Tuesday, January 29, 2013

The Bully Pulpit 2013

One of the criticisms lobbed at President Obama from liberals was that he did not forcefully push for the passage of legislation they supported. Laws like the Affordable Care Act ended up looking more like conservative - market oriented - programs rather then the government run programs they preferred.

Whatever the reasoning behind this, it is commonly argued now that Obama will spend more time travelling and giving speeches at rallies to promote his agenda. Here's a story about him taking his gun control agenda public. He is going to do similar things with his immigration proposals soon.

There is precedence for this with other presidents, and we will discuss this in 2305 when we cover the expanding nature of presidential power over time. The term "going public" was developed to refer to the efforts of Ronald Reagan to bypass Congress and take his case directly to the American people. The theory was that if he was more popular than Congress - which he was - he could get the public to onvince the general population to support his proposals and convince their members of Congress to go along. It worked.

When Bill Clinton was president, he never really dismantled his campaign operations, and used it to - try to - rally support for his innitiatives. He was a bit less successful than Reagan - but it got him reelected and saved his from removal from office followig his impeachment. This was called the permanent campaign. Obama seems to have adopted this strategy. We'll see it in action and determine whether it works for him.