Did Obama play the GOP on the stimulus bill?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Calling the president "a master rope-a-doper," Noam Scheiber has an interesting take on what may have been Obama's strategy in dealing with the Republicans over the stimulus bill:

For weeks now, Obama has soared above the fray -- inviting dour-looking Republicans to the White House for cookies and patiently hearing them out on Capitol Hill. Once again, the Republicans have exploited this stance, notching a series of tactical victories, like their unanimous no-vote in the House last week. And, once again, liberals have panicked...

But [these] complaints... miss what's been accomplished these last few weeks: Obama has completely defined the stimulus narrative on his own terms. To the average voter, Obama has been earnest and conciliatory while the Republicans have been cynical, self-serving, and puerile. Which, if the past is any guide, is precisely the moment he'll start playing hardball.

And so he has, hitting the airwaves, going on the offensive, taking the fight directly to the Republicans, as he did yesterday both at the town-hall meeting in Indiana and in his press conference, all while maintaining his credibility as a post-partisan: If you're against the stimulus, you're against jobs, and hence against the American people: " I can't afford to see Congress play the usual political games," he said.

I want to believe this, I really do, but I'm not entirely sold.

First, it's not like all liberals have been panicking. Many of us have been worried by what we saw as an excessive and ultimately futile attempt to secure bipartisan support at a time when what is needed is decisive action -- not to mention at a time when the Republicans were entrenching themselves behind extremist ideology and partisanship, and showing no interest in working constructively with Obama and the Democrats.

Second, this all suggests some sort of omniscience on Obama's part. He and his people are master strategists, to be sure, and Scheiber is right to connect what may be the current strategy with a similar strategy employed back during the campaign (when Obama waited and waited to respond to McCain's smears, taking the high road and ultimately prevailing), but it's also possible that they underestimated Republican loyalty and unity. As well, it's not like the stimulus package is widely popular with the American people. I have long thought, like many others, that Obama's post-partisan rhetoric is just that, rhetoric, and that, deep down, he knows how the game is played, but he may have expected this process to have gone much smoother than it actually has, which is to say, he may have overestimated his own ability to bring the competing partisan sides to the table and force something through with significantly more Republican support than a few centrists in the Senate.

What does seem to be true, though, is that Obama has not just fought back but retaken control of the narrative, a narrative that the Republicans were dominating until just recently. But was that really part of some master plan? If so, Obama was taking an enormous risk. But I doubt it was as clearly preconceived as that.

Give Obama some credit. He has shown remarkable patience and fortitude during the stimulus debate, just as he did during the campaign. But what if he had fought back earlier? What if, intentionally or not, he hadn't ceded the narrative to the Republicans, if only temporarily? Is it not possible that there would be a better stimulus bill on the table than the two (House and Senate) that will soon be reconciled? Even if some of the cuts are undone, the bill still won't be what it should be, what it needs to be, and Obama surely could have fought for a better bill instead of trying to secure Republican input. As it stands now, after all, there is hardly any Republican support for it, just those few centrists. Sure, Obama may have made the Republicans look bad in the process, but wasn't this about stimulating the economy and helping the American people, not scoring political points?