The Job Isn't Senator-in-Chief
LINDSEY, LAWRENCE B.
The Job Isn’t Senator-in-Chief Obama and McCain need to be ready on day one. BY LAWRENCE B. LINDSEY Eight months from now America will have its first president in nearly five decades with...
...That would add 12.4 percentage points of tax to every person making over roughly $100,000...
...Finally, both candidates should realize that their current behavior is shaping the foreign policy crises they will confront in their first year as president...
...He also ran on one very nonspecifi c item: health care reform...
...Pandering and endless talk about really trivial issues is what both the media and the public expect...
...By contrast, in 2004 Bush did not run on any specific legislative programs...
...For the good of the country the sooner this changes the better...
...Gentlemen, in eight months one of you will no longer be a senator but the leader of the free world...
...One was to tell the Canadians that Obama’s anti-trade rhetoric was for domestic consumption...
...It was widely perceived in the press that Clinton had won a mandate for reform, but the absence of details on which he could claim a mandate doomed the process...
...But his advisers publicly said 25 percent and in a recent interview on Fox News Sunday he dodged and weaved on the subject of rates...
...Both men say they want “cap and trade” systems for carbon emissions...
...This would be especially the case for President Obama whose post-superpower One World image is sure to be tested...
...All of this is fi ne if one wants a senator...
...The issue was staying in Iraq...
...To be a successful president, though, Lawrence B. Lindsey is the author of What a President Should Know . . . but Most Learn Too Late (Rowman and Littlefi eld...
...Within a matter of weeks he will have to fill about 1,500 jobs and propose a legislative agenda all the while dealing with foreign adversaries who will seek advantage in a period of transition between administrations...
...But Social Security reform was revived as an afterthought in early 2005 and went nowhere...
...That is why candidates must go out of their way to plan ahead: create detailed agendas that provide clarity about legislative intentions, designate spokesmen who can gather information and lay the groundwork for governing and quietly clarify the ambiguities the candidate creates, and recognize that the things you say now about foreign policy matters are driving policy decisions in capitals around the world...
...McCain’s tough guy image creates less opportunity for miscalculation, but does invite mischief...
...But both are now running campaigns for an offi ce that more closely resembles that of Senator of the United States than President of the United States...
...The lack of an agenda in 2005 and 2006 helped cost the Republicans the Congress in the midterms and send the president’s popularity to new depths...
...McCain will “keep the Bush tax cuts...
...Sure, compromises were made, but the essential ingredients of each campaign proposal were enacted...
...Nor did he say what he would do about changing the formula that links benefi ts to taxes paid...
...Even the son of the former commander of the Pacifi c Fleet is going to be tested by the Chinese to see how far he is prepared to go to defend America’s dominance in the region, and there will be no better time to do it than when he is still settling in...
...How does that square with not raising taxes on middle income families...
...This does not mean handing out cabinet posts, as the popular imagination would have it...
...they expire, so merely saying you’re going to keep them is hardly an act of economic leadership...
...Develop specifics now, gentlemen, or expect either no program or a highly fl awed one to be your legacy...
...In addition, the campaign had produced a detailed agenda on dozens of issues that guided executive branch decision-making in the fi rst term...
...It would be generous to call what their campaigns have put out on this even “works in progress...
...The details were left vague for reasons of political expediency...
...Done right, it also creates the impression of a government in waiting...
...Obama will get rid of them...
...BY LAWRENCE B. LINDSEY Eight months from now America will have its first president in nearly five decades with zero executive branch experience at the federal or state level...
...Communication is essential to governing...
...Indeed a pro-American Arab ambassador told me specifically that the Obama campaign had made the same Iraqi assurances to him...
...The two specifi c items Bill Clinton ran on in 1992 were a tax increase and ratifi cation of NAFTA, the latter setting him up as a new style of Democrat...
...There are a whole host of economic, foreign policy, and legal and domestic policy matters that someone should be able to discuss on a detailed background level with the more expert parts of the media, business, and foreign policy establishments...
...How is this not a tax hike on middle income Americans...
