The Countryman: Opportunity scorned

17 mins read
Bob Neal
Bob Neal

“Yasser Arafat never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” So said Abba Eban, Israel’s foreign minister about 10 years ago. Arafat, the Palestinian leader, had just scotched a deal that had the potential to lead to statehood for the Palestinians.

People in public life face opportunities every day, and Arafat was certainly not the only pea in the pod of those who missed a great opportunity, or blew it, if you will.

Consider two other peas in that pod, Barack Obama and Paul LePage. Yep, The President and the Governor. Peas. In the same pod.

They are more similar than you think. Both were from minorities, Obama a mixed-race African-American, LePage a Franco-American, albeit in a heavily Franco city, Lewiston. Both had tough upbringings, Obama deserted at a young age by his father, LePage booted out of his father’s house before puberty. Neither served in the military. Both graduated college when their backgrounds might have suggested they would not. Neither is a career politician.

Yes, they are in important ways similar. But in their relations with legislative bodies, they are much closer. They are two peas in a pod. The pod of opportunities scorned.

Obama came into office in 2009 on a wave of hope that two of America’s warring tribes, the congressional Democrats and Republicans, could come together in mutual respect and cooperation, if not exactly a love-in, to benefit the country and all of its other tribes.

Didn’t happen.

There’s lots of blame to spread around, but Obama stumbled, to put it kindly, when he took his first steps toward hope and change.

Obama called a meeting of congressional leaders on Jan. 23, 2009, at the White House to work on getting out of the economic disaster he had inherited. In answer to a question from Eric Cantor, the Republicans’ minority whip in the House of Representatives, Obama said, “Elections have consequences, Eric, and at the end of the day, I won.”

He was factually correct. But he was politically as clumsy as his speeches had been graceful when he had said America was not a black America and a white America, not a Christian, a Jewish and a Muslim America but the United States of America.

Obama then went on to scotch the deal. He had presented his proposals for righting an economy that had been trashed by his predecessor. He asked the Republicans in the room to bring forth their ideas, as well, and basically said he saw no deal-breakers when they handed him their wish list.

Four days later, Democrats steamrolled the Obama plan, without a single Republican idea folded in, through Congress. And without a single Republican vote. Obama’s plan had been written largely by Nancy Pelosi, then the speaker of the House.

Pelosi: “Yes, we wrote the bill. Yes, we won the election.”

Not long after that, the Republican leadership adopted a strategy that became a disaster for the country. They established but one goal for their party: preventing Obama’s reelection in 2012. How did that work out for them? And for the country?

It has become evident over the past seven years that Obama has no taste for the political process. Pity, because he is so gifted.

(For that matter, the only presidents since Lyndon Johnson who enjoyed playing in the dirt on Capitol Hill were Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.)

Marc Thiessen has written in the Washington Post: “In January 2009, Republicans were running scared . . . and afraid to so much as criticize the (popular) new Democratic president. The president could have easily co-opted the GOP by making it a partner in crafting the stimulus. He could have told Republicans: Take half of the money and use it for tax relief, spending, or both. Had Obama really wanted to be the first ‘post-partisan’ president, he could have incorporated (Republican ideas) into his final stimulus legislation.”

But Obama wasn’t really interested in working with the other guys. Or, to give him the benefit of the doubt, maybe he just didn’t know how. That’s not likely, though, for a guy who had taught constitutional law and most days is the brightest person in the room.

One last example. Many presidents schmooze, both with other politicians and with the public. Obama doesn’t. You could count on the fingers of one hand the number of members of Congress with whom he has golfed or otherwise socialized. And you can count on the fingers of one finger the number of times he goes on the road to present an initiative.

George W. Bush (not my favorite president) had a screwball idea to privatize Social Security (Disclosure: Most of my income is from Social Security, to which I began paying taxes in 1951.). He tried to sell the idea in several dozen speeches on the road. The idea didn’t take, but Bush at least tried. Obama never campaigned with the public for more than a speech or two for any of his proposals. His scenario was more like this: Let’s submit a plan to make community college available to everyone. Then, we’ll go to a community college, make a speech, fly back to Washington and move on to something else.

That does not constitute a campaign.

The instructive contrast is Ronald Reagan and Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, speaker of the House of Representatives and the Democrats’ leader.

Gloria Borger wrote in US News & World Report that Reagan and O’Neill “revered the presidency, and both believed they were elected to make things happen. For them, partisanship–while completely appropriate in politics–always had a natural endpoint.” That endpoint for partisanship was at 6 o’clock every day. You can be sure that after 6 p.m. they sat down to gab and to craft policy.

Tip O’Neill’s son wrote in 2004 in the New York Times: “President Reagan knew my father treasured Boston College, so he was the centerpiece of a dinner at the Washington Hilton Hotel that raised $1 million to build the O’Neill Library there. When Reagan was shot at that same hotel, my father went to his hospital room to pray by his bed.”

