Nobody Knows the Trouble He'll See
BARNES, FRED
Nobody Knows the Trouble He’ll See A few clouds on Obama’s horizon. BY FRED BARNES Except for the distraction (or worse) caused by the Blagojevich scandal, President-elect Barack Obama has...
...Obama should have known better...
...And they don’t want a repeat of President Clinton’s so-called “triangulation” with Republicans, despite Obama’s promise to pursue bipartisanship...
...Obama said his transition and his presidency would be “transparent...
...That’s because transparency is neither possible nor desirable...
...They’re impatient to pass the entire liberal agenda, sooner rather than later...
...If they do, that will be the biggest trouble of all...
...Senate majority leader Harry Reid has declared that once Joe Biden becomes vice president, he won’t be invited to the weekly meetings of the Democratic caucus...
...The problem is Obama didn’t run on the liberal agenda and the public didn’t vote for it...
...Obama and Democrats agree on the big issues, but on powersharing, process, and priorities they part ways...
...Bottom line: The relationship between Obama and congressional Democrats will be tense...
...There’s another aspect of that relationship that’s potentially troublesome...
...Reporters are bound to remind Obama of his promise, as one did last week...
...The media are likely to be relentless on this point...
...Secretaries and czars will fi ght for the president’s attention...
...What more could a Democratic president ask for...
...His press conferences have been short, orderly, and mostly sweet...
...Confl ict ensued...
...Let’s start with the foolish campaign boast...
...This had to be a bitter pill for Biden...
...You ran on a platform of transparency,” the reporter said...
...Cabinet members will fume...
...When they disagree, the czars will have the advantage of working nearer to the president...
...There are already two czar-like advisers at the White House: the national security adviser and the national economic adviser...
...Deliberations and decisionmaking require privacy, even stonewalling at times...
...This was the respectful version of the questions about transparency that Obama will get as president...
...But that’s not the problem...
...And the excitement over his inauguration as America’s 44th president has been growing palpably...
...BY FRED BARNES Except for the distraction (or worse) caused by the Blagojevich scandal, President-elect Barack Obama has had a wonderful transition...
...Before and during the Democratic primaries, the phrase he used was “open and transparent...
...Obama has named an energy secretary and an Environmental Protection Agency chief, along with a czar on his presidential staff to deal with energy and environmental issues...
...Transparency or anything close to it in the White House won’t happen...
...But, as a White House man, the senators don’t want him butting in...
...His campaign website said the Obama presidency would create “a new level of transparency...
...The trouble begins the day he steps into the Oval Offi ce...
...But the combined force of congressional Democrats and liberal special interests could be too great for Obama to resist...
...But the Blagojevich scandal and the fraud conviction of Democratic fundraiser and developer Tony Rezko suggest we haven’t heard the fi nal word on Obama and Chicago...
...Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...According to John Bresnahan of Politico, she was clear about what she expects from Obama and his aides, a wish list including “no surprises, and no backdoor efforts to go around her and other Democratic leaders by cutting deals with moderate New Democrats or conservative Blue Dogs...
...He rose through the Democratic machine in Chicago without being tainted by it...
...If Reid’s message wasn’t clear to the Obama team, House speaker Nancy Pelosi removed any doubt...
...As president, Obama will step into an ideal political situation, at least on the surface...
...But there is trouble ahead...
...How diffi cult is all this having to wait to release your inquiry [on staff contacts with Blagojevich] when the American people expect transparency...
...In past presidencies, their infl uence grew at the expense of the secretaries of state, defense, and treasury...
...They prefer to decide things on their own...
...Obama’s boast will come back to haunt him...
...The subtext is that Reid and Pelosi fear Obama may be more willing to compromise on liberal issues than they are...
...Highlighting a president’s failure to live up to a promise is a hardy perennial of Washington journalism...
...He’ll have a housing secretary and an urban affairs czar at the White House...
...And then there’s Chicago, Obama’s adopted hometown...
...Imposing that agenda on the country, as Reid and Pelosi would like to do, tax increases and all, might backfi re politically...
...But reporters also have a vested interest in Obama’s transparency promise...
...It’s a standard that no president has ever met or tried to...
...So the media won’t let this promise fade...
...More czars mean more confl ict, plus story after story in the press about infi ghting...
...This is also true of his insistence on putting a team of “czars” in the White House, people who deal with the same issues as cabinet members...
...His cabinet picks have been widely praised...
...He’ll be dealing with a Congress with solid Democratic majorities in the Senate and House...
...What’s the problem...
...Some of the trouble is selfinflicted, the product of an unrealistic campaign promise or Obama’s unique idea for the architecture of his administration...
...Could his ties to the Chicago machine come back to haunt Obama...
...The press is...
...Part comes from the political situation he’s stepping into...
...And part is the result of Obama’s political roots...
...He was a senator himself for 36 years and, as veep, actually has a constitutional role in the Senate...
...A White House with little or nothing hidden is every reporter’s dream...
...It is already...
...They’re eager to fi ll the $850 billion economic “stimulus” package that Obama is expected to sign soon after being inaugurated with goodies for these groups, notably organized labor and environmentalists...
...She told Rahm Emanuel, her former House colleague and now Obama’s choice to be White House chief of staff, to stay out of internal House Democratic matters...
...The problem here is obvious...
...More than Obama, congressional Democrats are sensitive to the wants of liberal special interest groups...
Vol. 14 • December 2008 • No. 15
