Moving past labels to solve problems
After President Barack Obama won election in 2008, the Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky quietly laid out a strategy for his caucus. He would use the rules of the Senate to frustrate the new president and the Democrats. If the Democratic majority and the president did manage to push through any major, controversial legislation — such as overhauling the system of paying for health care — the Democrats would fully own it.
Politically, the strategy worked, with Republicans in 2010 capturing the House of Representatives and gaining six seats in the Senate, increasing their ability to make life miserable for Obama. After that election, McConnell made no secret of what should be his party’s top priority. It wouldn’t be lowering the deficit, fixing Social Security, or rebuilding the economy.
“Our top political priority over the next two years should be to deny President Obama a second term,” McConnell told the Heritage Foundation.
Republicans were not successful as Obama won a second term in 2012, but Republicans did take control of the Senate and maintain their majority in the House. None of the major challenges facing the nation have been addressed since.
What if this becomes the new template? If a Republican wins the White House next year, will the overriding priority of the Democrats be denying the new president any accomplishments to run on in 2020? If Democrats retain the White House, will Republicans continue their block-the-president tactic?
The group “No Labels” is pursuing a strategy to try to avoid that. When I attended the Association of Opinion Journalists Symposium at The Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla., last weekend, I heard from two leaders of the organization that is calling for a bipartisan effort to pursue a “National Strategic Agenda.”
Republican Tom Davis, a former U.S. congressman for Virginia and a business lobbyist, and Mark Penn, the president of public relations firm The Stagwell Group and the guy who devised Hillary Clinton’s campaign strategy in conservative upstate New York during her successful Senate election, have little in common on political ideology. In addressing the symposium, however, both made the point that the nation must tackle major problems that go beyond ideology.
The group’s National Strategic Agenda includes four goals:
• Create 25 million new jobs in the next decade.
• Assure the viability of Social Security and Medicare for the next 75 years.
• Balance the federal budget by 2030.
• Make the United States energy secure — no longer dependent on foreign sources — by 2024.
Without shared goals, said Davis, there is no chance for cooperation and compromise. Seventy House and Senate members have signed on to the National Strategic Agenda concept, the only one from Connecticut being Rep. Jim Himes, D-4th District.
What could compromise look like? Perhaps on jobs it could mean both spending the money necessary to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure, as pushed by the Obama administration, combined with business-friendly tax policies favored by Republicans. Making the nation energy secure could combine aggressive support for renewable energy technology, while tapping more domestic fossil fuel sources and expanding nuclear energy.
No Labels sees the early days of the next presidency as an opportunity to break the gridlock and move forward on one or more of the strategic goals, said Penn. On Jan. 11, four weeks before the New Hampshire primary, the group will announce the list of presidential candidates who received its “No Labels Problem Solver Seal of Approval,” having pledged to discuss shared goals with leaders of both parties within his or her first month in office.
The group is also signing up thousands of New Hampshire voters who promise to only vote for these designated problem solvers.
Then in April, with the nominating conventions approaching, No Labels will release more than 50 policy proposals, ideas backed by policy experts across the political spectrum and that score well with the public in polling.
The intent is to pressure the candidates to stop attacking and start talking about fixing.
One of the co-chairs of No Labels is familiar to Connecticut residents — former U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, who ran as the Democratic vice presidential candidate in 2000, won re-election to the Senate as an independent six years later, and then backed the Republican presidential candidate in 2008.
No Labels doesn’t try to tackle some of the biggest impediments to compromise — gerrymandering that creates one-sided politically safe congressional districts; candidate dependency on big money from highly partisan groups; and pressures from biased news outlets and talk radio.
But by trying to counter these forces with political pressure aimed at solving problems, the movement holds out some hope that politicians of one party will focus on something other than working to assure the president of the other party fails.
Paul Choiniere is the editorial page editor.
Twitter: @Paul_Choiniere
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