The Green Lantern theory of the presidency

Matthew Yglesias pinpoints an important -- and absurd -- meme in which liberals blame Obama's legislative compromises on a lack of will (see, for instance, Kos and Hamsher on health care reform):

I sort of want to stop writing about Matt Taibbi, but his decision to respond to his critics with an article on “Obamania” compels me to write more... [W]hen it comes to domestic policy issues, and certainly when it comes to financial reform, you’d be hard-pressed to find an issue on which there’s a majority in the House, and a majority on all the relevant House committees, and a majority on all the relevant Senate committees, and 60 votes in the Senate for some progressive bill but Barack Obama is standing in the way of reform...

Whatever failings the package may have, they’re not the fault of the Obama administration. And whatever ties the Obama administration may have to big banks, the banks like the Republicans’ ideas a lot better than they like Obama’s.

If you want to complain about the Obama administration, you should complain about their conduct of issues they actually have control over... [O]n legislative matters that require the concurrence of congress, it’s not clear what pushing Obama to the left would accomplish. Rather than “Obamamania” I think a lot of the left is infected with a kind of “Presidentmania” in which they assume that the White House could get anything done if only they really wanted it. But let me promise you, the White House wants to sign a health care bill. They really, really do. Having their top priority bogged down for months is not part of a secret plan.

During the Bush years, 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.

Update 12/15 1:35 PM: Green Lantern alert! Here's MoveOn.org demanding Obama "not allow Senator Joe Lieberman to hold health care reform hostage" (via Jonathan Bernstein):

Today, MoveOn.org members will hold an emergency rally outside of the White House telling President Obama to not allow Senator Joe Lieberman to hold health care reform hostage, and to urge the President to fight for real reform with the public health insurance option. MoveOn members want to remind the President that the country elected him, not Joe Lieberman, to fix our nation's broken health care system.

Who knew that Obama could just "not allow" Lieberman to threaten to oppose health reform? It looks like the liberal elite need a lesson on how a bill becomes a law...

Update 12/15 3:26 PM: Yglesias returns to the theme this morning:

I know a lot of people out there on the Internet seem to feel that the White House could have saved the public option if only they’d put more “pressure” on Joe Lieberman, Blanche Lincoln, etc. or done some more “arm-twisting” as seen in colorful LBJ anecdotes. Do people think the administration forgot to use its magic pressure button to get Senator Nelson to endorse the deal? Or is it possible that a minority of legislators are relatively immune to pressure and blandishment from the White House?

I should also note that CJR's Greg Marx was implicitly criticizing the GL theory in this article back in August:

[T]he rapidly coalescing media narrative—both in the mainstream press and from liberal-leaning outlets—is that Obama and his team have bungled their push for health care reform by compromising too readily, or not articulating and sticking to a vision more forcefully...

[M]uch of this criticism proceeds from the assumption that a different approach—either more detailed, or more aggressively partisan, or more specific and straightforward—would have commanded majority support in Congress. Where’s the evidence for that assumption?...

This close scrutiny to “theories of power” suggests that there is one that can be counted on to work—but history shows that no matter what strategy is employed, a president has only limited power over Congress...

Given the current configuration of Congress, the fate of health care is likely to depend, in the end, on the incentives confronting conservative Democrats...

* Here's Yglesias explaining the Green Lantern reference:

[T]he Green Lantern Corps is a sort of interstellar peacekeeping force set up by the Guardians of Oa to maintain the peace and defend justice. It recruits members from all sorts of different species and equips them with the most powerful weapon in the universe, the power ring.

...[The ring] lets its bearer generate streams of green energy that can take on all kinds of shapes. The important point is that, when fully charged what the ring can do is limited only by the stipulation that it create green stuff and by the user's combination of will and imagination. Consequently, the main criterion for becoming a Green Lantern is that you need to be a person capable of "overcoming fear" which allows you to unleash the ring's full capacities...

Comments

[David]

I don't mind that Obama and Congress aren't achieving all their aims, since most of their goals are harmful IMHO. Having said that, I'd be more impressed with Yglesias's defense of Obama if Obama had really tried hard to get his legislative vision enacted. Obama might have laid out a specific plan and made numerous speeches trying to sell his ideas to Congress and to the public. George W. Bush did that successfully with respect to invading Iraq and cutting taxes. Bill and Hillary Clinton failed in their effort to sell health reform, but at least they really tried.

[Seth]

Thank you, David, for proving Brendan's point.

[Noah]

right on seth. My favorite part is:

"Bill and Hillary Clinton failed in their effort to sell health reform, but at least they really tried."

Apparently actual accomplishment isn't what matters (and by extension actually helping the uninsured) but rather it's the outward presentation of effort!
Teacher teacher! Why didn't a get an A? Didn't it LOOK like I was really trying hard?

I suppose I shouldn't be took shocked at that mentality. Image is god when consumption dominates.