Group Think in Obamaland

How do Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer author an article that uses the word “un-American,” regardless of its context?  Between their two offices, a minimum of 10 different sets of eyes must have looked at drafts including the incendiary language, but nobody thought to remove it before sending it on to USA Today.

How does a request for Americans to inform on fellow citizens by sending “fishy” emails to “flag@whitehouse.gov” make it through the White House bureaucracy?

Only two years ago, populist outrage at the details of a 1,000 page immigration bill being jammed through the Senate led to a bipartisan scuttling of a classic Washington deal cut between business and labor.  After this experience, how could anyone think that a healthcare strategy following a similar pattern would run into anything but trouble?

Whether you call it a Platonic Rule or the Pauline Kael rule, the short answer is that in politics  — whether in ancient Athens or Obama’s America — it is easy to assume that everyone thinks just like the allies with whom you surround yourself.  So in spite of all the poll-tested messaging and advice from self-proclaimed “strategists,” it comes as little surprise when political professionals at the highest levels of government fail to ask whether there is a better way to phrase something in the interest of not turning off half of all Pennsylvanians.

At this stage in the healthcare debate, President Obama might consider the example of John McCain and his experience with the D.C. echo-chamber.  In the summer of 2007, McCain could have, and should have, walked away from the immigration bill that he was promoting in the Senate.  Not only would it have been good politics, immediately resurrecting his candidacy, but given the heavy-handed manner in which the bill was winding through the Senate, it would have been consistent with his own good government commitments.  But McCain did not walk away, in large measure because he and his aides had no doubt convinced themselves that they could not walk away.  Doing so would have made little sense in Washington, where it seemed that the known universe supported an immigration bill, and where Republican operatives were convinced immigration reform was the key to building the Republican party.  But to independent and Republican voters, McCain would have walked away from the bill a hero.

Unable to move public opinion, hemorrhaging personal support, and facing a revolt among Congressional Democrats, President Obama might also think of walking away from a healthcare bill that is threatening his presidency.  He could follow Bill Clinton’s lead, moderating in the face of growing public resistance to liberal policies, without having to endure a replay of the 1994 mid-term elections.  He could urge Congress to go back to the drawing board, include bipartisan policies that truly ‘bend the growth curve,’ and take things slow.

But to do so would require his staff to consider the views of ordinary voters, which might be at odds with the Democrats’ conventional wisdom.  And too often in Washington, and in politics generally, such thinking is in short supply.