Obama Must Quickly Learn Hardball

Let me get this straight. The long-running stimulus negotiation, which effectively shut down and held the entire process hostage, was done in order to get three Senate Republicans on board: Arlen Specter and the Maine twins? You can't make this up.

I am all for President Obama's decision to actively reach out to woo House and Senate Republicans on this and future initiatives. It is an admirable way to break the partisan gridlock which bloomed and festered under the Bush administration. I think Obama should continue to make nice gestures to his political adversaries in ways as simple as calling individual Republicans, going to speak with them about legislation, and giving them freer and friendlier access to the White House. Generally, no bad can come of simple niceties.

All of that being said, if this stimulus mess teaches the new President anything, it is that he cannot hang his hat on working with Republicans on anything important. He should continue trying, but if that avenue seems to be going nowhere, he should forget it and move forward with a plain majority from his side. In the first major initiative of his presidency, Obama reached out to the other side in ways his predecessor never reached to Democrats, and apparently what it got him was zero votes in the House of Representatives, and three votes in the U.S. Senate. These are not the signs of a group that wants to work with you or give any leeway.

And let me make clear that I do not fault the Republicans here. Politically, their obstructionism makes sense. If they help pass this measure, they are fully tied to it, making Democrats less culpable in future elections should it fail. However, if they join the Democrats in wide support and it succeeds in its purpose -- namely, providing a vital boast to the American economy -- they realize that President Obama and in turn the Democrats will get most of the credit, and not their party. Therefore, from their perspective, what's the point of supporting this bill?

That is all well and good, and I respect that, but President Obama and his advisers need to realize that the thought calculus the elephants are computing. Obama should thicken his skin and skull very fast, and ram through what he needs to push through quickly. As this debacle has proven, once again, when you let any matter sit and let opposition build, it is never a good thing for ultimate passage. We all knew this bill was going to pass way or another. The White House should have gauged GOP support, and when it found none, it should have pushed the stimuls through both houses right way, even if not a single Republican voted 'aye.' Once this bill is signed, how can Democrats claim it was passed with bipartisan support when only three Senate Republicans endorse it? You can rest assured that when it does pass, GOP leadership -- McConnell, Boehner, Cantor, et al. -- will be front and center bashing this stimulus. For all of his work in trying to cobble together a bipartisan super-majority, Obama ended up basically empty-handed, politically weakened mere weeks into his administration, and his bill is now watered-down to boot.

Over the life of this administration, Republicans have basically no reason to work with this President. Making the future of bipartisan endeavors even more unlikely, the GOP caucus in both bodies is now essentially bereft of any moderates -- all that is left now are hardline conservatives who believes the GOP lost badly in the last two cycles because it was not conservative enough. This is not a party that will be amenable to playing nice. The GOP knows that it cannot fell Obama now with his high approval ratings fresh off electoral victory, so it will engage in a war of attrition where it tries to bring down Obama and the Democrats with a thousand little cuts. You can score the last week as a series of small cuts.

Obama needs to realize this, and fast. Little gestures are one thing, but he must learn a new game: hardball.