...a candidate must make up his mind before he is elected...
...Both passed...
...Then, after a brief honeymoon—six weeks for McCain, six months for Obama—the press will turn relentlessly hostile...
...The other involved a signal that Obama really does plan to stay in Iraq and knows the consequences of a pullout...
...Neither man is prepared, indeed no one can be fully prepared...
...The shock to the new occupant of the Oval Office will be profound...
...For example, inertia would take the top rate on capital gains back to 20 percent...
...Both men have proposed radically different health care concepts, but again, the specifi cs are missing on how either would save money rather than raise the nation’s health care bill...
...If it doesn’t, the country will just have to fi nd out what is behind the proverbial “Door Number One” after the election...
...Act like it...
...The easiest place to start by far is with a legislative agenda...
...The new president and his appointees will not have time to thrash out details after January 20...
...If Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hugo Ch?vez, and Kim Jong-Il are watching Obama’s public statements on CNN and preparing for their face-to-face meetings in the Oval Offi ce, but their neighbors who are our allies are being told something else, then conflict caused by miscalculation is inevitable...
...By contrast, he did not bob and weave around a much bigger tax increase—lifting the cap that limits the income on which Social Security taxes are paid and benefi ts calculated...
...Neither a candidate nor a president can possibly have detailed knowledge of all the things about which he is expected to hold an opinion...
...On a recent trip to Japan, I was struck by the widespread view that China will become far more assertive late this year and early next as both America and Japan go through political transitions...
...But guidance would be useful...
...Obama will get “change” on taxes simply through inertia...
...But any scheme that actually reduces emissions must be a net tax hike on end users like drivers and homeowners with electric bills...
...In 2000 Bush laid out very specifi c proposals on tax cuts, defense spending increases, education reform, a prescription drug benefi t, and personal accounts for Social Security...
...To be fair, our electoral process does not make it easy for candidates to act like grown-ups...
...Would Social Security stay a contributory system or become just a welfare scheme...
...A solid record of legislative accomplishment gained Republicans seats in 2002 and 2004 and gave Bush a reelection victory despite the Iraq war and a recovering but hardly robust economy...
...A similar tale can be told of Clinton...
...Nor frankly could a press secretary...
...Specifi city is not only good government and good politics, it is the only way to run a government...
...They will be far too busy just governing...
...The list goes on...
...The transition period is always a period of opportunity for adversaries...
...It means deciding who speaks authoritatively for the president-want-to-be...
...Four of those fi ve got enacted despite the lack of a convincing election win and lack of control of the Senate...
...Both need to lay the groundwork for governing...
...Both campaigns resemble senatorial offi ces with plenty of “aides” with whom one can speak, but no single person except for the senator who can actually provide an authoritative answer...
...One need only look at the two terms of Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton to get a sense of the difference running on a legislative agenda can make...
...Neither Obama nor McCain has had any success in this regard...
...Consider something obvious and unavoidable like taxes...
...The second item the candidates can control to some extent is personnel...
...He received a mandate to do so and carried it out...
...Obama had said he wants it “no higher than when Ronald Reagan was president,” which means 28 percent...
...no leadership needed...
...Saying what you’re going to do in specifi c fashion is not only good government, it is also good politics...
...The most prominent flaps of his campaign (besides Reverend Jeremiah Wright) have involved spokesmen whispering to foreigners out of school...
...What we now remember as HillaryCare collapsed despite solid majorities for the Democrats in both houses of Congress...
...As busy as a presidential campaign may seem, it only gets worse after you are elected...
...There were no signifi cant legislative accomplishments in the second term despite a three million vote win and solid control of both houses of Congress...
...Once elected, that man will accomplish about as much as the Senate accomplishes on its own volition...
...The generally fawning press hasn’t asked these tough questions...
...This suggests that an Obama administration is an accident waiting to happen...
...Immigration reform was invented on the fl y and died on the vine...
...Trouble is, McCain can’t “keep the Bush tax cuts...
Vol. 13 • May 2008 • No. 34
