Tpp will pass during the lame duck
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- Obama has spent practically no political capital on TPP
- Obama has already invested lots of PC in TPP
- Obama hasn’t spent enough PC to get a vote on TPP this year
- Political Capital is a myth; the president can pass popular agenda items irrespective of some finite amount of political influence
- PC theory is difficult to quantify and ignores important factors like ideology
- Obama’s attempted uses of PC polarize congressional votes more
- The Green Lantern Theory of the Presidency is wrong; presidential relentlessness makes bipartisan cooperation less likely
- Successful domestic policies make presidents more likely to get their foreign policy agenda
- Political losses bolster presidential rigor to pass agenda items
Internal LinksPC Not Key to TPPObama hasn’t spent enough PC to get a vote on TPP this yearIkenson, associate director of Cato's Center for Trade Policy Studies ‘16 (Daniel Ikenson focuses on WTO disputes and regional trade agreements. Ikenson has been involved in international trade since 1990, WHY IS OBAMA STRANGELY SILENT ON THE PACIFIC TRADE DEAL?, Jun 3rd 2016, News Week, http://www.newsweek.com/why-obama-strangely-silent-pacific-trade-deal-465787) Superficially, one could blame election-year politics and a metastasizing popular antipathy toward trade agreements for the situation, but the original sin is the president’s lackluster effort to sell the TPP to his trade-skeptical party and the American public. In the administration’s division of labor, those tasked with negotiating the TPP kept their noses to the grindstone and brought back an agreement that reduces taxes and other protectionist impediments to trade, establishes precedents for tackling new kinds of barriers that have emerged in the 21st century and positions U.S. businesses, workers, consumers and investors to capitalize on the region’s growth. Meanwhile, those responsible for explaining the deal’s merits domestically spent too much time on the golf course. With scarcely greater frequency than a couple of sentences in his past two State of the Union addresses has President Obama attempted to articulate the importance of trade and the TPP to the American public. Even then, his “advocacy” has been grudging and couched in enough skepticism to create and reinforce fears about trade and globalization. When Hillary Clinton—the president’s former secretary of state, co-architect of the Asian pivot and champion of the TPP—announced her opposition to the negotiated deal because it became a political liability for her, President Obama remained silent. If the president really believes in the trade agenda his administration has pursued for eight years, his decision not to challenge Clinton was a significant tactical error—and a profoundly lamentable display of cowardice. Foregone was a prime opportunity to inject an affirmative case for the trade deal into the fact-deprived election debate. And how could Obama let Clinton’s political ambitions take priority over his policy agenda? How could the president of the United States be so cavalier about actions and inactions that amount to kneecapping the U.S. foreign policy agenda and subverting American commercial interests? The president’s near total absence of promotion of the TPP explains why, in the waning months of his tenure, ratification of the economic centerpiece of the vaunted Asian pivot is unlikely. In this absence emerged a fallacious, hysterical narrative about the allegedly deleterious effects of the TPP on jobs, the environment, public health and even cancer rates, which became the dry tinder that fueled the fiery anti-trade rhetoric of this year’s demagogic presidential campaigns. Obama has spent practically no political capital on TPPKrauthammer, Fox News commentator, ’15 (Charles Krauthammer columnist for the Washington Post, Save Obama (on trade), May 14, 2015, The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/save-obama-on-trade/2015/05/14/aabaf342-fa65-11e4-9ef4-1bb7ce3b3fb7_story.html) That free trade is advantageous to both sides is the rarest of political propositions — provable, indeed mathematically. David Ricardo did so in 1817. The Law of Comparative Advantage has held up nicely for 198 years. Nor is this abstract theory. We’ve lived it. The free-trade regime created after World War II precipitated the most astonishing advance of global welfare and prosperity the world has ever seen. And that regime was created, overseen, guaranteed and presided over by the United States. That era might be coming to a close, however, as Democratic congressional opposition to free trade continues to grow. On Tuesday, every Democrat in the Senate (but one, with another not present) voted to block trade promotion — a.k.a. fast-track — authority for President Obama, which would have given him the power to conclude the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade deal being hammered out with 11 other countries, including such key allies as Japan, Australia and Singapore. Fast-track authority allows an administration to negotiate the details of a trade agreement and then come to Congress for a non-amendable up-or-down vote. In various forms, that has been granted to every president since Franklin Roosevelt. For good reason. If the complex, detailed horse-trading that is required to nail down an agreement is carried out in the open — especially with multiple parties — the deal never gets done. Like all modern presidents, Obama wants a deal. But he has utterly failed to bring his party along. It’s not just because for six years