Blog CQ Politics: Bipartisan Relations: Collaboration or Collision?
This is an interesting read from CQ Politics.
http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=weeklyreport-000003017554
Bipartisan Relations: Collaboration or Collision?
By Alan K. Ota, CQ Staff
Not long after the election, Mitch McConnell received a call on his cell phone while shopping the aisles of a Kroger grocery store near his home in Louisville. Barack Obama offered warm greetings and congratulated the Senate minority leader on his hard-won victory of a fifth term. Neither man made any mention of their past disagreements or legislative battles, and each expressed a desire to work together to meet the challenges ahead.
Several weeks later, the president-elect telephoned a second time, and the two chatted about ways to ease the credit crisis and spark the economy. McConnell, it turned out, was just leaving the same supermarket. “You’ve got a knack for catching me here,” McConnell recalled telling Obama. “My constituents are impressed. They wonder who I’m talking to.”
The “Kroger calls” may have been the beginning of what could become either the most productive bipartisan relationship in the capital this year or the most destructive. That is because McConnell, who’s now the highest-ranking and most influential elected Republican in Washington, has more power than anyone else to either stand in the way of the 44th president’s agenda for the United States or to make the two political parties into legislative collaborators in tackling a crippled economy and a complex world.
McConnell’s approach — whether he works with the new administration in search of consensus, fights every step of the way or does a little of both — will determine as much as anything how well Obama succeeds at ending the toxic party wars that have polarized and paralyzed Washington for so many years, an overarching promise of his campaign.
After their initial encounters during the transition, and a bipartisan congressional leadership meeting with the new president at the White House last Friday, both McConnell and members of the incoming administration provided upbeat, hopeful assessments of their prospects for reaching across the partisan chasm and finding a hand from the other side. The question, though, is how long that optimism deservedly lasts, because almost from the start McConnell will be under pressure from multiple angles, political and tactical, to push back against the new president and his fellow Democrats in charge at the Capitol.
Politically, McConnell will be helping direct the way Republicans define themselves for the 2010 midterm election, when nearly half the Senate seats the party now holds (19 of 41) will be on the ballot. Once the voting and the positioning — and the fundraising — begin, the dynamic can change rapidly.
Tactically, McConnell will be managing a caucus dramatically diminished in size since he took the floor leader’s job two years ago, but with precisely the number of members he needs to stage a successful goal-line stand against Obama’s initiatives. It takes 60 votes to break a filibuster in the 100-member Senate, and so it takes 41 votes to keep a filibuster alive and thereby thwart every nomination and piece of legislation, except for certain budget matters. That is exactly the number of Republican senators at the moment, which means that whenever McConnell succeeds in keeping his caucus totally unified, he can put a stop to the new president’s plans.
It is his control over those powerful legislative brakes that makes McConnell so much more influential than the other Republican minority floor leader, Ohio’s John A. Boehner in the House, as unified Democratic control over the legislative and executive branches returns to Washington for the first time since 1994.
The initial test of the relationship between McConnell and the Obama administration came even before last week’s inauguration, on the question of whether to release the second half of last fall’s $700 billion financial industry bailout. McConnell led 32 other GOP senators (and eight Democrats) in voting to stop the release, saying there were insufficient safeguards to ensure that the money would be spent wisely.
He lost soundly when six fellow Republicans and 45 Democrats voted to untether the money. McConnell did not put any parliamentary obstacles in the way and was able to secure a letter from Obama’s team outlining some conditions that will be set for tapping the fund, known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). After the vote, McConnell’s attitude was that he’d lost fair and square to a worthy adversary — “impressive” was his word for Obama’s lobbying effort — while learning lessons for bigger battles ahead, starting with an economic recovery package that may exceed $800 billion, which will dominate the congressional agenda for the next several years.
“He’s got an A-plus personality. Approachable. Bright,” McConnell said when asked to size up the incoming president. “They came close but didn’t quite get there on TARP,” he said of Obama’s negotiators. “We hope they can get there on stimulus.”
The praise has been mutual. Rahm Emanuel, the former House Democratic Caucus chairman who’s now White House chief of staff, said McConnell “can be a good partner. He’s an honest, straight shooter.”
This honeymoon may well last a bit. But after so many years of partisan enmity, McConnell and his team said both sides will need time to build lasting confidence. “They must follow through on commitments. We need to see a pattern of commitments kept,” Arizona’s Jon Kyl , the No. 2 Senate GOP leader, said of the Obama administration.
McConnell said he’s adopted a Cold War philosophy for his approach to the party that now controls the government. “As President Reagan used to say: Trust, but verify,” he said after the first meeting he convened between his caucus and top Obama aides, in the Capitol a week before Inauguration Day.
Which Approach?
