Carter & Obama
I agree with Zelizer that Nancy Pelosi has been an extremely effective (and powerful) Speaker, but second Chait’s argument that Harry Reid can’t be judged by the same standard. Post-2006 GOP tactics (combined with the remarkable ideological unity of nearly all the Senate Republican caucus) have produced what amounts to a constitutional amendment by procedure, so as to require 60 votes on virtually all Senate bills. If Pelosi needed 60 percent on all measures, her record wouldn’t be anywhere near as impressive.
Indeed, the 60-vote problem that Reid faces illustrates how much harder it is for Obama to pass legislation than was the case for Carter. From 1977-78, Carter had 62 Democratic senators; Obama has 58 (or 59, if you want to count Joe Lieberman). Several of Carter’s 62—take, for instance, Mississippi’s Jim Eastland—were never reliable administration votes, but liberal Republicans (Mathias, Weicker, case, Javits) often supported the Carter’s domestic initiatives. Carter didn’t face the constant threat of Republican filibusters against all of his administration’s proposals—he had far more legislative freedom of action. That he struggled nonetheless to come up with a coherent legislative agenda won’t do anything for his historical legacy.
Zelizer faults Obama for not championing sufficiently progressive policy proposals on such matters as the stimulus or the health care bill. Yet because of the newly aggressive use of the 60-vote requirement, the stimulus bill (voted on before Al Franken’s swearing-in) required the vote of conservative Ben Nelson, the anti-Democrat Lieberman, and at least two Republicans. Even in retrospect, it’s hard to see how Obama could have gotten much more out of this quartet than he did. Similarly, on the health care bill, Zelizer is correct that Obama’s proposal strayed very far from the single-payer approach, but there’s no reason to believe that anything close to a single-payer option would have obtained majority support in the Senate, much less the 60 votes now necessary.
It’s also worth pointing out just how different the situation that Obama inherited than that which Carter experienced in 1977. While the U.S. position internationally would dramatically weaken beginning in mid-1978, and while the economy wasn’t particularly strong in 1977, Carter certainly didn’t come to office—like Obama—amidst a massive economic downturn and two wars.
In this respect, perhaps a more appropriate comparison to Obama is FDR. A pretty strong case can be made that FDR didn’t go to the left in his first two years, but instead focused almost exclusively on trying to ameliorate the Depression’s effects—including adopting some pretty conservative (NRA) policies. Only when Democrats gained seats in the 1934 midterm elections, and the economy had at least marginally stabilized, did FDR move to the left in 1935 and 1936.
Perhaps Obama could have done the same—for several months in 2009, it looked as if Democrats would be able to take advantage of GOP retirements plus a pretty favorable map to gain three or four seats in the Senate. Now, of course, such an outcome seems impossible. But it’s interesting to wonder if Obama could have maintained the political upper hand for a longer period if he had deferred health care to 2011 and had focused, FDR-like, on recession-related initiatives.
In any event, I’m not convinced that moving to the left (even if he could do so) would benefit Obama politically, and I’m not at all convinced by the Carter analogy.