Tilting at windmills.

AuthorAlter, Jonathan

Frame of reverence

If you went into homes up in the hollows of Charlie Peters's West Virginia and elsewhere in the decades following World War II, you could often find photographs of FDR. The same was later true of JFK's picture, and not just where Catholics lived. The people who hung them on their walls are mostly dead, and their children--at least in West Virginia--are mostly Republicans. But after the executive order on immigration, it's a good bet that many Latino and other immigrant families will join African Americans in giving a place of prominence in their homes to a photograph of Barack Obama.

Scalia's bull

The Social Security Act of 1935 was a flawed and racist bill. It excluded from coverage sharecroppers, maids, and almost any other occupation held by blacks. But FDR knew the landmark legislation could be fixed in later years, and it was. Same with Bill Clinton's welfare reform in 1996.

Unfortunately, we can't get on with necessary fixes to Obamacare (e.g., shielding doctors from being penalized for practicing medicine at odds with distant review boards) until the Republicans stop trying to kill it. The latest threat comes from the Supreme Court, which is poised to ignore the obvious congressional intent (cited repeatedly by conservative justices in other cases) and upend the ACA on a technicality, a corrupt power grab that I don't put past the conservative majority. If that happens this summer, the White House is rumored to be prepared with a technicality of its own--a workaround that uses HealthCare.gov, the federal exchange, as the architecture for instant new exchanges in states that don't currently offer them, which would essentially restructure Obamacare by executive order.

Like executive orders on carbon emissions and immigration, this approach would be waving a red cape in front of a bull, as Mitch McConnell put it. The Court's bull, Antonin Scalia, will go nuts if the White House tries to circumvent the high court's decision, and he won't be alone. A Supreme Court-induced constitutional crisis could be on the way.

Charming as he wants to be

A few days after FDR was sworn in as president on March 4,1933, he went to the home of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., where a small group celebrated the retired justice's ninety-second birthday with some bootleg champagne. (Imagine Obama smoking a little weed with John Paul Stevens.) Holmes advised the new president, "You are in a war, Mr. President, and in a war there is only one rule. Form your battalion and fight." After FDR left, Holmes famously remarked, "A second-class intellect but a first-class temperament."

Obama has a first-class intellect and a much better record than he's given credit for. But we've learned that his second-class political temperament is preventing him from being the great president he could have been. Obama is not a "happy warrior," the ghostwritten moniker FDR (reluctantly) applied to his frenemy, Al Smith, at the 1924 Democratic National Convention.

In the better-late-than-never department, the president seems to be more of a domestic warrior these days, particularly on immigration and the environment, and confrontational vetoes lie ahead. The problem is the "happy" part. Because he seems to be missing the schmooze gene, it's harder for Obama to form his battalion. The Democrats he needs now on the Hill are annoyed with him for not being in better touch since he took office.

Yes, it's whiny, but think of it from their perspective. Practically every time they go home, some liberal constituent asks, "How's the president? When's the last time you spoke?" The legislators cough nervously, shuffle their feet, then lie and claim they've "seen" him just recently, which means they've glimpsed him from fifty feet away with 1,000 other people at some Washington wingding. In truth, surprisingly few Democratic senators (and even fewer House members) have spoken to Obama one on one in years. He's just not that into them, though it's his job to pretend otherwise.

George Washington had dinner every week with representatives of the legislative branch, alternating between senators and congressmen. Before World War II, FDR spent a couple of hours a day in back-to-back fifteen-minute one-on-one meetings, often with members of Congress who wanted something. (Roosevelt...

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