose their vision on America — if there is a single Republican vision for America at all. Regardless, the election results do have meaning — time’s running out for the president, and he must substitute serious action for a litany of progressive platitudes and a string of domestic and foreign disappointments.
Obama’s view of the efficacy of his own foreign policy isn’t particularly serious, or even grounded in anything resembling reality. He claims that American leadership is “stopping [the Islamic State’s] advance” when the Islamic State has in fact doubled the amount of territory it controls since the summer. At the very least, he should be given credit for asking for a “resolution to authorize the use of force” against the Islamic State, as opposed to his and Hillary Clinton’s sauntering into Libya’s civil war without authorization and turning that country into a politically divided Islamist wasteland.
Obama’s community college proposal, as pointed out in the Jan. 16 Verbum Ultimum, “A Shallow Promise,” isn’t serious either. Borrowing from an idea based on a Tennessee program that isn’t funded by tax hikes, Obama’s idea would throw $60 billion in federal money at a community-college system in which only about a fifth of students complete their two year degrees in three years. Throwing more money at a problematic system isn’t a serious solution, but getting down into the business of why K-12 education is failing for students at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder might be.
Obama’s redistributive tax proposal, while perhaps reasonable in its desire to close important loopholes on capital gains, is basically a non-starter with both houses firmly under the control of his political opponents. The GOP’s backpedaling on its 20-week abortion ban proposal shows some degree of understanding of what can and cannot happen. It would be similarly advisable for the president to avoid quixotic proposals that have little chance of coming to fruition and to concentrate on a realistic agenda, one that could both give a boost to folks in need and reduce the harm potentially done by government.
A serious agenda would perhaps resemble something like the agenda advanced by Bill Clinton and the GOP-controlled Congress he had to work with from 1994 on. During this period, steps were taken to introduce real workforce development incentives and initiatives to complement a streamlined welfare system, balance the federal budget and provide relief to families with children — the latter of which, to his credit, President Obama has proposed. These initiatives played to Republicans, through their promotion of personal and governmental fiscal responsibility, and to Democrats, through their aim at promoting the long-term advancement of the disadvantaged.
Along similar lines, President Obama could do a lot to advance his agenda if he advanced some serious tit-for-tat compromises: “You give me a minimum wage hike, and I’ll give you the Keystone XL pipeline. You close some tax loopholes, and I’ll give you corporate tax cuts, and in the meantime let’s both work to pass more free-trade deals.” Certainly this wouldn’t leave any hard-liners salivating, except for those who sit on a hard line down the center, but it’s hard to imagine any other serious path forward for the president at this moment. As the Rolling Stones said, “You can’t always get what you want — but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need.” Right now, compromise is what the country needs.
