So suggests Jennifer Rubin, drawing on a piece in Politico on the Burris fiasco, and she identifies two main causes. One is the President-Elect’s maladroit handling of the situation; according to Politico, Democrats in the Senate are
complaining that he kept his distance from the Burris controversy then jumped in at the end to claim the mantle of peacemaker—much as he did in the flap over Sen. Joe Lieberman’s support of Republican John McCain’s presidential bid.
As Rubin points out, letting his party’s Senate caucus hang itself without intervening may work fine for a presidential candidate (especially when one’s opponent obligingly jumps into the situation), but it’s a really bad idea once you’re elected president. Not only will it be necessary for him “to resolve food fights before they spatter him,” but even if they don’t spatter him, the Senate still won’t respond well to being mishandled—particularly if that mishandling results in the Senate looking bad. If he’s unwilling to spend any of his political capital to help Senate Democrats out, they aren’t likely to play along when he wants them to compromise, or to stick their necks out for him.All of this, however, can be put down to inexperience, and that’s something that can be fixed; as long as President Obama proves a quick enough learner (and he’s certainly bright enough), this shouldn’t be a long-term handicap for his administration. The other problem Rubin identifies, however, is considerably more serious:
the Senate Democrats don’t much like or respect Reid. Republicans might cackle that the Democrats are just coming around to this realization. Nevertheless, there is a difference between a Senate leader of the opposite party, whose job it is to annoy, frustrate and criticize the White House, and a Senate leader of the same party, whose job it is to build coalitions to pass the President’s agenda and grease the skids for legislation. Reid seems spectacularly ill-suited to fill the latter role. But he’s the chosen leader, and unless more calamities befall the Senate, that’s the position in which Reid will remain. The Senate Democrats’ success (and many of their members’ re-election prospects) will depend as will, to a great extent, the Obama legislative agenda, on the extent of Reid’s finesse. Good luck, fellas.
I have been quite skeptical—some might say, extremely skeptical—about Barack Obama and the kind of president he will prove to be; but the upside to his sketchy record and short political career (which constitute one of my main reasons for skepticism) is that, combined with his impressive natural gifts, there is a substantial possibility that I’ve misread him, and that he’ll prove to be a significantly more effective president than I expected. (Based on his first round of appointments, he’s certainly bidding fair to be a different president than I expected.) The same, however, cannot be said of Harry Reid; he’s been doing this long enough that he’s not going to surprise anybody—what you see is what you get. There may not be any greater problem for the Democrats in 2009-10 than that.Update: David Broder sees some additional reasons for concern in this affair.