by Jules Witcover

With the possible exception of Nancy Reagan's pitch to America's youth to "just say no" to mind-bending drugs, simply being against something in politics has seldom yielded much in the way of positive results.

As far back as 1948, Harry Truman was elected to a full presidential term in his own right by attacking what he called a "do-nothing Congress," scoring points by painting his Republican opponents as rank obstructionists.

More recently, when House Speaker Newt Gingrich in 1995 balked at passing spending bills needed to keep the government running, President Bill Clinton called his bluff. He closed down national parks and other public facilities, successfully putting the blame on the Republican leader. The Gingrich Revolution of a year earlier soon crumbled and Clinton was re-elected in 1996.

For the last year and currently, President Obama and the Democratic leadership have been working the same political lode by casting the GOP as "the Party of No." The gambit has been made possible by the conspicuous stonewalling of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader John Boehner against virtually all of Obama's legislative agenda.

Until last month, the Democratic lament had a bit of a hollow ring. Large Democratic majorities in both houses -- 60 votes in the Senate and 76 in the House -- provided enough mathematical margin for the majority party to work its will on the top priority issue, health-care reform. But differences in the bills passed in each house muddied the picture.

Then came the special Senate election in Massachusetts for the late Sen. Ted Kennedy's seat, won in a huge upset by Republican Scott Brown, giving the opposition party the 41st vote to block the Democratic proposals by filibuster. So Obama has renewed his so-far rejected pitch for bipartisanship with an invitation to the GOP leaders to a "summit" on health-care reform, on Feb. 25.

In his recent meeting with the House Republican Caucus, Obama won praise for engaging in a candid exchange of views, while at the same time using it to underscore the past Republican stonewalling. Boehner and his deputy, Minority Whip Eric Cantor, obviously see a trap in another meeting, with Obama reiterating the obstructionist charge.

In a letter to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, they called for putting aside the Democratic bills passed by the House and Senate and starting from scratch, this time with real Republican participation. The demand could be a summit-killer, which might just be the intent of the wary GOP leaders.

"If the starting point for his meeting is the job-killing bills the American people have already soundly rejected," Boehner and Cantor wrote in apparent reference to the Obama economic stimulus package, "Republicans would rightly be reluctant to participate."

But after spending a year pounding out the Democratic plan, the White House is not about to go back to the starting point. Presidential press secretary Robert Gibbs, confirming Obama's commitment to the work already done by his congressional leaders, has merely repeated the president's willingness to review "Republican proposals that meet the goals he laid out in the beginning of this process" to extend affordable health-care insurance to the millions of Americans currently uncovered.

"He's open to including any good ideas that stand up to objective scrutiny," Gibbs said in continuing the kabuki dance between the two parties attempting to convey willingness to talk, but not much more. What Obama won't do, Gibbs said, "is walk away from reform and the millions of American families and small businesses counting on it."

In this pre-summit verbal sparring, Obama appears to have the tactical advantage. If the high-level meeting on health care is held, the Republicans will be obliged to trot out in detail their own reform proposals, which so far have not been subjected to much public scrutiny.

And in the end, if the GOP leaders decline to take part, they will only give Obama more ammunition with which to reinforce their indictment of the Grand Old Party as "the Party of No." That outcome, however, might well suit the gathering army of anti-government protesters in the tea party movement of naysayers increasingly symbolized by Saran Palin of Alaska.

 

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Political Partisanship: Accentuating the Negative | Jules Witcover

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