The temptation to watch gleefully as the Obama presidency wobbles must have been strong for the House Republican leadership.
After all, the Republicans are mere months away from seizing control of Congress just four years after enduring what amounted to a political repudiation in 2006. They have watched this happen almost despite themselves.
There was no popular GOP initiative that won the country back; indeed, the country’s rightward shift has had very little to do with Republicans.
But the House Republican leadership seems to understand that it will soon be called on to provide an agenda. Last week, it began to shape that agenda, with a document called “A Pledge to America.”
The Pledge is not a perfect political document. It suffers from several key flaws.
First, in a symptomatic modern failing, the Pledge to America is bloated. Like the sprawling pieces of legislation that it criticizes for being too large and unwieldy, the Pledge never fails to be comprehensive when it could instead be bold.
At 48 pages (with pictures), the Pledge loses much of the potency it could have had. The brilliance of the Contract with America — the 1994 document that the Pledge self-consciously imitates — was in its simplicity. It came with due dates and bill names. It also had the good sense to know when to stop. The Contract didn’t address every pet issue of the Republican caucus, nor did it get bogged down in more minor debates.
One could easily imagine a stripped-down version of the Pledge that could have committed the presumptive GOP majority to read every bill and solicit online feedback, balance the budget, and repeal and replace Obama’s health care law. This, perhaps, would have been a more potent formulation of the GOP’s goals of openness, limited government and fiscal sanity.
Further, the Pledge continues some particularly obnoxious GOP politicking when it bemoans the Obama Medicare cuts. This complaint seems calculated solely for political gain, and probably runs counter to the actual feelings of most Republican congressmen.
There are some minor gems of phrasing and politics amid the mess, however.
For example, the “Red Tape Factory” in Washington, D.C., is a fantastic image. Americans generally agree that much of life is over-regulated and the federal government is particularly to blame. But the Pledge’s solution is to rein it in by letting Congress vote whenever a proposed regulation would cost more than $100 million.
This is an admirable goal so far as it restricts the power of the administrative branch — the unseen and unaccountable fourth branch of American government — but the solution lacks immediacy. So too do many of the Pledge’s specific points. Those looking for rallying cries should look elsewhere.
The Pledge, still, is a sort of renunciation of the popular nihilism that has threatened to overwhelm any positive response the GOP has to the Obama agenda. Clearly, there are still those in Republican leadership who believe that saying “No” is the beginning, not the end, of the message. The Pledge provides the “No, but,” and the “No, because,” that every political debate needs.
The Pledge’s strongest argument is the graphic that portrays the dense web of new bureaus and agencies that will be responsible for implementing Obama’s health care law. The graphic is simple and powerful, and it underscores a crucial point: There is much in the Obama agenda to oppose.
But opposition is simply a means toward a positive goal of different policy. GOP leaders seem to understand that their time to lead is coming.
And they are finally saying something more than “No.”
Reach Will at wmunsil@asu.edu
