Nancy Pelosi’s remarks on Sunday prior to the inauguration were not an accident. She drew a line in the sand and essentially told the new President to keep his campaign promises…promises that Obama jettisoned long ago and no longer wants to keep.
This will be one of Obama’s early tests, perhaps his first and most important. Is he going to be the leader of the Democratic Party and set the nation’s agenda or is he going to be led around by the left-wing barons on Capitol Hill who want to raise taxes and drag ex-Bush staffers before some demagogic panel of blowhard inquisitors? On Sunday, Pelosi said it will be the latter. It is up to Obama to make sure it is the former.
New Presidents are often tested, usually early in their terms. Kennedy was tested by Khrushchev (and won), Johnson by Southern Senators who vowed to scuttle his civil rights legislation (he rolled them), Nixon by a spendthrift Congress (Nixon impounded the funds and refused to spend the money), Reagan by the air-traffic controllers (they lost), Bush 41 by Hussein (remember Operation Desert Storm?) and Bush 43 by Al Qaeda.
President Carter, on the other hand, tried to excise several pork barrel spending projects approved by a Democratic Congress during his first hundred days, only to find his decision overturned by a Democratic Senate. At that moment, he became a weak President. President Clinton ceded his authority over too many spending items to a democratic congress and was forced to sign spending bills full of nonsense (remember midnight basketball?). Clinton eventually found his footing, thanks to a Republican Congress and triangulation. Carter never did.
It is essential for President Obama, and essential to his success, and ultimately his legacy, that he win the first test of wills with the left-wingers on the Hill. The nation elected an Obama. It did not elect a Pelosi.
