Is Boehner using Tea Party to employ Nixon’s ‘Madman’ strategy?
In the end, Boehner agreed to a package of $38.5 billion in cuts, a significant victory for a man who said his goal was to extract as much as possible from the federal budget. He also won limited victories on a handful of policy riders attached to the bill. But Boehner was forced to abandon some major demands, including Planned Parenthood, restrictions on the Environmental Protection Agency and efforts to restrict Obama’s health reform bill.
The budget deal was a limited victory for Obama, who showed that he could insert himself in the process and craft a bipartisan deal that maintained the EPA’s clean air act authority.
But strategically, Boehner would seem to have done better. He controls only “one-half of one-third of the government,” as he often says, but he “managed to make the most of that limited leverage “” both in forcing President Obama and the Democrats to come more than halfway on his party’s demand for spending cuts, and in making the absolutists in his own ranks accept the principle that compromise is part of governing,” as the Washington Post put it in today’s front-page story.
He may be making use of Nixon’s “Madman theory” of negotiations, exploiting the “craziness” of the Tea Party, which does give him some dealmaking leverage, at the expense of messaging clarity and public perception.
Before discussing that, let me make two points. First, the short-term deal cuts clean-tech programs (and one can assume that the full-year package will have cuts in both clean energy and in environmental programs — but see below on how Dems avoided deeper cuts here). Here’s some of what I was sent on a short-term deal’s $2 billion in cuts:
A Summary of the $2 billion in reductions contained in the 1-week CR is below:
Section 295 cuts funding for the Transportation Planning, Research, and Development account from $16.1 million in FY 2010 to $9.8 million….
Section 298 reduces FY 2011 funding for FRA High Speed and Intercity Passenger Rail to $1 billion, a reduction of $1.5 billion from FY10.
Section 299 reduces the Federal Railroad Administration’s Research and Development account to $35.1 million, a reduction of $2.513 million below FY 2010….
Section 301 reduces funding for the Transit Research and University Research Centers Program to $64.2 million.
So the brunt of the short-term cuts come from R&D and medium-term efforts to reduce oil consumption – at a time that oil prices are soaring again!
I will report on the details of the $38 billion in cuts when I have them. The Politico reports on “Reasons Democrats Got a Good Deal”:
More than half–or $17 billion–of the final round of spending cuts came from changes in mandatory programs, or CHIMPs. The emphasis on this part of the budget staved off severe cuts to key domestic programs like education, clean energy, and medical research….
The final agreement eliminates nearly $3 billion in unnecessary Pentagon spending that was contained in H.R. 1. These reductions are supported by Secretary Gates.
Second, as Politico notes, the short-term deal provides “no guarantee that some new snag will scuttle the current deal next week – or that the compromise crafted this week makes it more likely future deals can be cut.” Even the $38 billion deal could require Democratic votes since it may well not get enough Republican votes to pass by itself.
The WashPost’s Steven Stomberg has a piece this morning, “Shutdown threat isn’t gone,” that explains:
But we aren’t necessarily through with shutdown scares this year, and Friday’s deal may make them more likely. It absolves the brinksmanship that led to it, rewarding Republican leaders for saying no until the last minute with more spending cuts than Democrats said they were willing to approve. It has fueled a nasty back-and-forth between the parties that encourages mistrust. These factors, combined with the fact that the speaker will have to convince his Tea Party wing to swallow the deal by promising bigger fights in the future, could make this sort of behavior more probable later, when the stakes are higher.
The Tea Party may be the perfect realization of Nixon’s “Madman theory“:
The Madman theory was a primary characteristic of the foreign policy conducted by U.S. President Richard Nixon. His administration, the executive branch of the federal government of the United States from 1969 to 1974, attempted to make the leaders of other countries think Nixon was mad, and that his behavior was irrational and volatile. Fearing an unpredictable American response, leaders of hostile Communist Bloc nations would avoid provoking the United States.
Nixon explained the strategy to his White House Chief of Staff, H. R. Haldeman:
I call it the Madman Theory, Bob. I want the North Vietnamese to believe I’ve reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war. We’ll just slip the word to them that, “for God’s sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about Communism. We can’t restrain him when he’s angry””and he has his hand on the nuclear button” and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace.
Whether Nixon was crazy or crazy like a fox I’ll leave to historians.
But the Tea Party has certainly left science and rationality far behind, so they allow Boehner to play thw madman card. This is likely to be effective in negotiations going forward – but at considerable expense to messaging clarity and the public perception of the Republican party. Even in this negotiation, the fact that conservatives looked like they were prepared to shut down the federal government over funding to Planned Parenthood certainly make them look bad to independents.
The Tea Party are extremists – and thankfully progressives have finally figured out that labeling them as extremists is a key winning message. Recent polling suggests the public perception of the Tea Party is dropping. Everything they do that makes it easier for people to see that they are in fact extremists will hurt them and the GOP in 2012 and beyond – though that still doesn’t mean their extremism isn’t bad news for humanity [see Why the victory of the Tea Party extremists (backed by Big Oil) over the slightly less extreme GOP establishment (also backed by Big Oil) is good for progressives, but bad for climate and clean energy].