he’s treated all of Congress with disdain and prefers insult to argument when confronted with opposition, this time from Democrats such as Elizabeth Warren. It’s also because he’s expended practically no political capital on the issue. He says it’s a top priority. Has he given even a single televised address? Obama has already invested lots of PC in TPPLee and Puzzanghera ’16 (Don Lee is a Washington reporter for the LA Times and Jim Puzzanghera writes about business and economic issues from the Times’ Washington, D.C., bureau, Obama's tougher approach to corporate America may reshape his presidency, April 15th 2016, The Los Angeles Times, http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-obama-corporate-legacy-20160415-snap-htmlstory.html) If Obama was too soft on business, part of that can be explained by the top advisors who surrounded him earlier, said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. They include former chiefs of staff Rahm Emanuel and William M. Daley, who are seen as centrist and business-oriented, as well as confidants like former Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, who some saw as sympathetic to the financial industry during his tenure and now serves as president of Warburg Pincus, a Wall Street private equity firm. “I think part of the story [of Obama’s stronger hand with businesses] is that some of the people pushing him toward the center are gone,” Baker said. Still, like many Democrats, he said what ultimately has pushed Obama to implement stiffer regulations on businesses was the realization, however slowly, that his efforts to compromise and get changes through legislation would never happen in the current partisan climate in Congress. Geoff Garin, a Democratic strategist and president of Hart Research Associates, argued that history would show that Obama struck a healthy balance in his dealings with businesses. “It’s hard to argue he’s anti-corporations in as much as he’s invested a lot of political capital negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership,” he said, referring to the pending Pacific Rim free trade deal that many Democrats have bitterly opposed. “It’s clear that people like Bernie Sanders would like Obama to be a lot tougher on corporations, but the thing about Obama is he’s not knee-jerk pro-business or knee-jerk anti-business.” PC Not Key to TPPObama hasn’t spent enough PC to get a vote on TPP this yearIkenson, associate director of Cato's Center for Trade Policy Studies ‘16 (Daniel Ikenson focuses on WTO disputes and regional trade agreements. Ikenson has been involved in international trade since 1990, WHY IS OBAMA STRANGELY SILENT ON THE PACIFIC TRADE DEAL?, Jun 3rd 2016, News Week, http://www.newsweek.com/why-obama-strangely-silent-pacific-trade-deal-465787) Superficially, one could blame election-year politics and a metastasizing popular antipathy toward trade agreements for the situation, but the original sin is the president’s lackluster effort to sell the TPP to his trade-skeptical party and the American public. In the administration’s division of labor, those tasked with negotiating the TPP kept their noses to the grindstone and brought back an agreement that reduces taxes and other protectionist impediments to trade, establishes precedents for tackling new kinds of barriers that have emerged in the 21st century and positions U.S. businesses, workers, consumers and investors to capitalize on the region’s growth. Meanwhile, those responsible for explaining the deal’s merits domestically spent too much time on the golf course. With scarcely greater frequency than a couple of sentences in his past two State of the Union addresses has President Obama attempted to articulate the importance of trade and the TPP to the American public. Even then, his “advocacy” has been grudging and couched in enough skepticism to create and reinforce fears about trade and globalization. When Hillary Clinton—the president’s former secretary of state, co-architect of the Asian pivot and champion of the TPP—announced her opposition to the negotiated deal because it became a political liability for her, President Obama remained silent. If the president really believes in the trade agenda his administration has pursued for eight years, his decision not to challenge Clinton was a significant tactical error—and a profoundly lamentable display of cowardice. Foregone was a prime opportunity to inject an affirmative case for the trade deal into the fact-deprived election debate. And how could Obama let Clinton’s political ambitions take priority over his policy agenda? How could the president of the United States be so cavalier about actions and inactions that amount to kneecapping the U.S. foreign policy agenda and subverting American commercial interests? The president’s near total absence of promotion of the TPP explains why, in the waning months of his tenure, ratification of the economic centerpiece of the vaunted Asian pivot is unlikely. In this absence emerged a fallacious, hysterical narrative about the allegedly deleterious effects of the TPP on jobs, the environment, public health and even cancer rates, which became the dry tinder that fueled the fiery anti-trade rhetoric of this year’s demagogic presidential campaigns. Obama has spent practically no political capital on TPPKrauthammer, Fox News commentator, ’15 (Charles Krauthammer columnist for the Washington Post, Save Obama (on trade), May 14, 2015, The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/save-obama-on-trade/2015/05/14/aabaf342-fa65-11e4-9ef4-1bb7ce3b3fb7_story.html) That free trade is advantageous to