Obama and Clinton: Strategies For Change

It is going to pain me to say this (a lot!), but I think Ron Fournier is actually right about something.

Friends and associates of the former secretary of State, including some who are preparing her for a likely presidential bid, say Clinton obviously will embrace Obama's progressive economic agenda. Middle-class tax cuts, judicial reform, paid sick leave, and free community-college tuition are the sort of policies that Clinton has previously supported—and would certainly push in the future.

Clinton is not worried about being associated with Obama's policies, associates say. Her challenge is to convince voters that, unlike Obama, she can deliver on her promises...

The Clinton team is discussing how to draw a contrast between Obama's leadership skills and hers—without overtly insulting the president.

The assumption behind this kind of strategy is that Clinton will lose if she simply runs on a "third Obama term." I'll leave that one aside for now because Fournier has tapped into the argument she'll likely make.

Way back during the 2008 primary (when the contest was still between Obama, Clinton and Edwards), Mark Schmitt wrote a masterful piece on their different "theories of change." While the GOP strategy of total obstruction was not in view at the time, he did define the status quo as Republican intractability. And then he examined the candidates' approach to overcoming the stalemate that would produce. Here's how he summed it up:

Hillary Clinton's stump speech is built around the speechwriter's rule of three, applied to theories of change: one candidate believes you achieve change by "demanding" it [Edwards], another thinks you "hope for it" [Obama], while she alone knows that you have to "work for it" [Clinton].

That's accurate as a rendering of the candidates' language: Her message of experience and hard work, Obama's language of hope and common purpose, Edwards' insistence that those with power will never give it up willingly.

Schmitt goes on to suggest that simply relying on "hard work" might not be enough.

Any of the three "theories of change" has to be tested not just as a description of the current political situation, but as a tactic for breaking it. Even the non-naive Edwards believes that the structure of power can be broken -- by a large, engaged social movement. Clinton's theory in a sense takes the status quo for granted more than the others, but it's appropriate in certain situations: I imagine her negotiating the fine points of a health care bill, having mastered every lesson from 1993 and every detail, and getting Senators McConnell and Grassley in the room, and them walking out having agreed to something they barely understand. Superior knowledge and diligence can be a tool of power...And while hard work and mastery of details is also indispensable in a president, work alone does not overcome unyielding political opposition. As Karl Rove would say, it's not a "gamechanger."

That description of how Clinton might have handled health care reform negotiations totally reminds me of the deal President Obama made during the attempt to avert a government shutdown over the FY 2011 budget. Initially conservatives went into celebration mode and liberals were incensed that "Obama caved." Eventually Republicans figured out they'd been taken.

So the budget deal is supposed to deliver $38 billion in spending cuts, including $20 billion in cuts to domestic discretionary spending...Based on news accounts, quite a lot of that $20 billion could be phony: $6.2 billion in unspent money for the Census; $2.5 billion of highway funds that couldn’t be spent; $3.5 billion of unused spending authority in a children’s health-care program. Is it possible that Republicans have gone from $61 billion in domestic discretionary savings all the way down to $8 billion?

As for the Edwards theory that the status quo can be broken "by a large, engaged social movement"... President Obama has been there, done that too.

Schmitt outlines what it is that President Obama added to the mix. Something I've called "conciliatory rhetoric as a ruthless strategy."

...perhaps we are being too literal in believing that "hope" and bipartisanship are things that Obama naively believes are present and possible, when in fact they are a tactic, a method of subverting and breaking the unified conservative power structure. Claiming the mantle of bipartisanship and national unity, and defining the problem to be solved... puts one in a position of strength, and Republicans would defect from that position at their own risk...

What I find fascinating about his language about unity and cross-partisanship is that it is not premised on finding Republicans who agree with him, but on taking in good faith the language and positions of actual conservatism -- people who don't agree with him....

