The Limits Of Presidential Power

by Stuart Shapiro

There is no shortage of advice for President Obama as he deals with sequestration and a potential government shutdown.  Two schools of thought argue that he should make offers to the GOP hostage takers and another that he should bend them to his will.  Neither is really practical.  Ezra Klein explained the problem with offers:

The bottom line on American budgetary politics right now is that Republicans won’t agree to further tax increases and so there’s no deal to be had. . .But it’s unpopular for Republicans to simply say they won’t agree to any compromise and there’s no deal to be had — particularly since taxing the wealthy is more popular than cutting entitlements, and so their position is less popular than Obama’s. That’s made it important for Republicans to prove that it’s the president who is somehow holding up a deal.

This had led to a lot of Republicans fanning out to explain what the president should be offering if he was serious about making a deal. Then, when it turns out that the president did offer those items, there’s more furious hand-waving about how no, actually, this is what the president needs to offer to make a deal.

And Kevin Drum explained why he can’t simply get them to do what he wants.

A “firm presidential statement”? Seriously? Where do people come up with this stuff? Obama has made dozens of firm presidential statements, and it’s had precisely zero effect. Republicans couldn’t care less about his firm presidential statements.

There’s a lot of this going around these days, the idea that presidents can magically work their will on a hostile Congress if they’re simply strong enough. This has never really been true, and it’s certainly not true of the 113th Congress, the most hostile in living memory. It’s weird that so many people seem to think otherwise.

So right now all he can do is go around the country and make sure everyone knows who is to blame for the sorry state in Washington.  Which is, oddly enough, exactly what he’s been doing.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.