Playbook: “Trump has spent the last year controlling the narrative. He’s lost it. Oh, and by the way, Trump is about to face a new normal. He spent the year worrying about crowd sizes and rallies. That delivered him the presidency. But now a single senator could stymie his plans. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said yesterday that he would do anything in his power to stop John Bolton from being secretary of state. All he has to do is place a hold on his nomination, and Trump has to grovel to his former rival. And this isn’t even coming from Democrats yet!”
No More Gridlock
Rick Hasen: “If, as it appears likely, we have a Republican President, Senate, House and Supreme Court, policy and law will shift sharply to the right. Putting aside what that would look like on the merits, it does give us something we have not had in our system of divided government: a chance for a single party to govern and be held responsible and accountable by the voters. Gone would be arguments about the other party obstructing.”
“It is a very different world than the gridlock we have seen.”
More from Hasen: Trump would get 2-4 appointments to the Supreme Court.
Clinton Transition Team Steps Up Work
“The secretive team tasked with preparing for a possible Hillary Clinton presidency is ramping up big time,” Politico reports.
“With polls pointing to the likelihood of a Clinton win, her transition team is hiring staff, culling through the resumés of possible Cabinet nominees and reaching out to key Democrats for input, according to people familiar with the process.”
Jockeying for Administration Positions Already Begins
“Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have yet to face off in their first debate, but both candidates have already moved teams into a plush marble-and-glass office building a block from the White House, where they are vetting résumés, sketching out organizational charts and otherwise planning the transition to a Trump or Clinton administration,” the New York Times reports.
“The jockeying for jobs that usually consumes the two and a half months between Election Day and Inauguration Day is well underway in Washington, with people swapping their notional lists of cabinet officers and speculating about who might get the plum deputy posts just under them.”
Reuters: White House discusses transition with Clinton and Trump teams.
Gates Says Obama Has Too Many ‘Yes Men’
Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates suggested on MSNBC that President Obama has “centralized power and operational activities of the government in the White House to a degree that I think is unparalleled.”
He added: “I don’t see the kind of strong people around the President who will push back on him. I will give him credit. I pushed back on him a lot and he never shut me down. He never told me to be quiet or refused to see me or anything like that. But I don’t see people around him like that now. “
You Think Running for President Is Hard?
First Read: “Finally, when it comes to Bush and Rubio, both men have been voicing their frustrations — the Washington Post reported on Rubio’s dissatisfaction with the Senate, while Bush complained about the state of the GOP race (‘If this election is about how we’re going to fight to get nothing done, then I don’t want any part of it’). But here is a reality check for both Rubio and Bush: If you think working in the Senate or campaigning for president is frustrating, just wait until you’re president. This is as easy as it gets.”
Mike Allen: “Very few soundbites live past a news cycle, but top Republicans were still buzzing last night about comments Jeb Bush made Saturday in South Carolina that were taken as churlish, even defeatist.”
Byron York: “It’s probably an understatement to say voters don’t like such talk.”
Is Today’s Politics Incompatible with Governing?
First Read: “In today’s highly polarized political world, this is how you win elections — by motivating your base and by recognizing there are few swing voters left. But it also makes governing harder, especially when the parties are trading electoral victories every two years (with Democrats benefitting from presidential turnouts, and with Republicans benefitting from midterm turnouts). When you have data-driven candidates appealing to win 51% of voters, it means that a president’s job-approval rating is never going to get much higher than that, and it means that bipartisan policy goals (like the TPP free-trade agreement) are the exception rather than the rule.”
“Bottom line: Campaigns don’t engage in persuasion anymore. They simply look for unmotivated like-minded potential voters and find an issue to motivate them. And if someone wins office by not having to persuade a voter who actually swings between the two parties, there isn’t any motivation for said elected official to compromise. This cycle of polarization will continue until someone wins a massive election based on a different premise.”
Extra Bonus Quote of the Day
“You can’t govern the country based on being angry.”
— Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), quoted by Politico.
Can Republicans Overcome Internal Rifts to Govern?
“Republicans taking control of Congress this coming week will try to overcome their reputation as a divided party hobbled by infighting by working to reshape policy in ways that Americans will feel in corporate boardrooms, on factory floors and at the gas pump,” the Washington Post reports.
“Incoming committee chairmen are preparing fresh oversight of federal agencies while rank-and-file members will be encouraged to use a new budget plan and government spending bills to chip away at President Obama’s environmental regulations, health-care reform and outreach to Cuba and Iran.”