The reason the conservative power structure has been so dangerous, and is especially dangerous in opposition, is that it can operate almost entirely on bad faith. It thrives on protest, complaint, fear...One way to deal with that kind of bad-faith opposition is to draw the person in, treat them as if they were operating in good faith, and draw them into a conversation about how they actually would solve the problem. If they have nothing, it shows. And that's not a tactic of bipartisan Washington idealists -- it's a hard-nosed tactic of community organizers, who are acutely aware of power and conflict.

President Obama has engaged all three theories - hard work, building a social movement, and conciliatory rhetoric - in an attempt to break through Republican obstructionism. For a while, he also tried to build a "common sense caucus." Now he's added his "pen and phone" strategy. In other words, when it comes to change, the President has employed an "all of the above" strategy. None of these things have been unquestionably successful - but they've all had their moments. And in the end, he's managed to accomplish quite a lot.

If Ron Fournier is right and Hillary Clinton wants to show that she can "deliver" in a way that President Obama has not, she's going to have to dig a lot deeper in search of something new. Otherwise it's just empty rhetoric that would come back to haunt her once she's in office.

President Obama: Please proceed, Senator McConnell (updated w/ video)

If you didn't get to watch President Obama's press conference this afternoon, I encourage you to do so.


He made a point of saying that he looks forward to hearing from McConnell and Boehner on what their agenda for Congress will be. And that he's willing to work on those areas where they can agree.

While some will undoubtably view this as pre-capitulation, its actually an amazing power play as well as a reprisal of conciliatory rhetoric as a ruthless strategy.

One way to deal with that kind of bad-faith opposition is to draw the person in, treat them as if they were operating in good faith, and draw them into a conversation about how they actually would solve the problem. If they have nothing, it shows. And that's not a tactic of bipartisan Washington idealists -- it's a hard-nosed tactic of community organizers, who are acutely aware of power and conflict.

Over the last 6 years, Minority Leader McConnell has been able to embrace a "post-policy" approach focused on total obstruction.  Now that Republicans control both chambers of Congress, President Obama is basically saying "puts your cards on the table and let's see what you've got."

After last night's election results, both National Review Online and Rush Limbaugh are counseling McConnell to keep up the obstruction. Jonathan Chait pretty much nailed what McConnell will see as his most effective strategy going forward:

McConnell’s next play is perfectly clear. His interest lies in creating two more years of ugliness and gridlock. He does not want spectacular, high-profile failures that command public attention — no shutdowns, no impeachment. Instead, he wants tedious, enervating stalemate. McConnell needs to drain away any possibility of hope and excitement from government, so that the disengaged Democratic voters remain disengaged in 2016.

So if you were President Obama, how would you chose to counter that? The truth is, no matter what you do, you're not going to get liberal policies enacted with Republicans in control of both chambers. If you simply yell and scream about obstruction, you look like a weak ineffective victim.

Today the President simply called on McConnell to "put up or shut up." That's his best way of undermining McConnell when/if the gridlock continues. In other words, its the best power play he has now - given what the midterm electorate did yesterday.

I also think that long before he decided to run for president, Barack Obama diagnosed what he thought was our biggest problem. No matter how daunting the challenges, what has kept us from tackling them has been our inability to do this:

Our goal should be to stick to our guns on those core values that make this country great, show a spirit of flexibility and sustained attention that can achieve those goals, and try to create the sort of serious, adult, consensus around our problems that can admit Democrats, Republicans and Independents of good will.

Until we can get there, we won't be able to move forward on much of anything else.

So...please proceed, Senator McConnell :-)

Has President Obama been naive?

Liberal pundits are very fond of calling President Obama "naive." Even in his defense of Obama's successes, Paul Krugman says this:

Obama was indeed naive: He faced scorched-earth Republican opposition from Day One, and it took him years to start dealing with that opposition realistically.

Clearly Krugman doesn't understand this President's theory of change - which I have often called conciliatory rhetoric as a ruthless strategy.

One way to deal with that kind of bad-faith opposition is to draw the person in, treat them as if they were operating in good faith, and draw them into a conversation about how they actually would solve the problem. If they have nothing, it shows. And that's not a tactic of bipartisan Washington idealists -- it's a hard-nosed tactic of community organizers, who are acutely aware of power and conflict.