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I get it that Obama did not have much choice but he framed it as if we were wining the future. He is trying desperately to ride the wave of what he thinks the center is. Well, that center will move even further to the right during the FY 2012 budget battle. We are losing the future. Communities, regions, and whole countries will suffer in the years ahead because climate change will make survival and civilization difficult if not impossible. We saw what he did with a Dem majority. He failed to focus on the existential issue of our time, global warming. Does he think he can make that all better with 4 more years? If the next 4 are like the current 4, why bother.
The man lacks passion and conviction with respect to the most important substantive issues of our time. He enjoys the process which is great for a mediator. Which is great, if he were just a mediator for, say, a union/business negotiation somewhere. But we need more than a mediator; we need a leader. Having a great leader may not be sufficient given the forces against us, but it is absolutely necessary.
The pragmatist in me says I will probably vote for him give the alternative. But the emotional side of me could take over as I become increasingly disgusted. As we head to hell in a hand basket, he seems to be enjoying the ride. In the worst of times, he strolls up to the podium to announce the apocalypse. Sort of like Bush’s strut.
So I had this theory pop into my head this morning. Suppose the Republicans were never serious about all those restrictions on EPA. They put in provisions they knew were liberal hot buttons and that therefore could not pass, so that they could back down on them in return for more spending cuts. They were just bargaining chips.
Now, obviously, as you note above, they’re also intent on cutting spending on stuff liberals like. But I wonder how much of the crazy stuff was put in there just so they could give it away. Damn politicians!
OK, right up front, I need to confess that I went to bed last night fully expecting to wake up to the news that President Obama had caved on the demand by the Republican Flat Earth Society to deny/defund the EPA CAA actions on greenhouse gas emmissions. So that I was pleasantly albiet momentarily surprised by the news reports that Obama held firm.
(In preparation,I even watched the old West Wing episode where Barlett finally concludes that an issue is “More important than relection and so I must speak out now”.)Finding solace in fiction, I guess.
But the truth appears to be that at best this is a temporary holding point by the extreme far right crowd in their drive to eliminate Government action on behalf of society as Vs the supremacy of the individual to act in their own selfish interests. A very temporary truce, I suspect.
There will be numerous other “Crisis Points” coming which the Far Right will leverage time-pressure compromise to continue the relentless pursuit of the progress of their agenda.
The Far Right appears to be very good at thinking 3 steps ahead in this game which started with the amazing repackaging of the Financial Meltdown as caused by Obama policies followed by their success in getting Bush tax cuts renewed. This was a great “sleight of hand” that I still do not understand how the American public bought into it.
I suspect that the Far Right will continue to make significant progress in the achievement of their agenda unless we quit reacting and start proacting which menas that we get better at messaging the truth.
Human caused Global Warming is an absolute truth that will eventually be realized. The question is at “what cost must be paid” before we as an American society accept and respond to this truth.
In the future, I won’t be able to look at my kids & grandkids in the “eye”, if I don’t do all that I gain to counter the force of this “New Flat Earth Society”. Their future well being and the well being of all their peers depends on it.
At a time when we should be increasing our cleantech investments at the fastest rate nature allows, allowing reductions in high speed rail, university transportation research, and other cleantech programs is a huge failure. Only in the context of fungible politics and economics is this a victory by any side. Nature does not negotiate or compromise. When air travel disappears due to rising fuel costs, we will regret not having high speed rail. By then it may be too late to deploy a high speed rail infrastructure, as energy costs will have skyrocketed.
The Madman Strategy in this case makes no sense. We already know they’re frigging crazy.
I have become convinced obama is nothing more than a trojan horse, doing dirty energy/corrupt corporate powers’ wishes. These current sorta of victories…are they real? Or will they be given up in the next bogus fight? Im digusted with this game for our future
EPA’s authority is preserved but thanks to the cleantech cuts we’d better get used to Chinese solar panels and wind turbine components from here on. THANKS GOP FOR CREATING A NEW JOBS PROGRAM… FOR THE CHINESE!
I’ve agreed with dana #3, from the beginning. To believe that an ‘outsider’ not utterly beholden to the money-power can ever even approach the throne of Presidential Power in the USA is pure madness. That Obama pretended to be such an outsider made me believe that he was a dissembler, a ‘confidence-man’ in the grand tradition. And I believe that my innate cynicism, which, in this world is simply brutal realism, has been vindicated in trumps. I’m absolutely convinced that playing the political game in Western capitalist polities is the waste of a life. The system is totally immune from change-it will go on doing what it is truly designed for, serving the narrow psychopathic desires of the rich, until it destroys itself. It is a system that, being based on capitalism’s essential neoplastic nature, must destroy the very life-support systems that sustains it and its immediate host, humanity. So the collapse draws nearer, and the only hope of escape is that the population of human beings removes the dead souls, the zombies of the global ruling elite from power, before they destroy us all.
Would be good to see an analysis on the likely consequences of cuts mentioned, particularly the $1.5 billion FRA cut.
