Tpp will pass during the lame duck
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- Opposition from presidential candidates makes PC key to TPP
- AT: PC Theory False
- AT: Winners Win
- Empirically – Obama can’t translate the plan into increased PC
- Winners don’t win
Internal LinksPC KeyTPP will pass before Obama leaves office but PC is key to negotiations with Congressional leadersRascoe and Rampton 6/20 (Ayesha Rascoe, Roberta Rampton: Reporters for Reuters, “Obama takes turn as 'America's pitch man' to help sell TPP trade deal,” 6/20/16, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-obama-trade-idUSKCN0Z625H, Accessed: 7/13/16, RRR) President Barack Obama made a plug on Monday for the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal to a group of 2,400 investors looking at locating business in the United States, saying the deal would help boost the global economy.¶ Trade has become a hot-button issue in the Nov. 8 presidential election campaign, with presumptive candidates from both parties voicing objections to the 12-nation TPP deal that Obama wants the U.S. Congress to sign off on before his time in office ends on Jan. 20.¶ Both the Republican and Democratic presidential campaigns have tapped into populist skepticism about the benefit of trade deals on jobs and wages, particularly in the manufacturing sector.¶ Obama tried to dispel the economic gloom-and-doom coming from the campaign trail, extolling the recovery of the United States from recession.¶ "I don't mind being America's pitch man," Obama said in a speech at the SelectUSA Summit. "In seven months or so, I'll be on the job market, and I'm glad I'm going to be here. I'm going to get on LinkedIn and see what comes up," he quipped.¶ Obama argued that while there are legitimate concerns about boosting wages and improving working conditions, ultimately global trade can help connect people from around the world and reduce poverty.¶ "This is not just about jobs and trade, it's not just about hard cold cash," he said. "It's also about building relationships across borders. When your companies come together you help bring countries and cultures together."¶ American business lobby groups have been pushing the White House and congressional leaders to finish their work to ratify the TPP before the next administration takes office.¶ Obama's top economic adviser sidestepped a question on a conference call about the timeline.¶ "We're continuing to work with congressional leaders to find the right opportunity, the right window of opportunity, to get TPP passed this year," Jeff Zients, the director of the National Economic Council, told reporters. Opposition from presidential candidates makes PC key to TPPMiller, fellow on East Asia for the EastWest Institute ’16 (J Berkshire Miller is the director of the Council on International Policy, Time is running out on TPP, Aljazeera, June 15th 2016, http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/06/time-running-tpp-160613091202942.html) In an ideal world, the Obama administration would look to get the deal ratified during its "lame-duck" session - immediately following the election in November and before the new president-elect takes office in January. Obama's top trade envoy Michael Froman has taken a sanguine view that the deal be put into force, noting: "There is a pathway forward here and what we're trying to do right now is just maximise the likelihood that we’ll be able to walk down that path successfully." But while there is cautious optimism in the Obama administration, the timelines and sensitivities attached to election politics do not portend well for the deal being struck by the end of the year. It will require political capital that is needed on other key priorities such as the confirmation of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. Despite the fact that the TPP was largely pushed under her watch as Secretary of State, Clinton has been forced to distance herself from it due to concerns that her base has on its impact on US jobs. The Republicans are similarly boxed in with the presumptive nomination of Donald Trump - who has blasted the deal. This has tempered their support for the TPP due the timing and the signal its ratification might deliver. Despite the strategic imperative of ratifying the pact, it appears that deal's approval is hanging by a thread. AT: PC Theory FalsePC is real; the alternative, of presidential political influence predicated on willpower, is non-falsifiableNyhan, political scientist, ’09 (Brendan Nyhan is a political scientist and media critic, The Green Lantern theory of the presidency, December 14, 2009, http://www.brendan-nyhan.com/blog/2009/12/the-green-lantern-theory-of-the-presidency.html) During the Bush years, [Matthew] Yglesias coined the Green Lantern Theory of Geopolitics* to mock conservatives who believed that "[t]he only thing limiting us is a lack of willpower" in foreign policy. What he identifies here is nothing less than a Green Lantern theory of the presidency in which all domestic policy compromises are attributed to a lack of presidential will. And, like the Green Lantern theory of geopolitics, this view is nonfalsifiable. Rather than learning from, say, the stimulus vote that Obama faces severe constraints in the Senate, liberal GL proponents have created a narrative in which all failure and compromise is the result of a lack of presidential willpower. (Hamsher, for instance, claims that "The failure to establish a public option to control medical costs and increase competition is President Obama’s failure alone.") It's a fantasy world. AT: Winners WinWins don’t spill over – capital is finite and prioritizing issues is keySchultz, 13 – professor at Hamline University School of Business, where he teaches classes on privatization and public, private and nonprofit partnerships; editor of the