By metaphorically lowering the barricades for the White House on Capitol Hill — and by extending Obama an open invitation to attend the weekly GOP caucus luncheons — McConnell is betting some of his political capital that he can develop working ties to a president he never got to know particularly well during the previous four years, when Obama was the junior senator from Illinois.
But unlike so many politicians, including the new president, McConnell, who turns 67 next month, tends to shun attention and is more comfortable cutting deals behind the scenes than making grand gestures in public. He has tried various approaches to legislating since arriving in Washington 24 years ago as the only GOP challenger elected to the Senate on Reagan’s short second-term coattails in 1984. Initially known more as a principled and unyielding conservative, he’s cultivated a reputation as a consummate pragmatist during his four years as whip and his two years since as minority leader — albeit one who can be tough, tenacious, tireless, competitive and combative.
For the next stage in his career, McConnell suggests that he’ll probably take his cues from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.
“The bipartisanship frankly is going to depend on the direction the administration takes,” McConnell said during an interview this month in his offices overlooking the inaugural platform. “If it goes to the left, I think there will be very few Republicans there, maybe a handful. If it stays in the center, the number will go up.”
In several speeches, most recently last week at the National Press Club, McConnell has urged Obama to use his electoral mandate and the leverage of tough economic times to form bipartisan coalitions that “reach for big accomplishments” on such intractable matters as the surging growth in outlays for Social Security, Medicare and other entitlement programs. “The only way he will be able to tackle any of these issues is to attack them early on, while he still has political capital, and to propose solutions that appeal not just to the liberal wing of his party, but to a majority,” McConnell told the Federalist Society, a prominent conservative organization, in November.
Most Democrats close to the new president said Obama will strive to win over big blocs of Republicans for almost every piece of his legislative agenda. “Peeling away two or three Republicans on a few bills will not set the tone. That’s not change,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, one of Obama’s most trusted confidantes in Congress. “We want to do big things. To achieve that, you need bipartisanship.”
And nonpartisan veteran political observers said Obama will need the political cover of bipartisanship in case the economy continues to sink even after his recovery plan is enacted. “If his initiatives fail to work, he needs to show Republicans were on board,” said James A. Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University.
These political dynamics should create a ripe time for McConnell and Obama to work together — and for the senator to get some of what he wants along the way. So also should McConnell’s own political situation: Having survived an uncomfortably close call last fall, he has six years before he faces the voters again, so parochial political considerations can take a back seat for a time. And so will national political considerations: Unlike Bill Frist, who spent enormous energy trying to use his Senate job as a springboard for a 2008 presidential run, or Bob Dole, who capped his career as the 1996 GOP nominee, McConnell has shown no interest whatsoever in moving from the Republican leader’s office to the White House.
Door to Cooperation
McConnell became Washington’s most powerful Republican at noon Jan. 20, when he stood just a few feet away as Obama was sworn in and the presidency of George W. Bush came to an end. But Bush unofficially passed McConnell the torch four days earlier, when the two met alone in the Oval Office. “We talked about some of the highlights of his tenure and about the future,” McConnell said.
As Bush’s chief legislative facilitator in the 110th Congress, McConnell occasionally showed a gutsy streak by embracing bipartisan agreements opposed by conservatives — most significantly the deal he cut with Bush and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that saved the financial rescue package from collapse.
But he also led efforts to thwart many Democratic initiatives, which left him open to criticism that his main accomplishment as minority leader was putting up a tall wall of obstruction — manifest in the fact that there were only 215 roll call votes in the Senate last year, the lowest number since 1961, and that 49 of them (23 percent) were on whether to invoke cloture to limit debate and end a filibuster. (For his part, McConnell blames the cloture glut on Democratic intransigence.)
While McConnell declines to tip his hand, veteran GOP strategists such as Tom Korologos, an adviser for DLA Piper who was a congressional liaison for the Reagan White House, predicted that the one place McConnell will have to give ground is on the coming stimulus. “He almost has to make a deal on the economic recovery bill. In the end, he doesn’t want to be accused of screwing up the economy,” Korologos said.
Former GOP Rep. Bill Frenzel of Minnesota, a pivotal figure in several big bipartisan deals of the 1980s and now a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution, agreed. “He must look reasonably cooperative. If he looks like a squabbler, he’ll damage his party’s chances,” Frenzel said.
In recent days, McConnell has opened the door to compromise on the economic recovery measure and on appropriations for fiscal 2009, which have been left on autopilot since before the election. But he’s hinted that he is ready to do battle, including on Obama’s first budget — for fiscal 2010, which starts in October — and on a tax cut package that could move separately from a stimulus bill focused mainly on spending.
Already McConnell has faced divisions among Republicans over the stimulus package, with conservatives such as Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, opposing any deal, while big trade groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are virtually certain to back the package.
