Obama's royal-pain opposition: It ain't the Republicans

Polls are funny things. You'll find for example in the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll that while a respectable 52 percent of those surveyed support Obama's "approach to the deficit," a more impressive 62 percent regard him as a "fiscally responsible Democrat."

One would think there'd be a precise intersection of support and regard for responsibility -- or, at least, something less than a double-digit spread -- so go figure. At any rate, let's vex ourselves not with more statistics and settle instead for this pleasant generality: "The number of Americans who believe that the nation is headed in the right direction has roughly tripled since Barack Obama's election."

While it's true the tripling is less than a plurality, keep in mind that last fall and early winter the "right direction" figure was miserably microscopic. So, graphically speaking, we see something of an "X": as the economy has trended down and to the right, confidence in the general direction we're going -- invested in a personage of one -- remains on a straight and upward trajectory.

Still, says the Wapo-ABC poll, "the nation's overall mood remains gloomy." Plus, there is detectable slippage: Independents are peeling away, not en masse, but noticeably; and while about "two in three Americans ... have confidence that Obama's economic policies will improve the economy," that's down a bit from his pre-inaugural days.

Overall? "Fewer Americans now express confidence that his economic programs will work, barely half of the country approves of how the president is dealing with the federal budget deficit [even though, remember, many more regard him as "fiscally responsible"], and the political climate is once again highly polarized."

So what gives? After all, Obama has only faithfully striven to execute his campaign promises of middle-class tax cuts and economic stimuli and progress on health care yada yada yada, vastly unlike his predecessor, who quite disingenuously and almost instantly flipped on damn near everything. So why, suddenly, less confidence in his economic programs? So why, indeed, the degradation in Washington's political climate?

Hell, don't blame the Republicans. In fact, I'm not even sure they still constitute a political party. In further fact, they're the only amusement we have in these forbidding times, so for heaven's sake let's not run them out of town or groundlessly assign them any existential potency. With their exotic Bachmanns and Steeles and Cantors and associate-good-fella Limbaughs they've become Mad-magazine parodies of an SNL parody -- God love 'em, and I'd miss 'em -- but an opposition party by any definitional stretch they ain't. Not yet.

No, I'd venture that this Democratic president's real and more worrisome opposition are those who stand athwart the general principles of the Democratic Party: Congressional Democrats, of course.

This I expressed not more than a week ago, but yesterday I ran across similar sentiments from the New Republic's Jonathan Chait in a more expansive piece -- "Why the Democrats Can't Govern" -- which I highly recommend.

"[T]he contours of failure are now clearly visible," he writes. "In Obama's case, as with his predecessors [Clinton and Carter], the prospective culprit is the same: Democrats in Congress, and especially the Senate. At a time when the country desperately needs a coherent response to the array of challenges it faces, the congressional arm of the Democratic Party remains mired in fecklessness, parochialism, and privilege."

"Inarguable" recently became an overnight and overworked adjectival smash which I try to avoid, but I'll whip it out on this one. Fecklessness, parochialism and privilege -- the tripodal foundation of the aristocratic bumbling and reactionaryism we find in this dreadful Democratic Senate -- hands down, ironclad, there's just no argument possible.

Obviously there are exceptions; the Senate still harbors its scattered Ted Kennedys and Russ Feingolds, Democrats who've retained their principles and vision and legislatively labor to reify them. But there are also the reigning "culprits" of Chait's piece:

Kent Conrad, Senate Budget Committee chair, for instance, who "demand[ed] that Obama do more to reduce the deficit while simultaneously opposing his deficit-reducing measures." Notes Chait: You'd think this "would have turned Conrad into a punch line. Instead, it launched him as a symbol of fiscal rectitude and encouraged fellow Democrats to follow in his hypocritical wake."

Or Nebraska's Ben Nelson, who's eviscerating Obama's effort at ending costly guaranteed student loans (versus direct government loans). "This is as straightforward a case as you can find of a fight between special interests and the public good," writes Chait -- inarguably -- yet "Nelson opposes it because one of the lenders that benefits from federal overpayments is based in Lincoln, Nebraska."

Or the "Eight Democratic senators [who] signed a letter opposing the use of reconciliation to pass a cap-and-trade bill limiting carbon-dioxide emissions," as well as the "Several Democrats also oppose using reconciliation to pass health care reform."

Or the majority leader himself, who snootily, inexplicably asserted that "I don't work for him," meaning the one man whom an impressive majority of Americans just elected to get a job done -- as promised.

The net effect of their collective carping and retrogressive hardline-ism is "a congressional party that is congenitally unable to govern" in a coherent, unidirectional manner, concludes Chait. George W. Bush accomplished so many of his goals because his majority Republicans acted like a "parliamentary party": but Obama has Democrats, who "hedge their bets by carving out an independent identity."

Another effect is, and will be, a general dragging down of confidence in Obama and his agenda. Because the electorate -- the silly geese -- see him as the leader of his party, responsible for its progress or inarguable lack thereof.