both sides is the rarest of political propositions — provable, indeed mathematically. David Ricardo did so in 1817. The Law of Comparative Advantage has held up nicely for 198 years. Nor is this abstract theory. We’ve lived it. The free-trade regime created after World War II precipitated the most astonishing advance of global welfare and prosperity the world has ever seen. And that regime was created, overseen, guaranteed and presided over by the United States. That era might be coming to a close, however, as Democratic congressional opposition to free trade continues to grow. On Tuesday, every Democrat in the Senate (but one, with another not present) voted to block trade promotion — a.k.a. fast-track — authority for President Obama, which would have given him the power to conclude the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade deal being hammered out with 11 other countries, including such key allies as Japan, Australia and Singapore. Fast-track authority allows an administration to negotiate the details of a trade agreement and then come to Congress for a non-amendable up-or-down vote. In various forms, that has been granted to every president since Franklin Roosevelt. For good reason. If the complex, detailed horse-trading that is required to nail down an agreement is carried out in the open — especially with multiple parties — the deal never gets done. Like all modern presidents, Obama wants a deal. But he has utterly failed to bring his party along. It’s not just because for six years he’s treated all of Congress with disdain and prefers insult to argument when confronted with opposition, this time from Democrats such as Elizabeth Warren. It’s also because he’s expended practically no political capital on the issue. He says it’s a top priority. Has he given even a single televised address? Obama has already invested lots of PC in TPPLee and Puzzanghera ’16 (Don Lee is a Washington reporter for the LA Times and Jim Puzzanghera writes about business and economic issues from the Times’ Washington, D.C., bureau, Obama's tougher approach to corporate America may reshape his presidency, April 15th 2016, The Los Angeles Times, http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-obama-corporate-legacy-20160415-snap-htmlstory.html) If Obama was too soft on business, part of that can be explained by the top advisors who surrounded him earlier, said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. They include former chiefs of staff Rahm Emanuel and William M. Daley, who are seen as centrist and business-oriented, as well as confidants like former Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, who some saw as sympathetic to the financial industry during his tenure and now serves as president of Warburg Pincus, a Wall Street private equity firm. “I think part of the story [of Obama’s stronger hand with businesses] is that some of the people pushing him toward the center are gone,” Baker said. Still, like many Democrats, he said what ultimately has pushed Obama to implement stiffer regulations on businesses was the realization, however slowly, that his efforts to compromise and get changes through legislation would never happen in the current partisan climate in Congress. Geoff Garin, a Democratic strategist and president of Hart Research Associates, argued that history would show that Obama struck a healthy balance in his dealings with businesses. “It’s hard to argue he’s anti-corporations in as much as he’s invested a lot of political capital negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership,” he said, referring to the pending Pacific Rim free trade deal that many Democrats have bitterly opposed. “It’s clear that people like Bernie Sanders would like Obama to be a lot tougher on corporations, but the thing about Obama is he’s not knee-jerk pro-business or knee-jerk anti-business.” PC Theory FalsePolitical Capital is a myth; the president can pass popular agenda items irrespective of some finite amount of political influenceKemstone 2010 (Kemstone, The Myth of ‘Political Capital’, April 25th 2010, Kemstone’s Journal, http://kemstone.com/Journal/2010/04/25/the-myth-of-political-capital/) One of my favorite political misnomers is the phrase ‘conventional wisdom’ as it’s usually the farthest thing from ‘wisdom’ you can find. I think ‘conventional bullshit’ would be a far more appropriate term. And my favorite piece of ‘conventional bullshit’ is this idea of ‘political capital’ which I would like to take a moment to rip to shreds. When Bush was re-elected, he boasted about all the ‘political capital’ he had earned and how he intended to spend it. He was going to use this capital to privatize social security—and we all know how well that worked out for him. When Obama first got into office riding that tidal wave of popular sentiment and hunger for change, all the talking heads—including a few of those I actually like—were talking about all the ‘political capital’ he had and how he should spend it. After passing the stimulus it was on to health care reform—and we all know how well that worked out for him. Towards the end of the fight, when things looked the most grim, the pundits were speculating about how Obama had spent all his capital on the health care fight and would now have to spend the rest of his presidency only doing small things. Then when he got the bill passed, suddenly he had earned more political capital which he could use to take on financial reform. Presumably, he’ll earn more capital once this bill is passed. Enough already. There is no such thing as ‘political capital’ and I think it’s high time some