Two Senators

 

By Peggy Noonan
WSJ.com

This is from not-for-attribution interviews with two Republican senators who attended the dinner with the president on Wednesday night at the Jefferson Hotel in Washington.

One was heartened and impressed by the meeting while retaining his skepticism as to whether it might open the way to pronounced progress in pursuit of a so-called grand bargain.

The other was more optimistic and left the meeting moved.

Each independently mentioned one aspect of the conversation that troubled them both: The president, while friendly and forthcoming, seemed to withdraw somewhat when talk turned to continuing the process.

Both senators said that near the end of the two-hour, 20-minute dinner, a senator or senators pressed the president: This has been a good discussion, it’s promising, but we need a plan, a process, so that whatever momentum comes from this talk isn’t squandered.

The Republicans fear that members of the Senate from both parties will not be able to come to serious agreement unless the president is actively involved and puts the prestige of his office behind it.

Senator No. 1: When pressed on the question, the president seemed to step back. “His idea of a process is, ‘You guys figure it out and work with my staff, and if you need me call me.’ But in the end, unless the president really gets engaged and forces meeting after meeting, I don’t see how you get past the logjam.”

He will judge the president’s level of “real sincerity” by this: “Does he follow up?” “If he just takes the standoff attitude—my guess is he’s gotta be smart enough to know that’s not gonna work.”

Senator No. 2: “At the end I mentioned, ‘Share [with us] how you see this going forward.’ ” Here the president “got hazy. . . . I told him this will never work without adult supervision from the White House. I don’t think he comprehends that this is part of getting something done.”

Senator No. 2 said he planned to “press” the president in coming days “to lead, to exert authority.”

What has been behind President Obama’s reluctance to own and lead negotiations with Congress? Members of his party have taken to conceding that he’s somewhat aloof, doesn’t enjoy the give and take of talking with politicians, tends to prefer the company of family and friends. That is the temperament argument.

Another argument is that nonnegotiating is actually his way of negotiating—drive the other side crazy by withholding involvement and information, talk over Congress’s head to the public.

Both senators said the president, at the dinner, touched on a reason for his uninvolvement.

Senator No. 2: “He’s been under the view that if he gets involved, it poisons something. But no, we want presidential leadership, we want to solve this. . . . He should be the convener.”

Senator No. 1 also used the word “poison” also, which suggests the president himself may have used it.

Here some possibilities arise. One is that the president truly thinks that he’s so personally hated by the Republicans and their base that he feels he damages any effort at progress by seeming to be leading or encouraging it. If he really thinks that, it must be painful on some level. And yet it’s an odd fear. The president just won re-election decisively, and he obviously has a lot of friends and supporters in America. He can move forward and take responsibility, he just has to get around those who really do hate him. But that’s what successful political figures do. They all have people who hate them. Especially presidents. The don’t—they can’t—sit around moaning, “Woe is me, nothing is possible.”

Another possibility is that the president exaggerates in his mind the power of the huge, dark force of the Republican base. (Republican politicians sometimes exaggerate it, too.) This might go under the heading “believing your own propaganda.” Both parties have bases, both bases have darkness within them, but a good portion of both bases would surely like to see Washington function again, see the entitlement crisis eased and the tax code simplified and reformed.

Another possibility is that the president’s claiming he’s poison is just a dodge, a way of subtly putting the onus on his foes: I could help if your team didn’t hate me so unreasonably, but alas they do, so I can do little. And this would be an excuse to continue what appears to me to be his preferred negotiating style, which is the nonnegotiation negotiation: Let them guess where I am, let them guess what I’ll do, I’ll be the calm center while they run around like headless chickens.

My sense: If you really want a grand bargain, that dinner was exactly where you’d make it clear you’ll work with them every step of the way, you’ll own this, you’ll lead.

It doesn’t sound like that’s what the president did.

Maybe he’ll surprise us along the way.

More on the dinner, from Senator No. 1:

“What you’ve been hearing is accurate, it was a good, cordial, open discussion.” He felt that there might have been a breakthrough in that “the president should have walked away from the meeting . . . knowing these are serious people here. He should have walked away with a sense of our seriousness.” The senator seemed to be suggesting that Obama tends to think his political opponents are knuckle-dragging pols—shallow, cynical. But the level of conversation that came from the senators, their seriousness and sense of gravity about the issues, might have made him question his assumption.

The meeting started with “brief pleasantries.” They “hopped in with substance easily in five minutes.” The president claimed he’d come up with $3.9 trillion in deficit reduction. “I don’t know where he came up with that.”

Obama “laid out his viewpoint of what we need to do, what his constraints are. He laid out the reality of his situation politically.”

The president either said or agreed that “he has four or five or six months to accomplish something. There’s a window here and it’s not that large.”

“He acknowledged that the biggest problem was Medicare. He said the problem with Medicare is people think that it’s their money,” when in fact “they pay in a buck and get three.” Later in the conversation a senator said to the president: “You have a platform here. You are in a unique position to educate the American people on what we have to do.”

The conversation went around the table. Lindsey Graham sat to the president’s left, John McCain to his right. “Nobody filibustered, everybody added something, so it was a pretty complete discussion—Medicare, Social Security. The elements are known.”

“Interestingly, on Medicare it looks like moving back the eligibility age is a nonstarter.”

The entitlement discussion had “kind of defined elements.” Tax reform is “more difficult . . . because the variables are legion. Republicans want pro-growth tax reform, the president wants increased revenue statically scored.” Ironically, it might be easier to bridge these differences with “a real tax reform, a paradigm shift” than by picking away at loopholes. “But he doesn’t have the time, the window.”

At certain points in the conversation the president, according to the senator, said that even if he wanted to agree with the Republicans on certain specific questions there would be a rebellion in his own party: “He said that a few times. But that’s an abdication. You have to lead! You have to educate as only a president can with a bully pulpit, you have to bring your party along.”

I asked if anyone brought up the unhelpfulness of the president’s demonizing of Republicans on the stump and in interviews. “Tom Coburn really went after him.” It was “forthright and earnest.”

Did the president receive the message? “He certainly heard it.”

The senator thought “the American people watching the conversation would be buoyed by it.” He was “grateful” for the meeting and found it “inspiring” that everyone was talking. But “with eyes wide, I don’t really see this going anywhere.”

Senator No. 2 was more bullish: “It was constructive. The media has covered this so extensively because this was unique for this administration. What people saw was something they hadn’t witnessed in the past. The president was frank and sincere. A lot of us had served with the president in the Senate. He did a good job of setting the table with his opening comments. Then we went around the room and then it was a free-flowing conversation.”

He saw the dinner as part of a hopeful trend. “The House passed a CR”—a continuing resolution, to keep funding the government. “The Senate is passing a CR. The House is passing a budget, the Senate will. You’re beginning to see some good things happening.”

“All of us understand it was a dinner. Getting from a dinner to a resolution on our fiscal issues is light years in between. Our time frame of getting something done is the next four or five months.”

The president “let us know what was a bridge too far, and we told him what was a bridge too far.”

The president was “well prepared for the meeting.” He was “able to talk in detail. He pushed back respectfully but strongly. Republicans pushed back when something was against their possibilities.”

Senator No. 2 told a Democratic colleague the next day: “The president must have left thinking it was one of the best meetings he’d ever been part of. More than if he’d met with the Democrats!”

When the senator had met with the president in the past, during debt talks, “it was a lecture, it was preachy.” But at the dinner the president showed “reach out.

“There was nothing like it. There were at least three senators there who I could tell got a little emotional—there was something about the meeting where it was with such sincerity. Nobody held back.”