Just as with most people who are steeped in dominance as the only source of power, Krugman doesn't get that the audience for these efforts was never Republican politicians (who President Obama knew were wedded to a strategy of obstruction). It was always the American public - who he counted on to recognize the vacuity of the Republican position.

The question then becomes whether or not President Obama has been naive about the American public. This is a question I've often asked myself. As Ta-Nehisi Coates said years ago, he has shown "a shocking, almost certifiable faith in humanity." One has to wonder whether or not that faith is warranted.

But here's the catch: the American public has always relied on media to frame the story about what is happening in Washington DC. While major media outlets tended to frame Republican obstruction as "both sides do it," conservative and liberal media blamed Obama (the former for not capitulating to Republican demands and the latter for capitulating too much). In the end, almost no one focused on the fact that the Republicans had nothing...so it never showed. If President Obama has been naive, its been about the changing nature of our media and their role in giving cover to Republican strategies.

For me, any leader that stops believing in the power of the people is not a leader I can support. Call it naive if you will...but its also the very basis of our democracy.

We, the people — recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights; that our destinies are bound together; that a freedom which asks only, what's in it for me, a freedom without a commitment to others, a freedom without love or charity or duty or patriotism, is unworthy of our founding ideals, and those who died in their defense.

As citizens, we understand that America is not about what can be done for us. It's about what can be done by us, together through the hard and frustrating but necessary work of self-government. That's what we believe.

- President Barack Obama, 2012 Democratic Convention

The most unrecognized element of President Obama's legacy

When people consider President Obama's legacy, most often they'll talk about health care reform or saving us from another great depression. But rarely do people cite what BooMan talked about.

I have a theory that when the Republican Party finally collapses as a national party it will happen suddenly and without much warning. It could happen as early as this November, although I am not ready to make that prediction just yet...

But the game is nonetheless up. The best movement conservatism can hope for at this point is a flash in the pan confluence of bad news timed at just the right moment to give them the unlikeliest of national victories. This country has totally moved on from their ideology.

Actually, the country moved on from their economic and foreign policy ideology after the disaster of the Bush/Cheney administration. On cultural issues, it was just a matter of time.

But it didn't have to be this way. From the beginning, President Obama reached out to Republicans to work with him on developing bipartisan responses to the challenges we faced as a country. David Frum lamented the fact that Republicans could have taken another path on health care reform.

At the beginning of this process we made a strategic decision: unlike, say, Democrats in 2001 when President Bush proposed his first tax cut, we would make no deal with the administration. No negotiations, no compromise, nothing. We were going for all the marbles. This would be Obama’s Waterloo – just as healthcare was Clinton’s in 1994...

This time, when we went for all the marbles, we ended with none.

Could a deal have been reached? Who knows? But we do know that the gap between this plan and traditional Republican ideas is not very big...Barack Obama badly wanted Republican votes for his plan. Could we have leveraged his desire to align the plan more closely with conservative views?

As I've written so often, in response to this kind of obstruction, President Obama implemented conciliatory rhetoric as a ruthless strategy. In other words, his outstretched hand demonstrated the intransigence on the Republican side of the isle and left them with no choice but to embrace increasingly marginalized positions in order to justify their obstruction.

Just as Frum speculated on a different course for Republicans, imagine with me for a moment what would have transpired if President Obama had taken the advice of many on the left and decided to fight fire with fire. What if, for example, he had responded to their obstruction by insisting on single payer for health care reform or refused to include tax cuts in the stimulus bill? Don't even THINK about suggesting Republicans would have budged on either of those if he had insisted. Neither side would have prevailed and the resulting chaos would have been a Republican dream come true.

In the end, the Republicans chose their own path of obstruction and increasing marginalization. President Obama's response ensured that would mean their demise...not his. It might take years for us to see the full result of those decisions. But when it all unfolds, it will be one of the most important ingredients of this President's legacy.