people in the media admitted it. The idea that there is some kind of ethereal, invisible currency that a politician earns and spends on policy initiatives is absurd. It’s like Toys R Us money—it’s only valid when you’re in the store. Political capital exists solely in the mind of Washington insiders and those who go on the talk shows to spout their ‘conventional wisdom’. If a president wants to do something that has popular support, he can get it done no matter how much invisible Washington monopoly money he has in his pocket. It’s not as though average Americans are sitting at home and saying, “You know, I’m really in favor of this reform package but I’m not going to get involved unless the president has enough political capital to push it through.” It’s sheer nonsense. Unfortunately, even bullshit ideas can take on a reality of their own if enough people believe them. Inside the Washington bubble, the idea of political capital is accepted as objective reality, so the president’s advisors might very well tell him to avoid certain fights because they’re not worth the cost in political capital. I’ve already read several articles on the upcoming Supreme Court nominee battle that warn Obama not to pick someone too liberal because he’ll need his political capital for more important fights that lie ahead. Enough with this crap. There is not a limited supply of change you can bring. If you fight hard enough and get enough people on your side, you can win every battle. Not only that, but continuing to fight and win will actually build up a momentum of its own and make change easier. People will get behind a winner. They’re not so easily inspired by someone who will lose a few battles out of the nonsensical idea that it’ll somehow help him win fights in the future. PC theory is difficult to quantify and ignores important factors like ideologyKatz, political science and international affairs major, ’16 (Evan Katz is a Baldwin Scholar at the University of Georgia’s School of Public and International Affairs, Does Political Capital Matter?, April 6, 2016, Politics in Theory and Practice: Analyzing International Relations and American Politics, https://politicstheorypractice.wordpress.com/2016/04/06/does-political-capital-matter/) “Alright,” some political scientists might say, “maybe the Green Lanterns aren’t analogous to the president, but that doesn’t disprove the concept of political capital.” Well, beyond the poorly substantiated Green Lantern Theory of the Presidency, political capital as a concept is largely conjecture supported with anecdotal evidence. Because presidential influence as an independent variable is not unidimensional, it can be difficult to operationalize; how does one go about quantifying how much a president influences Congress? Does one measure the number of speeches a president gives on a specific topic? The number of times he/she supports a bill? This ambiguity causes researchers to ignore other confounding variables that could potentially render the relationship between presidential influence and legislative outcomes spurious. As Matthew Dickinson, professor of political science at Middlebury College, explains: Although journalists (and political scientists) often focus on the legislative “endgame” to gauge presidential influence – will the President swing enough votes to get his preferred legislation enacted? – this mistakes an outcome with actual evidence of presidential influence. Once we control for other factors – a member of Congress’ ideological and partisan leanings, the political leanings of her constituency, whether she’s up for reelection or not – we can usually predict how she will vote without needing to know much of anything about what the president wants. Obama’s attempted uses of PC polarize congressional votes moreKatz, political science and international affairs major, ’16 (Evan Katz is a Baldwin Scholar at the University of Georgia’s School of Public and International Affairs, Does Political Capital Matter?, April 6, 2016, Politics in Theory and Practice: Analyzing International Relations and American Politics, https://politicstheorypractice.wordpress.com/2016/04/06/does-political-capital-matter/) If anything, presidential influence may have a net negative effect on persuading lawmakers to vote one way or the other. Studies show that when a president takes clear positions on particular issue, congressional votes on those issues are more likely to fall along partisan lines. In other words, while a president might be able to persuade members of his/her own party to support a bill, members of the opposition party will be keener on stopping that bill to deny the president a victory. This especially holds true as both parties grow more unified and polarized. Keith Poole, a prominent University of Georgia political scientist and a future professor of mine, has noted the trend of asymmetric polarization among both parties; congressional Republicans have raced toward the fringes much faster than Democrats have, prompting them to take much stronger stances against legislation Obama endorses, like the Affordable Care Act. Obama, to his credit, has recognized this trend to some extent, taking fewer clear positions on legislation than previous presidents, but even tacit support or association has the effect of repulsing congressional Republicans. The Green Lantern Theory of the Presidency is wrong; presidential relentlessness makes bipartisan cooperation less likelyKlein, former columnist for the Washington Post, ’14 (Ezra Klein is an American blogger and columnist known for his ongoing work as a contributor to Bloomberg News and