Dan Pfeiffer’s Exit Interview: How the White House Learned to Be Liberal

[kpete]

March 9, 2015 By Taegan Goddard
Jonathan Chait has a great exit interview with White House adviser Dan Pfeiffer:

“The original premise of Obama’s first presidential campaign was that he could reason with Republicans—or else, by staking out obviously reasonable stances, force them to moderate or be exposed as extreme and unyielding. It took years for the White House to conclude that this was false… If you had to pinpoint the moment this worldview began to crystallize, it would probably be around the first debt-ceiling showdown, in 2011, when Obama tried repeatedly and desperately to cut a budget deal with House Speaker John Boehner only to realize, eventually, that Boehner did not have the power to negotiate. The administration has now decided that in many cases, even adversarial bargaining fails because the Republican leadership is not capable of planning tactically.”

Explained Pfeiffer: “You have to be careful not to presume a lot of strategy for this group. I’ve always believed that the fundamental, driving strategic ethos of the Republican House leadership has been, What do we do to get through the next caucus or conference without getting yelled at? We should never assume they have a long game. We used to spend a lot of time thinking that maybe Boehner is saying this to get himself some more room. And it’s like, no, that’s not actually the case. Usually he’s just saying it because he just said it or it’s the easiest thing to solve his immediate problem.”

http://politicalwire.com/2015/03/09/how-obama-learned-to-ignore-republicans/
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/03/dan-pfeiffer-exit-interview.html

[Wellstone ruled]

1. After the Rethugs adopted the so called

Contract with America,it has been one shit storm after the other. Most of the same players pretty much run the show yet today. These smelly turds,new how optics and sound bites,could be used to flim flam Americans into believing their load of manure. These people have only one end game and that is a permanent low wage worker class people beholding to a few very wealthy that can be protected by a Police State much like England in nineteenth century.

[hedda_foil]

2. Great piece. Thanks, kpete

[Tom Rinaldo]

3. This was the reason why I didn't get on the Obama bandwagon in 2008 until his nomination

was virtually assured. But I was comfortable supporting him in the general election because I knew at some point he would wake up to the inevitable Republican unyielding resistance and smell the burnt coffee. He's an intelligent man.

[msongs]

5. well it only took him 6 yrs to learn what we knew the day he was elected lol nt

[Octafish]

4. Why didn't President Obama use GOP intransigence to destroy them politically?

If he had, the voters would remember who caused the shutdown.

We wouldn't have any worries in 2014, either. Oh.

[bigtree]

6. I'd written about Barack Obama's naivete about 'working with republicans' since his first campaign

...nice to see evidence that he came to terms with all of that; much too late, I think.

me: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022752251

[Adrahil]

7. I blame Rahm.

Rahm Emanuel pulled Obama away from the left, and that was a mistake. Look at how he has been running Chicago. That's where he was pushing Obama to govern from. I think Obama has personal loyalty and trusted Emanuel's advice WAY too much.

Let Obama be Obama.