The pen and phone strategy

Over the last few years I've written about the various strategies President Obama has employed to deal with Republican obstructionism. As has been well documented, on the day the President was inaugurated in 2009, Republican leaders met to develop an opposition strategy. The one they decided on was to simply oppose anything and everything he tried to do - regardless of whether it included things they'd supported in the past.

Initially the President's response was to enlist conciliatory rhetoric as a ruthless strategy. The best description I've found of that came from Mark Schmitt.

One way to deal with that kind of bad-faith opposition is to draw the person in, treat them as if they were operating in good faith, and draw them into a conversation about how they actually would solve the problem. If they have nothing, it shows. And that's not a tactic of bipartisan Washington idealists -- it's a hard-nosed tactic of community organizers, who are acutely aware of power and conflict.

President Obama demonstrated that he was open to Republican ideas and invited them to the table to develop solutions to the challenges we face. This meant that he increasingly absorbed any pragmatic policies the Republicans had previously held and - in order to continue their obstruction - they had to paint themselves into an increasingly extremist corner.

Eventually on some issues a few Republicans became uncomfortable with those ideological extremes and started breaking away. That's when the President began to employ a strategy to develop a common sense caucus. That worked to get immigration reform through the Senate and created the possibility for a bi-partisan budget bill to be passed early this year after the extremists shut down the government.

And now comes the "pen and phone" strategy. Basically what President Obama is saying is that if Republicans won't work with him, he'll find the power to make changes via other means. The "pen" refers to his executive authority and the "phone" is all about marshaling the business community, nonprofits, state and local governments, etc. to do what Congress will not do. Recently I wrote about the innovation of working with the business community to achieve his goals in both foreign and domestic policy. Today Dan Pfeiffer wrote about the pen and phone strategy and highlighted how it is working on the issue of raising the minimum wage.

The best example of the president's philosophy for governing in a divided Washington is his effort to raise the minimum wage. Last year the president called for raising the minimum wage in the State of the Union. This caught a lot of pundits in Washington by surprise because there hadn't been much discussion of the issue in recent years. The president wanted to put it on the table even though he knew the legislative path was difficult, to say the least. What has happened since that speech is pretty remarkable: The president has launched a national movement to raise wages in this country. To begin with, he signed an executive order to raise wages for people working on new federal contracts. He has also has called on states, cities and businesses to do their part in the absence of Congressional action. And the thing is, folks are listening: From Maryland to Hawaii, states are raising their wages, and from the Gap to Punch Pizza, businesses are doing their part too. The actions that have been taken in just five states this year -- Maryland, Connecticut, Minnesota, Vermont and Hawaii -- mean that more than a million workers will see a raise.

But hold onto your hats. Because in the coming months we're going to see President Obama use this strategy on a couple of issues that will spark some fires. First of all, we know that the President has given Speaker Boehner until August to pass comprehensive immigration reform in the House. If he doesn't, Obama will use his pen to sign executive orders that re-prioritize our current deportation policies.

The second use of the pen will happen when the EPA releases their policies governing emissions from existing coal plants. As many have noted, this will be the most important step the President will take in dealing with climate change. And as has been recently reported, rather than leave it up to the EPA to make the announcement, President Obama will do it himself.

What I find fascinating about all this is that the Republican strategy of obstruction is nothing more than a power game. Their intent has always been to strip the President of his power. But perhaps they forgot that he taught classes on the topic of power analysis. President Obama is not about to play the victim and give his away. No matter what they throw at him by way of obstruction, he'll find a way to carry on...doing everything he can to implement the changes we elected him to make.

The ground has shifted and the long game is paying off (updated)

Yesterday the ground shifted in our political debate. Did you notice? It all started with Speaker Boehner's weekly press conference.


He not only said the teapublicans had "lost all credibility," he talked about the need for finding "common ground" - something that was repeated by Representatives Ryan and Cantor on the floor of the House later. If you remember, Boehner is the same guy who literally couldn't say the word "compromise" a few years ago.

