As the budget negotiations head into the home stretch, we once again commentary on the “role played by President Obama”:http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/hannity/transcript/house-majority-whip-blasts-lack-leadership-obama-democrats-budget, I thought it might be an interesting time to share some longer term evaluations of President Obama. Fortunately, at the recently concluded “Midwest Political Science Annual Meeting”:http://www.mpsanet.org/Conference/tabid/75/Default.aspx there was a “roundtable”:http://conference.mpsanet.org/Online/Search.aspx?section=1&session=106 on just this topic. Three of the participants have generously agreed to summarize their thoughts for readers of The Monkey Cage. First up, “Professor George Edwards”:http://www-polisci.tamu.edu/faculty/edwards/ of Texas A&M University:
bq. Successful leadership is not the result of the dominant chief executive of political folklore who reshapes the contours of the political landscape, altering his strategic position to pave the way for change. Rather than creating the conditions for important shifts in public policy, such as attracting bipartisan support or moving public opinion in their direction, effective leaders are facilitators who work at the margins of coalition building to recognize and exploit opportunities in their environments. Barack Obama is no exception.
bq. Strategies for governing based on the premise of creating opportunities for change are prone to failure. Moreover, they often lead to overreach and wasting the opportunities that do exist. The Obama administration overestimated both the opportunities for change in its environment and the president’s ability to create new opportunities. As a result, it advanced a large, liberal agenda. Yet the White House could not obtain public support for many of its most visible proposals, nor could it attract Republican votes in Congress. These failures were inevitable, and demonstrate the importance of making clear-eyed strategic assessments of the opportunity structure of a new administration.
bq. Failure is one thing, overreach is much more serious. The administration’s advocacy of unpopular policies alienated much of the public, especially those in the middle of the ideological and partisan spectrums. The large Democratic losses in the 2010 midterm elections cost Obama the opportunity to exploit his party’s majority in the House and the Democrat’s near filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, undermining his ability to govern for the rest of his term. Moreover, the Republican gains in state legislatures, where in 2011 they held the most seats since the Great Depression, increased the probability of redistricting that would favor the GOP and thus increase the probability of Republican majorities in Congress for the next decade.