Mulga, the problem is neither democracy nor capitalism, but rather their being hijacked by greed crazed corporate actors, most of whom have dark motivations and small penises. Their guilty secret is that they know that they can be defeated if the people ever found their voices, and their courage.
Mike Roddy #10. Mulga is right because both our representative democracies and capitalism as it is currently organized are built on the organizational design principle that produces competition, inequality of status and divisiveness. Once you set people against each other, you necessarily get self interest, and for those who already have the wherewithal, greed. The poor compete merely to survive.
He could also have added in other institutions such as our educational systems that are built on the same principle plus the ridiculous, mechanistic notion that our children won’t learn unless they have teachers to shove information down their necks. Just about every part of our, now proven to be destructive, cultures is built on this design principle.
Representative democracies are riddled with weaknesses which make them vulnerable to hijackings. Your current Congress with its take-over by the Koch fuelled Tea party is merely demonstrating these weaknesses. Once you have career politicians, you automatically have the potential for corruption.
I disagree with Mulga about the Obama ‘outsider’ view as no matter who goes into these systems, the system always wins. Their very structure determines their internal dynamics and the consequences of these.
I also disagree with him that it is capitalism per se. There is over 60 years of evidence that all types of productive organizations can make a good profit and provide a creative and healthy working life for those that work in them when they are built on the alternative design principle that produces cooperation and concern for the common good.
It is perfectly possible to redesign all our institutions on the second design principle but I doubt we have time now. I just hope that any survivors if there are such, will work out what went wrong at the most fundamental level. If you are interested, see the little paper called ‘Afterwards’ posted on http://www.thelightonthehill.com and also on http://www.sustainablefutureplanning.com.au. ME
The lesson of the “Madman Theory” analogy is that progressives had better acquire the persistence (if not the goals) of Ho Chi Minh. The “Madman Theory” quote you cited is from 1969. Four years, 30,000 American lives, and many hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese lives later Nixon got a no better deal from Ho than he could have had in 1969.
Mike #10, I’ll just have to disagree, I’m afraid.’Greed crazed corporate actors’ are, in my opinion, absolutely inseparable from market capitalism, not an aberration. I believe capitalism to be innately anti-life. To survive we will need a ‘steady-state economics’ dedicated to zero economic growth, indeed to a steady reduction in consumption, production and destruction, but, at the same time, as great intellectual, spiritual and moral growth for all as possible. That will require the liquidation of the great fortunes of the global parasite class, and their redistribution worldwide. That will greatly reduce human poverty and hasten the ‘demographic transition’ to smaller families that is necessary for the humane reduction in global populations and consumption that is essential for human survival. I cannot conceive of any type of ‘capitalism’ that can encompass that. As for ‘democracy’-I believe the two concepts capitalism and democracy to be entirely contradictory. My idea of a real democracy is local and personal empowerment, without the imposition of economic power over the individual or collectives. I believe governance in mass societies of millions can never be truly ‘democratic’, but will always be influenced by money power and carefully fomented mass hysterias. I see the Chinese system, which is basically that which has prevailed there for two thousand years or so, of one party of power, which everyone may join, and rise through the ranks based on merit, as assessed by your peers, and tested with progressively greater responsibilities, as worth emulating. It ought, I think, be wedded to as much local autonomy and personal freedom as possible, a route that the Chinese authorities are slowly taking, despite the constant attempts by the West to foment civil discord within China, as they have done for centuries. I mean, honestly, does the US system live up to its deluded self-image, and which system do you think is producing the more rational and beneficial results, for its own people and those of the planet?
@#7 Rick:
“EPA’s authority is preserved but thanks to the cleantech cuts we’d better get used to Chinese solar panels and wind turbine components from here on. ”
A company I am involved in is actively pursuing domestic manufacturing of solar panels. See siliconsolarsolutions.com
Also, I am actively involved in developing wind and solar projects. See my website link in my name. Opportunities exist if you look for them.
“Silicon Energy” is yet another company that has just opened a brand new manufacturing plant here in Washington with a great product and Green made in America business ethic. (no affiliation)
America CAN do it.
Wake up GOBP. Here comes the sun, and you vampires can fight but you will lose.
what I worry is that they are saying they will only raise the debt limit in sxchange for “something really, really big.” I really think that Obama sees all issues surrounding climate change as expendable, while destroying protections are a centerpiece of the GOP agenda. I can totally see Obama throwing the globe under the bus over the debt limit battle–he and his advisors have shown little understanding of how to “win the future”, much less win the next election.
I hate to say it, but barring some deus ex machina, I think evil has finally won. I hope we have time left.
I caught the end of an interview with Axelrod of the Obama administration. He was asked which member of congress was the biggest pain in the ass and he of course would not answer directly. However, he did say something that has stuck with me. He said that there are two kinds of people serving in the House and Senate. Those who run for election to accomplish something and those who run for election to be somebody. Unfortunately, as he pointed out, there are far more of the later pulling the levels of power today. It’s certainly painfully obvious when tuning into the political interview portions of what passes today for journalism and media.
And, Jim #17, I believe it is painfully clear which category Mr Axelrod’s boss fits into.