The Lost Art of the Deal
New York Times: “With more than 120 years in the House and Senate among them, four lawmakers offered a bit of parting wisdom to Capitol Hill newcomers: Partisanship is easy, governing is hard.”
“As the 114th Congress prepares to convene on Tuesday, some senior members, who will not be returning, reflected on what they saw as necessary to the success of both lawmakers and the institution.”
New Governing Coaltion Emerges
Roll Call: “The hard right and the hard left ended up out in the cold last week — free to raise their fists and their profiles and make a ruckus, but ultimately powerless to stop the cromnibus.”
“The deal represents a return — at least for a week — to the fabled establishment Washington dealmaking of yore, warts and all, like it or loathe it. It’s a return that could put the ‘do nothing’ label back on the congressional shelf — with Republicans and the president eyeing deals next year on trade and taxes, in addition to keeping the government open for business after four years of serial shutdown and default dramas.”
Republicans Don’t Need to Govern
Jay Rosen is tired of reading post-election news reports that state, “Republicans must show they can govern.”
“These are false statements. I don’t know how they got past the editors. You can’t simply assert, like it’s some sort of natural fact, that Republicans ‘must show they can govern’ when an alternative course is available. Not only is it not a secret — this other direction — but it’s being strongly urged upon the party by people who are a key part of its coalition.”
“The alternative to ‘show you can govern’ is to keep President Obama from governing. Right? Keep him from accomplishing what he wants to get done in his final two years and then ‘go to the country,’ as Karl Rove used to say, with a simple message: time for a change! This is not only a valid way to proceed, it’s a pretty likely outcome.”
How Campaigns Can Poison Governing
Amy Walter: “There’s a reason why the people who run campaigns are rarely the people responsible for implementing policy. The job of a campaign operative is to work in absolutes – you win or you lose, there’s no gray area. The job of a policy operative, of course, is to look for the gray, to look for solutions within the increasingly narrowing options of our polarized political system.”
“However, the way one wins a campaign ultimately determines how an incumbent and his/her party can (or cannot) legislate. And, the way that both sides have boxed themselves in on tough issues like immigration, entitlements, and climate change on the campaign trail ultimately leaves little room for any meaningful compromise in a 2015 Congress.”
Can Young Candidates Fix Our Government?
David Gergen: “At a time when national politics is so broken, a new generation of young men and women who first cut their teeth in service to others are now venturing into the political arena, offering us fresh, idealistic leadership that may be our best hope of breaking out of today’s mess.”
“This new wave of candidates comes from two vital streams in American life: young veterans coming home from protecting their country overseas along with others who served their country back home as volunteers in classrooms, hospitals, shelters, and beyond. Veterans and social entrepreneurs — they are joining forces and could become a new, powerful force for change.”
In Defense of Horse Trading
Ray LaRaja: “Like much in life, pushing people to the table means offering them rewards and punishments. Otherwise we get stalemate. In the Herald article, a legislator complains about ‘arm twisting.’ Cry me a river. He has a choice: ignore the leadership and vote his conscience or go with the majority. Voters will ultimately decide if his principled stand was worth the price of ignoring the arm-twist.”
Governing vs. Not Governing
First Read: “You can boil down the past three weeks in Washington to this one theme: The Obama White House and Democrats have a political problem when it comes to governing (see the Obamacare website), while Republicans have a political problem because they don’t want to govern (see the shutdown). And both sides have used the other party’s problems to mask their own.”
“Basically, the best thing both parties have going for each other right now is each other. That said, the public clearly wants competence and does like governing, see, well, every recent poll.”
GOP Roots for Failure
Juliet Lapidos: “In theory, lawmakers should hope that government programs work well, and if they don’t, work to fix them. Elected representatives should hope that government agencies carry out their missions smoothly, and if something goes wrong, try to figure out what happened to avoid making the same mistake in the future.”
“Obviously that’s not how things work in the United States, where one of the two parties doesn’t actually believe in government. Republicans want to shrink government until it’s small enough to drown in a bathtub! They think there’s nothing scarier than the prospect of a government employee trying to help! With beliefs like those, it’s perhaps not surprising that — with disturbing frequency — they root for failure in order to score points.”
Most Say Obama Can’t Get Things Done
A new Pew Research poll finds that just 49% of the public says President Obama is “able to get things done,” down from 57% in January and closer to his levels of confidence in 2012. But the vast majority of Americans, 67%, believe Obama is fighting hard for his policies, a quality that has been questioned in the wake of legislative setbacks.