So its clear that Republican leadership in the House has changed their tune - big time! I'd like to take a few minutes to think about how/why that happened. And rather than do what so many in the media tend to do, lets look at the long game on how we got here rather than simply focus on the recent past.

All of this started in January 2009 when a group of Republicans met to discuss strategy on the evening of Barack Obama's inauguration. Their plan, as we watched it unfold over these last 5 years, was to attempt to discredit the President and the Democrats by simply opposing anything they wanted to do. And so they became the "party of no," operating in a post policy fashion with a stated goal of making Obama a one-term President.

When the Democrats passed the Recovery Act and Obamacare basically without any support from Republicans, they ramped up the fear and paranoia of their base voters with thinly disguised racist dog whistles and fear mongering about Obamacare. Set in a backdrop of the Great Recession, this spurred the birth of the teapublicans and gave them a majority in the House as a result of the midterms. With the filibuster-proof majority in the Senate also gone, the strategy of total obstruction was possible to implement and, minus the ability to actually govern, the Republicans proceeded to regularly hold the country hostage over budget deals in an attempt to force their draconian policies on the country.

In the midst of all this, progressives and pundits had lots of advice for how President Obama should handle the obstruction. Many of the DC village press corp played the false equivalency game and critiqued the President for being aloof - failing to reach out enough to Republicans. What that suggestion failed to take into account is that obstruction was the Republican strategy. No amount of effort from the President was going to change that.

Progressives got angry and wanted the President to do so as well. There were calls for him to "man up" and give the teapublicans a dose of their own medicine. If Obama had followed this advice, it would have entrenched the battle. The American public, observing such a scene would have been justified in blaming both sides, saying "a pox on both your houses" and disengaging even further.

Anyone who has watched Barack Obama or read what he's written over the years knows that he would not take either form of advice. Here's James Kloppenberg making that point back in 2010.

...Obama is doing exactly what he said he would do. Perhaps the critics should read—or reread—the president’s own books...

Almost everything you need to know about Obama is there on the printed page. In contrast to the charges coming now from right and left, Obama is neither a rigid ideologue nor a spineless wimp. The Obama who wrote Dreams and Audacity stands in a long tradition of American reform, wary of absolutes and universals, and committed to a Christian tradition that prizes humility and social service over dogmatic statements of unbending principle. A child of the philosophical pragmatists William James and John Dewey, Obama distrusts pat formulas and prefers experimentation.

Throughout his career, Obama has refused to demonize his opponents. Instead, he has sought them out and listened to them. He has tried to understand how they think and why they see the world as they do. His mother encouraged this sense of empathy, and it’s a lesson Obama learned well. Since January 2009, Obama has watched his efforts at reconciliation, experimentation, and -consensus--building bounce off the hard surfaces of political self-interest and entrenched partisanship, but there is no reason to think he will abandon that strategy now. He knows that disagreement is a vital part of the American fabric, and that our differences are neither shallow nor trivial.

So, what course did President Obama take to deal with Republican obstruction? As is typical, he played the long game. First of all, he reached out to Republicans...repeatedly...in an attempt to find that common ground. As his efforts were rebuffed, the Republicans had no choice but to become more and more extremist in their response, fueling their angry, fearful, racist base to compensate. This is what I've often called conciliatory rhetoric as a ruthless strategy.

Finally, as some Republicans began to wake up to how much this extremism was hurting them, President Obama switched gears and started working on building a common sense caucus to invite a minority of Republicans to work with him in finding that common ground.

Yesterday, even Speaker Boehner demonstrated that he's had enough with the extremists. The end result is that last night, the House passed a bi-partisan budget bill with 169 Republican votes and 164 Democratic votes - no hostage-taking required. The teapublicans were limited to 62.

We'll have to wait and see how this plays out with Boehner in the future. But for once, I hope the teapublican cheerleader Erick Erickson is right. He's predicting this is all a set-up for Boehner to pass comprehensive immigration reform. And...we're off to the races!

Let me end by saying that none of this means that we're moving into some kind of utopia where Republicans sign on to a liberal agenda. The battles ahead will be fierce. What it does mean is two things: first of all, the strategy of total obstruction has been compromised and secondly, Charles Krauthammer's worst nightmare is in the process of coming true.

