W.H. adviser: Obama will do "better" working with Congress in second term
(CBS News) Transitioning out of a first term marked by unprecedented Washington gridlock, President Obama and his administration plan to do "a better job" in the next four years of doing "all we can" to negotiate with Congress on the most pressing issues, like deficit reduction and gun control, White House senior adviser David Plouffe said today on "Face the Nation."
"Yes, we have some political divisions in this country," Plouffe acknowledged, but added, "there's vast support out there for balanced deficit reaction, investments in education and manufacturing, immigration reform, gun safety. So on the issues the president intends to really push and focus on, there's massive support in the country, even amongst Republicans.
"...That's why we're going to do a better job in the second term of, we're going to do all we can to work with Congress and negotiate, to make sure the American people are more connected to what's going on here," he continued.
Plouffe nodded to one improvement already: Republicans agreeing to go along with a three-month extension on the debt ceiling increase. Though he conceded that "three months is no way to run an economy or a railroad or anything else," he said it's "helpful that they have now dropped their demand, that the only way they're going to pay the country's bills that they themselves racked up would be to extract some concessions."
Arguing that the U.S. economy is "poised to really grow," Plouffe said the American people "can't have Washington be a hindrance to that." He suggested returning to a "more regular order in Congress so we're not careening crisis-to-crisis. Congress ought to work together and come up with a long-term fiscal plan."
Though he said the president's priority in his second term remains growing the economy and the middle class in particular, Plouffe also cited new regulations to help thwart escalating gun violence in the country as something Mr. Obama thinks he can get through Congress.
"It's going to be very, very hard; obviously this is a tough issue," Plouffe said. "But I think if you look at the American people on things like assault weapons, high capacity ammunition clips, universal background checks, school safety, mental health - huge consensus on these issues. We're going to have to spend a lot of time on it.
"But I think post-Newtown, things have changed a little bit," he continued. "You see members of both parties thinking about this a little bit differently. And at the very least, I think the American people are going to want us to have a debate and a vote on these things. And I'm convinced that, yeah, are there 60 senators and 218 House members for some of these proposals? I think there are."
Even on areas of consensus, though, the "simple but obvious truth," Washington Post's Bob Woodward said during a panel discussion later in the show, "is that governing is a collaboration between the White House and Congress - and let's face it, it's a collaboration that's not working. It is broken. And the president has not found a way to kind of close the deal with the leaders in the Republican Party, and quite frankly, with his own party.
"...You talk to senators and Congress members, as you know, and they feel Barack Obama doesn't like them, or is at least indifferent to them," Woodward continued. "In any negotiation you need to leave the opponent with their dignity. And the president's going out and sticking his finger in their eye."
The Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan suggested a shift toward compromise would do Mr. Obama good, criticizing his "us guys versus you guys" mentality, "speaking in a way that is very sour about why Republicans take the stands they take." The president "implicitly is speaking about Republicans in a country who are half the country. I think that's a new way to play it, a tough and dicey way to play it."
Former Bill Clinton White House press secretary and Vanity Fair contributing editor Dee Dee Myers agreed that when negotiating you "have to let the other guy leave the table saying they got something for their side, because... they're going to give up something big if it's going to be an important deal." And Mr. Obama and his administration, she added, "has not done that as successfully as they need to," which leaves them with something akin to the Treaty of Versailles - "You solve the first world war with a treaty that sows the seeds of the second one," she said.
But former George W. Bush Secretary of State and CBS News contributor Condoleezza Rice suggested a "non-Washington" component could help propel the White House's promise to work better with Congress in the second term.
"Obviously, relations with Congress on one side of the aisle are pretty poisoned right now," she said. "But... the American people don't want to see this divisiveness. They want to see the president say, 'I won the election, and now here's where we're going, but we're going to keep together. I recognize that we have differences that may be deep, but first and foremost, we're Americans."
Mr. Obama can't communicate that, Rice continued, "from the point of view of, 'I'm going to put this down, and then you take it or leave it.' Because there are some deep, divisive issues within the immigration debate that are going to have to be smoothed over. So the American people - I like out in California; I don't live here in Washington. And I will tell you that out in the country, there's a sense that Washington is divided, and that's not a good thing for America."
