Word: clintonism
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...Endless Filibuster All this, it turns out, was a mere warm-up for the Obama years. On the surface, it appeared that Obama took office in a stronger position than Clinton had, since Democrats boasted more seats in the Senate. But in their jubilation, Democrats forgot something crucial: vicious-circle politics thrives on polarization. As the GOP caucus in the Senate shrank, it also hardened. Early on, the White House managed to persuade three Republicans to break a filibuster of its stimulus plan. But one of those Republicans, Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter - under assault for his vote and facing...
...Senate Republicans filibustered a stunning 80% of major legislation, even more than during the Clinton years. GOP leader Mitch McConnell led a filibuster of a deficit-reduction commission that he himself had demanded. The Obama White House spent months trying to lure the Finance Committee's ranking Republican, Chuck Grassley, into supporting a deal on health care reform and gave his staff a major role in crafting the bill. But GOP officials back home began threatening to run a primary challenger against the Iowa Senator. By late summer, Grassley wasn't just inching away from reform; he was implying that...
Similarly, when I was Speaker, President Clinton and I had a series of very tough negotiations, but in the end we accomplished welfare reform, Medicare reform, the first tax cuts in 16 years and the first four consecutive balanced budgets (reducing the public debt by $450 billion) since the 1920s. The public fights were often intense, but the willingness to keep talking and working together led to a number of historic achievements that both Clinton and the congressional Republicans could claim credit for. (See pictures of Gingrich's career...
...morning of Valentine's Day, as Dick Cheney was once again calumniating the President on network television, I was in Doha, Qatar, listening to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton attempt to explain Barack Obama's foreign policy to several hundred restive representatives of the Islamic world. The event was the annual U.S.-Islamic World Forum, sponsored by the Brookings Institution, and the mood was a bit more testy than last year's Obama-induced euphoria. There was a universal sense among the Muslim delegates that the President had offered fine words in the past year but not much action...
Good question. In fact, it cut to the heart of the Obama-foreign policy frustrations. Clinton's tough talk on Iran got most of the U.S. headlines, but her position on Gaza was far more important to the Islamic participants at Doha, especially the Arabs. The Israelis have stubbornly maintained a stiff blockade after pounding Gaza into submission in January 2009. Food is allowed in; Gazans aren't starving. But tight restrictions remain on construction materials for rebuilding homes and public buildings and on many of the nonessential necessities of life (Israel recently lifted the ban on cigarettes). Israel...