Obama is not the only other pea in that pod with Yasser Arafat. Enter Gov. Paul LePage.

This is not about his racist outbursts (“Guys with names like D-Money, Smoothie and Shifty”) or his outbursts against the press (“The press takes seven seconds of what I say and they make a shit show out of it”) or his obvious lies (windmills in Aroostook County contain electric motors that keep the blades rotating to deceive us into believing they are working wind turbines, etc.).

This is about opportunities he has scorned, opportunities he has kicked in the butt rather than embrace. “It’s clearly not about him versus Democrats,” said Phil Bartlett, chairman of the Maine Democratic Party. “It’s Governor LePage waging war against the Legislature.”

LePage came into office with a pretty clear agenda, and he had lots of Republicans, including many nowhere near so conservative as he, pulling for him and waiting to work with him. Basically, he wanted to reduce entitlement spending, taxes and the number of state employees (all worthy goals) in favor of infrastructure and in favor of reforming areas badly in need of their own kicks in the butt, such as education (at all levels) and the Department of Health and Human Services (known to wags as the department of hell and human sacrifice). He wanted to go after the attitude in Augusta that you can always solve a problem by throwing other people’s money at it. And, like Obama, for his first two years, his party had control of both legislative houses.

What did he do with it? Probably worse than nothing, because his personal shortcomings may have set back the conservative agenda for several elections.

Toward both Democrats and Republicans in the Legislature, LePage screwed up his bully courage (pun intended) and alienated many almost before he set his agenda into motion.

LePage’s animosity toward the Legislature goes back at least to his desire to abolish Maine’s income tax. In a state where property taxes are soaring, he should not be surprised to find little legislative support for ending the income tax, which would push the support of schools and municipalities even more heavily onto the property tax.

And, he got part of a loaf on income tax. The Legislature cut the highest rate and raised the minimum income one must earn before having to pay the highest rate, taking some middle-class Mainers out of the top bracket. But, a few slices wasn’t enough of the loaf for LePage.

Allan Greenblatt, writing in Governing magazine: “When that (abolishing the income tax) didn’t happen. . . he decided to veto practically every bill that reached his desk.”

But he didn’t even get that right. The Supreme Judicial Court ruled that he waited too long to veto 65 bills, as legislative leaders of both parties had warned, and the bills became law without his signature.

Earlier this year, LePage walked away from delivering the customary (not legally required, though mentioned in the state constitution) State of the State address. “Why am I going to go up and face people and talk to them in an audience that just a week or two before, they’re trying to impeach me?” LePage asked.

Because it was an opportunity to walk into the den and charm the socks off the surly Democrats and some disenchanted Republicans. That’s why. He could have shown Speaker Mark Eves, with whom he has been spit-fighting for a couple of years, that he was the bigger man. But LePage blew the opportunity and, like Arafat, came away looking the spoiler.

House Democratic leader Rep. Jeff McCabe: “Wow, it’s surprising that the governor would pass by the opportunity to talk to Maine people directly about his action plan. We’re facing a deadly drug epidemic, a lack of good-paying jobs (particularly in rural Maine) and an economy that still needs a jump start after the recession. Why shy away from the limelight now?”

LePage said the Legislature had wasted his time, so he would waste its time by forcing its 186 members to deal with his vetoes of 170 bills passed by the Legislature.

Greenblatt in Governing magazine again: “What’s really striking is that the Legislature managed to override him about 70 percent of the time, more than 120 overrides in all, including the state budget. This, despite the fact that his party controls the state Senate (where he needed only 12 votes to uphold a veto).”

On April 25, LePage conducted a meeting of an education commission that the Legislature had created at his request. When it didn’t go just as he wanted, he “withdrew.” And left behind questions about why he held the meeting in secret, apparently in violation of the state’s Freedom of Access Act. And questions as to why he asked for the education commission if he were just going to run away. Yet again.

Sometimes, it seems that Senate Republicans and House Democrats are working well together, crafting legislation and compromising to get legislation through. Witness the welfare reforms adopted this past winter after Democrats came around to seeing the need. In each house, the majority most of the time finds enough members in opposition (House Republicans, Senate Democrats) to piece together and pass legislation.

Greenblatt says that could leave LePage even farther on the outside looking in if voters blame him for ongoing disputes and put Democrats firmly in charge of the Legislature this year.

LePage has painted himself into a corner. “The five years of his administration have been a series of missed opportunities,” said Sen. Roger Katz (R-Kennebec). “We could have moved his agenda forward in a much more robust way if there had been more civility and more give and take between his office and the Legislature.”

