by Jules Witcover

April 18, 2011

A remarkable aspect of the threatened government closure over a budget compromise was the speaker of the House of Representatives' ability to equate himself in power terms with the president of the United States.

Speaker John Boehner, who leads only one of the three power centers in Washington -- the other two being the White House and the Senate -- managed to convey the fight on the carryover budget as one between himself and Barack Obama. In the process, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was reduced almost to an afterthought as the president finally jumped into the fray.

Boehner deftly and repeatedly interpreted the sweeping Republican victory in the November midterm congressional elections as a repudiation of Obama, as if it suddenly put him, as the new speaker, in charge. The president contributed by saying he personally "took a shellacking" in the GOP's takeover of the House and gains in the Senate.

In first leaving to Reid and House Democrats to handle the budget negotiations with Boehner, Obama reinforced his early hands-off attitude in the health-care reform battle, and later in showing he'd rather switch than fight on extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich. When the president finally did engage to try to avoid a shutdown, he left the impression he had been dragged in kicking and screaming.

Even as the prospective shutdown approached, Obama played into Boehner's hands by jetting off to Pennsylvania for an event that the speaker promptly labeled a presidential reelection event. Before Obama rushed back for a hastily called White House meeting on the crisis, CNN conveniently showed Air Force One parked on a runway, presumably at a Keystone State airport, awaiting the president's boarding.

One has to ponder whether that most conspicuously power-conscious of post- World War II presidents, Lyndon B. Johnson, ever would have handled it that way. LBJ, while famous as a master persuader and schmoozer, never let anyone around him have the slightest doubt about who was in charge.

Stories abounded of his personal intimidation of foe and friend alike when he felt it imperative to substitute the iron fist for the velvet glove. The LBJ in-your-face "treatment" made him much more feared than loved, and he applied it with a vengeance to bring friends and adversaries alike around.

Even Johnson's own vice president, Hubert Humphrey, felt LBJ's humiliating tactics, to the point that the Happy Warrior, as the 1968 Democratic presidential nominee, backed off breaking from Johnson on the Vietnam War when doing so might well have won his close and critical election against Richard Nixon.

But Barack Obama is no Lyndon Johnson, and in some ways that's all to the good. He puts congeniality above intimidation and has what to many other Democrats is an almost maddening inclination to reason together and the patience to go with it. When the opposition's modus operandi is to stonewall, however, as Boehner amply demonstrated as House Minority Leader in Obama's first two White House years, it can make the president look weak, or even naive.

Another famous presidential schmoozer, Bill Clinton, permitted himself to look like a soft touch in his first term to the point that he had to insist at a news conference that "the president is relevant" here. The Republican speaker at the time, Newt Gingrich, arrogantly tested the premise in late 1995 by also threatening a government shutdown. He was riding on the crest of his self-styled Contract With America "revolution" and Clinton called his bluff, let the government close and won. Public reaction blamed Gingrich for the inconveniences and sent him (at least temporarily) into political oblivion.

Obama currently has to deal with more crises ahead that include the next budget and raising the federal debt limit. Also, on top of the struggling economy and sluggish employment, his mixed message on using force to oust Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhaffi has raised further questions about his brand of presidential leadership.

With Obama's 2012 reelection campaign now launched, the strongest card he holds obviously is the office he occupies. It's in his hands to make maximum use of it by demonstrating that he remains in charge, in his own fashion.

 

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Who's In Charge? | Politics

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