He’s [Obama's] been using this, and I must say with great skill–-and ruthless skill and success–to fracture and basically shatter the Republican opposition… His objective from the very beginning was to break the will of the Republicans in the House, and to create an internal civil war. And he’s done that.

Way to go, Mr. President!

UPDATE: To be clear, I think Brian Beutler is right in downplaying the policy implications of this change.

Boehner’s always done what the professional right wants except when the right’s strategic and self-serving objectives would prove substantively and politically calamitous.

That's why I said that the political battles ahead would continue to be fierce. But what's important to note is that those calamitous strategic objectives (ie, total obstruction and hostage-taking) have not just been the purview of the "professional right" (read: teapublicans) over the last 5 years. They have been the adopted strategy of the Republican Party from top to bottom. So what's important to note is the strategy (rather than the policy) break. It means the battles will be played on a different terrain going forward and the Republican civil war that has been engaged will be a big part of that terrain.

Conciliatory rhetoric as ruthless strategy - Syria edition

For years now I've been writing about how President Obama employs conciliatory rhetoric as a ruthless strategy. After his remarks this morning regarding Syria, I think a few more people are catching on to what I mean by that. For example, here's one of my favorite quotes that describes what it looks like.

One way to deal with that kind of bad-faith opposition is to draw the person in, treat them as if they were operating in good faith, and draw them into a conversation about how they actually would solve the problem. If they have nothing, it shows. And that's not a tactic of bipartisan Washington idealists -- it's a hard-nosed tactic of community organizers, who are acutely aware of power and conflict. It's how you deal with people with intractable demands -- put ‘em on a committee.

What the President just did today was put the United States Congress on the "committee" to decide what we'll do about Syria's use of chemical weapons. That is a bold move that seems to have caught most everyone off guard. But it totally eliminates the position of "arm chair quarterbacks" who have taken up residence on the sidelines bitching about what is happening on the field.

Men with an ego to feed can't make this play...they're too busy thinking about how to position themselves for the "win." But, as we know, President Obama plays the long game. He knows that one way to shut up your critics is to give them some responsibility and then hold them accountable. Over the course of his Presidency, he's been asking Congress to step up to the plate and make some tough calls. After all the screaming about him needing to get Congressional approval for these actions, they're going to look like damn fools if they refuse to do so on this one. The outcome of that battle far outweighs the importance of what we do in Syria. And on this one, President Obama wins either way. Either we get a Congress that steps up to the plate, or he has demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are incapable of doing so.

Nice play, Mr. President!

The long game on post-partisanship

Let's pretend like you were elected President of the United States of America based mostly on rhetoric like this:


Now let's assume that immediately after your inauguration, you learn that the Republicans have decided to use this against you and are going to oppose anything you try to do - not simply when they disagree, but even when they might otherwise support your proposals on principle.

How would you proceed to try to "change the culture of Washington?"

You could - as many partisans suggested - dig in your heels and further entrench the partisan warfare. I suspect that's exactly what the Republicans were hoping for. Their job of painting your presidency as that of a soshulist Kenyan Muslim would have actually been much easier under those circumstances.

But no. You decided to stick with it and no matter what the issue being confronted - you reached out to try to compromise and find common ground with your opponents. That left them with a dilemma...to continue their "total obstruction all the time" they had to paint themselves into an ever more extremist corner and fan the flames of their ever-shrinking lunatic base. To actually appear to be working with the soshulist Kenyan Muslim would be anathema.

Based on this strategy you handily won re-election and gained seats in both the House and Senate. The Republicans tried a "rebranding" that failed completely and then started to fabricate scandals that went nowhere. Nothing seemed to be working for them and the harder they spun, the farther they fell in the eyes of the American people.

