Cast your mind back to the summer of 2009 for a moment. As you might recall, there were two major policy proposals being discussed in Washington that summer. One was the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill and the other was Obama’s Healthcare Bill. One of these got the weight of the President fully behind it and one of them didn’t. Consequently, the healthcare bill made it out of Congress and into law and Waxman-Markey died when the Senate couldn’t come up with their own version of a climate bill. While passing this healthcare bill has been hailed as one of the highlights (or lowlights, depending on who is asked) of Obama’s Presidency thus far, what if, rather than being a highlight, choosing to prioritize the healthcare bill was this biggest political mistake that Obama has made as President?
This premise rests on a few ideas: (1) that Obama had enough political capital at the time to pass one of the two bills but not both and that he chose healthcare instead of climate, (2) that the healthcare bill is the, or one of the, primary motivator(s) for the Tea Party, (3) if Obama loses in November 2012 it will be because of the economy and (4) a climate bill would have been a boost to the economy. So let’s explore these four ideas. First, however, note that this is not an examination of which of these policies was the right one to choose from the perspective of what they will accomplish – health care reform was desperately needed and climate change is a massive problem that must be addressed – or an examination of how Obama has performed as President. It is simply looking at whether, by choosing healthcare over climate, Obama made his political life more difficult.
Starting with the idea that Obama had enough political capital to get one of these two policies passed. He came into office with a massive groundswell of support after the Bush years. Although this was undercut slightly by the unpopularity of the bailouts and TARP funding he was still in quite good shape by the summer of 2009. His personal approval rating in June 2009 was 67%. This obviously isn’t conclusive evidence that he had the political capital to do whichever he wanted – clearly he couldn’t do both though – but there is no really good measure of political capital. So for the sake of argument say that 67% approval rating, combined with the fact that 71% of “likely voters” supported the Waxman-Markey bill, meant that if Obama had chosen to back it, we would now have climate legislation.
Now, to be fair, there are several people who think that Obama didn’t so much choose to endorse healthcare over climate change as he was forced to do so by the makeup of Congress and his own party. I don’t buy this argument. In part because of what has happened since then. I think that Obama was forced to endorse healthcare only insomuch as his leadership style, or lack thereof, is very hands off. He doesn’t dictate the debate; he allows the debate to be dictated and then tries to stake out a position in the middle. This is not leadership, and it isn’t what I’d expect from a President. “Leading from behind” as it was recently termed, is not really leading.
So on to the next idea, that the healthcare bill is the leading motivator of the Tea Party. Although the Tea Party was started in the spring of 2009, mostly in response to the bailouts on Wall Street, it really got going in the summer and fall of 2009 (the notable rally was held in DC in September) during the debate over healthcare. It was at the town hall meetings discussing the bill that the Tea Party gained most of its notoriety. While I think that the Tea Party would have developed in the absence of the Healthcare Bill, I think that it would have been less widespread and less politically important in its absence. The Healthcare Bill gave the Tea Party two things: (1) it threatened people on a very personal level (they’re going to “Kill Granny” with their “death panels”) that riled people up and (2) it appeared, rightly or wrongly, unconstitutional, thus appealing to the notion that by opposing it the Tea Party was returning America to it’s constitutional roots. The climate change bill would have offered neither of these things – and I think – taken away quite a bit of the draw of the Tea Party.
So here is the first reason I think choosing healthcare was a political mistake: it drove the creation of the strongest and most vitriolic opposition that Obama faces. I’d suggest that the climate bill, while it probably would have hurt some people economically (more on that in a minute) would not have had the same effect on the Tea Party. There was nothing in the bill that could have been construed as unconstitutional. Furthermore, there is nothing comparable to the death panel claims, except perhaps, claims of killing jobs. That doesn’t cause quite the same visceral reaction that saying a bill will kill you does. Finally, the climate bill is based on cap and trade, a fundamentally Republican idea, introduced by the paragon of Republican virtue himself, Ronald Reagan.
Now, the idea that if Obama loses in November 2012 it will be because of the economy. I think this a pretty uncontroversial statement. It’s pretty well documented that the fortunes of President’s rise and fall on the economy. This leads into the last point then, that the climate bill would have helped the economy.
This is probably the most controversial part of the theory. Indeed, most of the opposition to the bill stemmed from the fact that it was seen as a job killer. In some areas it certainly would have been. West Virginia, Wyoming, the other coal states, would have been hit pretty hard. But overall, a climate bill would likely have led to job creation. See here, here, here, here, and here for reasons why. But, the basic idea is that there is a ton of money looking to be invested in renewable technologies and energy and areas that have made policies to encourage this investment are seeing job creation and lower rates of unemployment. Passing climate change legislation would have gone a long way towards creating those policies on a national scale and, as a result, produced national scale job creation.
Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly, these effects would have begun to appear by the time the election takes place in 2012. This means that the economy would have begun to improve, improving Obama’s chances, and that there would be direct evidence to counter allegations made by is opposition. Instead, he is burdened with a healthcare bill that inspires very strong opposition, does little if anything to create jobs, and the effects of which – good or bad – will not be seen for years, providing him with no ammunition to counter critics of the bill.
Obviously, it’s impossible to say whether all of this would have happened the way it’s laid out here. Maybe the Tea Party would have found something in the climate bill just as offensive as in the healthcare bill. I don’t think that this is a particularly outrageous scenario though and I do think that passing the climate bill would have had benefits in a lot of areas unrelated to the climate (reduced political opposition, improved economy and therefore less problems with the deficit) that have bedeviled Obama for the last 16 months.
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