The most conservative GOP senators said McConnell has some room to cut deals but will face their wrath if he tries to move a stimulus measure with too much spending. “If we disagree with him, we’re not going to try to cut his legs out from under him. But we’re going to stand on the principles that we believe in,” Tom Coburn of Oklahoma said.
Unlike House Republicans, who have prepared a rival stimulus proposal, McConnell has refrained from drawing lines in the legislative sand. Instead, he’s set out some goals for the package, such as his call for loans instead of direct grants to states. And he has called for more tax cuts and less spending.
Robert F. Bennett of Utah, who functions as something akin to McConnell’s consigliere within the Senate GOP, said a wide-ranging dialog with Democrats on the stimulus would be part of a flexible strategy aimed at helping the GOP recover from its thrashing last November. “You can’t cry wolf too often. He can’t go all-out on everything. He will pick issues where we have to stand because this is what defines a Republican. You only have to win a few of those to succeed. It sends a message,” Bennett said. “In the end, Mitch McConnell has to hang on to 41.’’
Fork in the Road
The task of holding together a caucus that will have at least 41 members — one more could yet be added if the legal challenges in Minnesota fall the GOP’s way — has been complicated by an intraparty split over whether to take the road to the right or the center to regain power.
Too little confrontation could trigger a conservative backlash, Bennett said. Too much, and McConnell could lose his hold on a handful of moderates he needs to sustain filibusters and ensure that Republicans can offer amendments to important bills.
McConnell said holding Republicans together would be essential to making filibuster threats stick and getting the amendments they want. “If you don’t do that, you turn the Senate into the House,” McConnell said. But he began the session with mostly conciliatory signals.
In addition to allowing a splintered GOP vote to release financial rescue funding, he acceded to a rare Sunday roll call — aimed at speeding a bipartisan wilderness protection bill to passage — over vociferous demands by Coburn to allow debate on amendments. While Coburn waged a one-man filibuster, Democrats prevailed on the year’s first cloture vote. McConnell watched the proceedings from his home in Louisville, where he was honored in public and private events for surpassing Democrat Wendell H. Ford, who retired a decade ago, as the longest-serving Bluegrass State senator.
The passage of the bill four days later ended the intraparty feud and put McConnell in his trademark role as the master of often ambiguous procedural deals. While handing Democrats an olive branch, he locked arms with Coburn and 17 other small-government conservatives in voting against the measure.
With quiet gestures on the lands bill and other legislation, McConnell has made clear a willingness to step aside for pieces of the Democratic agenda, but generally only those bills that pass muster with a broad swath of the Republican caucus.
Avoiding the Culture Wars
Even though he appears to be in the mood to entice Democrats with the carrot of permitting fast action on the majority’s trophy bills, McConnell also must look for battles that can help rally his base.
Like a number of lawmakers in both parties, he’s elected not to dwell on social issues, such as abortion and gay rights, that could alienate independent voters. Instead, he has looked to draw the line on other issues intended to resonate with the public, including several priorities of labor unions. He has vowed to block their priority: legislation that would make it easier to organize new workplaces by allowing the use of petitions instead of elections.
“It’s pretty clear there’s going to be a big fight — some would argue, the mother of all battles,” McConnell said.
McConnell helped orchestrate the defeat of another union priority last month after deploying a surrogate, Bob Corker of Tennessee, to reshape or block a measure aimed at authorizing bridge loans for the nation’s three biggest automakers: Ford Motor Co., General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC. Having heard Corker voice opposition to a deal on the bailout endorsed by Bush, McConnell summoned the freshman senator to his office and then dispatched him to try to cut a better deal with three senior Senate Democrats: Reid, Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut and Charles E. Schumer of New York.
The talks unraveled after Corker won support in a GOP caucus meeting for language Democrats viewed as a poison pill: a requirement that the United Auto Workers accept within a year new work rules and compensation similar to what Japanese automakers pay their American workers. “I was standing at the podium. And Mitch was there, too. From the most moderate to the most conservative, everybody said, ‘If they don’t agree to a date certain, do we really have anything?’ That was the end of it,” Corker said.
Ultimately, General Motors and Chrysler got $14 billion in loans from the Bush administration. But by then, McConnell and his caucus had demonstrated that they would insist on big concessions by unions and other stakeholders as part of any bailout.
Wooing Centrists
While rallying Republicans in such party-defining issues as confronting the unions, McConnell has looked for ways to woo swing votes on other issues that divide his party, such as health care.
He said he will look to forge coalitions with ideological moderates in both parties when that debate begins in earnest, which could be this year. “Among the centrists, some will be in our camp, and some in theirs,” he said.
Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, said McConnell employs a layered approach to building consensus, often employing surrogates and task forces to extend his reach. That tactic will probably be in full force as McConnell tries to unify Republicans on fiscal priorities. “He gets everyone in a room and makes everybody come up with something. He wants as many fingerprints on it as possible. Sometimes, he tries to develop consensus around his viewpoint,” Gregg said.