Journal of Public Affairs Education (JPAE) (David, 1/22. “Obama's dwindling prospects in a second term.” http://www.minnpost.com/community-voices/2013/01/obamas-dwindling-prospects-second-term) Four more years for Obama. Now what? What does Barack Obama do in his second term and what can he accomplish? Simply put, his options are limited and the prospects for major success quite limited. Presidential power is the power to persuade, as Richard Neustadt famously stated. Many factors determine presidential power and the ability to influence including personality (as James David Barber argued), attitude toward power, margin of victory, public support, support in Congress, and one’s sense of narrative or purpose. Additionally, presidential power is temporal, often greatest when one is first elected, and it is contextual, affected by competing items on an agenda. All of these factors affect the political power or capital of a president. Presidential power also is a finite and generally decreasing product. The first hundred days in office – so marked forever by FDR’s first 100 in 1933 – are usually a honeymoon period, during which presidents often get what they want. FDR gets the first New Deal, Ronald Reagan gets Kemp-Roth, George Bush in 2001 gets his tax cuts. Presidents lose political capital, support But, over time, presidents lose political capital. Presidents get distracted by world and domestic events, they lose support in Congress or among the American public, or they turn into lame ducks. This is the problem Obama now faces. Obama had a lot of political capital when sworn in as president in 2009. He won a decisive victory for change with strong approval ratings and had majorities in Congress — with eventually a filibuster margin in the Senate, when Al Franken finally took office in July. Obama used his political capital to secure a stimulus bill and then pass the Affordable Care Act. He eventually got rid of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and secured many other victories. But Obama was a lousy salesman, and he lost what little control of Congress that he had in the 2010 elections. Empirically – Obama can’t translate the plan into increased PCGoldsmith, 12 – former assistant Attorney General in the Bush administration, professor at Harvard Law School and member of the Hoover Institution task force on national security and law (Jack, 4/27. “Romney’s advantages in U.S. security.” Lexis.) These successes have not translated into political capital on counterterrorism issues at home. Obama failed in his signature pledge to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center. His administration had to back down from its attempt to prosecute in civilian court senior terrorist leaders held at Guantanamo. In both contexts, large majorities in Congress, with broad popular support, opposed the president’s policies and enacted laws that forbid closing Guantanamo or trying terrorists held there in civilian court.¶ Congress pushed back against Obama partly for political reasons and partly because lawmakers did not fully trust his judgment in those contexts. Problems began with some clumsy public errors in the administration’s first year, including the ill-advised attempt to release some detainees into the United States, a waffling reaction to the failed Christmas Day attack by “underwear bomber” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and the poorly vetted decision to prosecute 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed in civilian court. These and related controversies spurred Republicans and many Democrats to hurl charges of insufficient seriousness on counterterrorism — and led to the unprecedented congressional restrictions under which Obama labors.¶ Obama never really tried to leverage his reputation for killing terrorists abroad into success on Guantanamo-related issues at home. The Bush administration used every tool of the presidency — the bully pulpit, political trench warfare in Congress and threats to disregard congressional restrictions — to further its counterterrorism priorities. The Obama administration has been internally divided on terrorist detention and trial issues and preoccupied with higher-priority matters; it has rarely spent political capital on the Guantanamo detainees. Winners don’t winEberly 13 - assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at St. Mary's College of Maryland (Todd, “The presidential power trap,” Baltimore Sun, 1/21/13, Lexis.) Only by solving the problem of political capital is a president likely to avoid a power trap. Presidents in recent years from have been unable to prevent their political capital eroding. When it did, their power assertions often got them into further political trouble. Through leveraging public support, presidents have at times been able to overcome contemporary leadership challenges by adopting as their own issues that the public already supports. Bill Clinton's centrist "triangulation" and George W. Bush's careful issue selection early in his presidency allowed them to secure important policy changes — in Mr. Clinton's case, welfare reform and budget balance, in Mr. Bush's tax cuts and education reform — that at the time received popular approval.¶ However, short-term legislative strategies may win policy success for a president but do not serve as an antidote to declining political capital over time, as the difficult final years of both the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush presidencies demonstrate. None of Barack Obama's recent predecessors solved the political capital problem or avoided the power trap. It is the central political challenge confronted by modern presidents and one that will likely weigh heavily on the current president's mind today as he takes his second oath of office. 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