MSNBC., The Green Lantern Theory of the Presidency, explained, May 20, 2014, http://www.vox.com/2014/5/20/5732208/the-green-lantern-theory-of-the-presidency-explained) What's wrong with the Green Lantern Theory of the Presidency? Basically, it denies the very real (and very important) limits on the power of the American presidency, as well as reduces Congress to a coquettish collection of passive actors who are mostly just playing hard to get. The Founding Fathers were rebelling against an out-of-control monarch. So they constructed a political system with a powerful legislature and a relatively weak executive. The result is that the US President has little formal power to make Congress do anything. He can't force Congress to vote on a bill. He can't force Congress to pass a bill. And even if he vetoes a bill Congress can simply overturn his veto. So in direct confrontations with Congress — and that describes much of American politics these days — the president has few options. Green Lantern theorists don't deny any of this. They just believe that there's some vague combination of public speeches and private wheedling that the president can employ to bend Congress to his will. Ron Fournier, a prominent Green Lantern theorist, offers a fairly typical prescription for presidential success: “He could talk to the media and the public more often with a more compelling and sustained message. He could build enduring relationships in Washington rather than being so blatantly transactional with his time. He could work harder, and with more empathy, on Capitol Hill to find "win-win" opportunities with Republicans.” The problem with this is that the Green Lantern Theory isn't just false. It's often backwards. The basic idea is that more aggressive and consistent applications of presidential power will break down opposition. But political science research shows the truth is often just the opposite. When the president takes a position on an issue the opposing party becomes far more likely to take the opposite position. In a clever study, political scientist Frances Lee proved this by looking at noncontroversial issues, like whether NASA should try and send a man to Mars. She built a database of eighty-six hundred Senate votes between 1981 and 2004. Typically, these votes fell along party lines just a third of the time. But but when the President took a clear position the likelihood of a party-line vote rose to more than half. In other words, when the president pushed on an issue the opposition party became more likely to oppose him. Winners WinSuccessful domestic policies make presidents more likely to get their foreign policy agendaMorey and Trantham ‘15 (Daniel Morey is an Associate Professor in Political Science. He specializes in the study of international relations, with special interest in international conflict. Austin P Trantham Ph.D., Political Science, University of Kentucky. Talking But Not Doing: Congressional Opposition Cohesion and Presidential Foreign Policy Involvement, http://www.austintrantham.com/uploads/5/9/9/2/5992747/talking_not_doing_-_morey_and_trantham_-_wpsa_2015.pdf) The second major difference of this research is to argue that foreign policy activity arises out of strength and not weakness. Most studies, particularly those in the diversionary paradigm, argue that presidents will take foreign policy action when they are weakened domestically and unable to push their policy goals or wish to distract attention from failures. However, we argue that presidents are less likely to engage in foreign affairs when they face a cohesive opposition within Congress. When the opposition party is unified in foreign affairs the president will have a difficult time pushing his agenda. However, if the opposition lacks foreign policy cohesion the president can take advantage of this weakness to push her agenda. Thus, being in a position of relative strength, with the opposition divided, helps move the president to become more active in foreign affairs. Political losses bolster presidential rigor to pass agenda itemsBaker and Davis ’14 (Peter Baker is the White House correspondent for The New York Times, Obama, Julie Hirschfeld Davis is an enterprise reporter in the Washington bureau of The Associated Press, Down but Not Out, Presses Ahead, NOV. 13, 2014, The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/14/us/politics/down-but-not-out-obama-presses-ahead.html) In the 10 days since “we got beat,” as he put it, by Republicans who captured the Senate and bolstered control over the House, Mr. Obama has flexed his muscles on immigration, climate change and the Internet, demonstrating that he still aspires to enact sweeping policies that could help define his legacy. The timing of the three different decisions was to some extent a function of separate policy clocks, not simply a White House political strategy. Mr. Obama, for example, had been scheduled to travel to China for a summit meeting in mid-November, and American officials have been trying for most of the year to negotiate a climate agreement for him to announce while in Beijing. Still, even if by happenstance, the back-to-back moves have reinforced Mr. Obama’s desire to assert himself in a period when his poll numbers and political capital are at their lowest ebbs. While losing Congress was a grievous blow that will further challenge his capacity to govern, advisers said that he feels liberated. He can now pursue his long-term agenda, they said, without being tethered to the short-term electoral concerns of his party’s leadership in Congress. 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