So far as legislative achievements go, Obama and LePage are two peas in a pod. The pod of opportunity scorned. I wonder how they like being in there with Yasser Arafat.

Bob Neal retired after 35 years of farming in New Sharon and 20 years of newspapering. He believes that you can’t win if you don’t play and that most of the time you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

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18 Comments

  1. I can’t stand LePage. He is arrogant, narrow minded and just plain mean-spirited. I’ll be glad when we get rid of him.

  2. “At the meeting, Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, the No. 2 House Republican, passed out copies of the Republicans’ five-point stimulus plan. At first blush, Obama said, “Nothing on here looks outlandish or crazy to me,” Obama said, according to a source familiar with the conversation. He seemed particularly receptive to some Republican ideas about increasing benefits to small businesses. (Was LePage ever “receptive” to others’ ideas?)
    But when the conversation got down to other specifics, it was clear that some of the Republican ideas were clearly non-starters with the new president – including calls to put off tax hikes during the recession. “He rejected that out of hand and said we couldn’t have any hard and fast rules like that,” Cantor said.

    Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2009/01/obama-to-gop-i-won-017862#ixzz47ns0r8ex

  3. Until this piece, I thought Mr. Neal writings were interesting, well written and offered a relatively unbiased point of view on various topics. I agreed with his comments on the obesity of healthcare workers, even though it was probably not “PC”.

    But, this article is something else. Mr. Neal tries to sanitize his comments by disclosing that he isn’t fond of any of the persons named. Yet what he is doing here, is just what conservative talk radio hosts and trash journalists are so adept at; reaching out for an abstract way to link three completely disparate individuals and in so doing, spread, by implication, the negatives of each to all.
    Paul LePage has prided himself with spouting vile and foul negative comments. He recently bragged that what he was best at in college was spring break.
    Yasser Arafat was a terrorist leader.
    Barack Obama graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard Law School. However one might view his policies and actions, he has worked for the good of the people in an honorable and dignified manner. It hasn’t all been a success, some of what he has tried to do may be seen historically as wrong, but his goal and purpose has been honorable as has his demeanor.

  4. Now, let’s sit back and watch everyone jump on the bash Lepage wagon and give excuses for Obama’s behavior.

  5. Obama…honorable?
    Ya right.ok…
    Thats absurd.

    Looks like the conservative talk show host aren’t the only spinsters.
    Look in the mirror.

  6. Privatization is not such a screwball idea to those of us who are currently funding your social security checks but will likely never get a dime back.

  7. Will M.

    That’s an argument that has been made and refuted by reality, for over 60 years. I know, I recall having the same sentiments at a younger age, yet now find myself fast approaching the age at which I will be collecting and the system is still functioning.

    I have also witnessed several stock market reversals. I know many people who watched in horror as their retirement funds evaporated.

  8. Barack Obama graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard Law School.

    Very true. We have to take his word for it since we can’t see his transcripts. Until we can, I’ll continue to believe they would reveal that Obama was a mediocre student at best, milking his status as a “foreign” student – and that the MCL was just a participation award.

  9. Oh for gosh sakes Frostproof,

    Do you actually believe that, after all these years, if Obama DIDN’T graduate from Harvard, where incidentally he was also the editor of the Harvard law review, which is a public publication, that it would have been known and proved and the man completely discredited by now?

    Come on Bulldog editors, are you going to help perpetuate lies and falsehoods?

  10. Snowman writes,
    “Come on Bulldog editors, are you going to help perpetuate lies and falsehoods?”

    So apparently snow thinks HE is the only one who can express their opinion.
    We get it that YOU know you are always right and that we should all just listen.(haha),
    Thats now how it works.
    Get over it.

  11. R U Kidding, I thought I was the only one that felt that way but snow man has made some good points (even a broken clock is right twice a day). Although, the higher you are on the political food chain the more people there are too help whitewash the truth.

  12. R U Kidding:

    This is an example of an opinion: Roses smell better than chrysanthemums.
    This is an example of a truth: The earth is round.
    This is an example of a lie: Barack Obama did not graduate from Harvard Law school.

    What has been happening over the past 8 years and beyond, is that so called conservative personalities who can garner an audience of listeners keep spouting lies, over and over, until they convince the gullible that the lies are true.
    Tell enough people enough times that the earth is flat, and they begin to not only believe it, but label those who say it’s round as conspiring to cover up the fact that it’s flat.

  13. Snow man… are these opinions, lies or the truth…. Black are better off today then they were 8 years ago….. Fewer people are on Food Stamps today then 8 years ago…. The worlds loves the USA more today than 8 years ago.. The Countrys deficet is lower today than 8 years ago… We are not at war anywhere in the world today.. ‘nuf for now….

  14. Thank you for the fresh look Bob. I do think however that you are down playing the role money from the reactionary Right has had since Citizens United.

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