Good Policy Is Still Good Politics

For the past ten days talking heads have been buzzing about President Obama’s new “charm offensive” with Congress.

Indeed, the president has been meeting and lunching with Republican Congressional leaders, inviting leaders to the White House, and even deigning to pick up the tab for a dinner with a dozen Republican Senators.

But why now, after over four years of aloof and even dismissive treatment of his coequal branches of government? Why the sudden interest in consulting with Congress?

Is it because he’s already “used up his political capital,” as some pundits have alleged? Is it because his popularity ratings have edged downward? Is it because concerns about his legacy are driving him to become the post-partisan president some expected from him in his first term? Is it because the last election actually settled nothing?

Is an olive branch to Supreme Court Justice Alito next?

Not likely. And neither is the president’s charm offensive likely to last much longer.

But it is instructive to observe that the president’s change in behavior almost immediately after Republicans stood their ground and allowed the sequester to take effect.

The reason for the president’s charm offensive is simple: Republicans in Congress wouldn’t cave on the sequester.

We’ve argued that the sequester is good policy, but it has also been good politics. By showing that they mean what they say and are serious about restraining the growth of government spending, Republican leaders have asserted their prerogative as a coequal branch of government, shamed the Senate into committing to pass a budget, and have made themselves relevant again.
 
Many conservatives have been rightly critical of Republican leadership in many instances over the past few years, but it’s time to acknowledge that, at least in the last couple of months, they have acquitted themselves well. Republican leaders made permanent the Bush tax cuts for the majority of taxpayers, and took further tax increases off the table through a strategic retreat on tax rates for the wealthiest Americans.

They’ve made it clear that the federal government’s spending problem will be dealt with through spending reductions, not through tax increases.

That’s good policy. And it appears that, at least for now, good policy remains good politics.