A few members of the opposition saw where all of this was headed and started to get worried. And so you launched a "charm offensive" (that's what the media called it anyways) to try to develop a common sense caucus. Pretty soon your former opponent for the presidency was calling out the lunatics on the Senate floor and agreeing with you on some major policy initiatives. And the 1996 GOP presidential candidate said that the Republican Party "ought to put a sign on the national committee doors that says 'closed for repairs' until New Year’s Day next year — and spend that time going over ideas and positive agendas." Ouch!

No one knows exactly how all this will end. But at this point you know that the Republicans still have only two choices: (1) work with you on finding common sense solutions, or (2) die as a party. That's the reality you have created. As Mark Schmitt explained several years ago:

...that's not a tactic of bipartisan Washington idealists -- it's a hard-nosed tactic of community organizers, who are acutely aware of power and conflict.

And so ultimately, this very long game of changing the culture of Washington is still underway. You know that you've set the table for a "win" on this one either way - even if some of the folks still caught up in the past can't see it - because you keep your eye on the prize and don't listen to the noise.

"Permission structure" and The Art of War

President Obama at his news conference this week:

...the point is that there are common-sense solutions to our problems right now. I cannot force Republicans to embrace those common-sense solutions. I can urge them to. I can put pressure on them. I can rally the American people around those common-sense solutions. But ultimately, they, themselves, are going to have to say, we want to do the right thing.

And I think there are members certainly in the Senate right now, and I suspect members in the House as well, who understand that deep down. But they're worried about their politics. It’s tough. Their base thinks that compromise with me is somehow a betrayal. They’re worried about primaries. And I understand all that. And we're going to try to do everything we can to create a permission structure for them to be able to do what’s going to be best for the country. But it’s going to take some time.

That reference to a "permission structure" set off a flurry of commentary. Perhaps the seminal article that captured what President Obama is doing was written by Brian Beutler. If you haven't read it already, please be sure to do so. John Sides agrees with Beutler and also provides lots of links to what folks are saying about all of this.

But when I heard the President talk about creating a permission structure, what came to my mind is the  idea of letting your opponents save face in defeat. It is an ancient strategy from Sun Tzu's The Art of War.

If you surround the enemy, leave an outlet; do not press an enemy that is cornered.

A google search sent me to this interesting article about the fact that President Obama quoted Sun Tzu to a group of Jewish leaders in talking to them about his approach to Iran. The author explains:

We need to let people save face, especially when their only alternative left when surrounded (and sanctioned) is to battle to the bitter end. The key here is Obama is taking the more difficult yet desirable route of winning without fighting. Anybody can fight -- only the wise truly win.

What is interesting to me is that if President Obama is attempting to create a permission structure (or to allow the Republicans to "save face"), then its also true that the opposition is surrounded. As I've been suggesting for a while now, the forces that are aligned against him look very much like a beast in its death throes.

We might take just a moment to recognize how we got there. As Susan Milligan said in her article that I quoted yesterday:

Latinos, other minorities and women are becoming more powerful, both in numbers and in political representation. Gay marriage is becoming more acceptable. That may be world-shaking for social conservatives. But making Obama fail won't halt the trend.

In other words, the coalition of the ascendant has cornered the dying beast.

But another factor that has gotten us to this place is something I've been talking about for awhile now, President Obama's conciliatory rhetoric as ruthless strategy. Mark Schmitt explains:

The reason the conservative power structure has been so dangerous, and is especially dangerous in opposition, is that it can operate almost entirely on bad faith...One way to deal with that kind of bad-faith opposition is to draw the person in, treat them as if they were operating in good faith, and draw them into a conversation about how they actually would solve the problem. If they have nothing, it shows. And that's not a tactic of bipartisan Washington idealists -- it's a hard-nosed tactic of community organizers, who are acutely aware of power and conflict.

In addition to demonstrating that they have nothing, by offering to meet Republicans half-way (or more sometimes) President Obama has given them two alternatives: either work with him or back themselves into an ever more extremist corner. Of course their strategy of obstruction has meant the latter.

And so we have a cornered opposition that has descended into chaos. Sun Tzu would suggest that "winning" means giving them an outlet to save face in defeat.