“What he likes are choices,” said Richard M. Burr of North Carolina, the Senate GOP’s new chief deputy whip. He said McConnell would probably collect options and viewpoints from an array of working groups, including a new task force on health care to build the case for GOP alternatives on big issues.
Gregg predicted that Republicans would rally behind longstanding measures aimed at spurring competition among health insurers and steer clear of government mandates such as Obama’s call to require coverage for children.
In pursuing centrists, McConnell often moves quietly and with multiple allies.
One such ally, Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter , took the first run at wooing Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut in a chat on the Senate floor last fall. The Democrats’ 2000 nominee for vice president, who now calls himself an independent, had infuriated Democrats by campaigning enthusiastically for John McCain last fall. But McConnell kept his powder dry until the early morning after Election Day.
“The first call that I got was from Mitch McConnell ,” Lieberman recalled. “He urged me to think about sitting with his caucus. I said I thought I would really stay as a Democrat. But I said I would think about it. He gave me all his phone numbers . . . and told me to call if I wanted to talk any more.”
Lieberman eventually appeased Democratic liberals, who wanted to take away his Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs chairmanship as punishment by surrendering a subcommittee gavel at the Environment and Public Works Committee. Then he delivered the bad news to the GOP leader. “I told him it looks like everything is going to work out on the Democratic side,” Lieberman said, but he promised to stay in touch with McConnell.
And Lieberman remains a potential McConnell ally when it comes to defense budgeting and legislative efforts to combat terrorism. A few other centrist Democrats — such as Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana, who often allies with the GOP on energy policy — will be time-to-time allies as well.
“It looks like Republicans will hang together. And on key votes, he can go find a Democrat if he wants,” said Korologos, the GOP consultant.
Rebuilding the Brand
As part of his push to rally his party, McConnell has emphasized the need to gear up early for the 2010 election. To that end, he has urged GOP senators up for re-election to either plunge into their fundraising and campaigning or step out of the way. So far, four senators have issued retirement notices: Sam Brownback of Kansas, Christopher S. Bond of Missouri, Mel Martinez of Florida and George V. Voinovich of Ohio.
While it’s not always satisfying to be in the minority in a one-party government, Republicans insist that the departures are not an indication of trouble. “This is not a sign of panic,” Gregg said. “Brownback plans to run for governor. Others have personal considerations, including health issues; 2010 is going to be a good cycle for us.”
While House Republicans pursue an agenda that closely resembles that of the conservative Republican Study Committee — more tax breaks, cuts in discretionary spending and efforts to reduce the reach of government — McConnell said he has not decided on the best path for recovering from the most recent political losses.
A wild card in coming months could be the GOP’s push to defeat Reid in 2010. The Democratic leader kept a pledge not to campaign in Kentucky against McConnell — unlike Frist, who in 2004 stumped in South Dakota and otherwise worked for the defeat of Tom Daschle, the majority leader at the time. McConnell said he would return Reid’s gesture. “He didn’t make an appearance in my political campaign. And I’m not going to be doing that in his,” McConnell said.
But McConnell said it was too soon to decide whether the GOP would pour resources into defeating Reid. Schumer, as chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, helped finance McConnell’s rival, Bruce Lunsford, and dispatched Hillary Rodham Clinton to campaign in Louisville two days before the election.
“I think the targeting will probably be done strictly by the numbers,” McConnell said. “In other words, do you have a chance of winning the race? If you do, we’re likely to be in there, and they’re likely to be in there.”
With 2010 on the horizon, McConnell said he will try to retool the GOP message and his own image as the former president’s closest ally. “The first step on the way back is his departure. That will give us the opportunity to grow and develop new messages,” he said.
While McConnell develops new themes, longtime friends such as fellow Kentuckian John Yarmuth , a Democratic House member who was once a Republican and who worked with McConnell in GOP politics in the Louisville area, said the one-time county executive will use his political capital to move bills.
“He’s been driven to acquire power. He loves the game of politics. He loves procedure. He’s like Tiger Woods, totally focused on his job,” Yarmuth said. “Now he’s at his peak in influence, and he’s looking for accomplishments.”
FOR FURTHER READING: Economic stimulus (HR 598), pp. 186, CQ Weekly, p. 126; public lands package (S 22), p. 128; health care, p. 114; Senate vote on bailout funds (S J Res 5), p. 129; financial bailout (PL 110-343), 2008 CQ Weekly, p. 3270; fiscal 2009 stopgap appropriations (PL 110a?`329), p. 3243; auto industry aid, p. 3370; labor’s agenda, p. 2556; McConnell background, 2008 CQ Weekly, pp. 3088, 2976, 1157
