President Obama DisOBEYed? (Corrected below)

Perhaps its because tax cuts don't deliver the kind of stimulus to the economy that are actually needed and they are choosing to err on the side of being effective versus, well, not being effective. Tax cuts deliver almost no economic jolt, aid to states generally the biggest multiplier (food stands ~ $1.73 for every federal $ spent), infrastructure ~$1.59 for ever fed $, numbers from Moodys).

Or maybe, Michael, Obama isn't stupid and knows that tax cuts are ineffective but are for some reason manna to Republicans, and so talked them up while signalling to the Dems in the House that he would be happy if they decreased them substantially.

What, you think only Karl Rove knows how to play politics? You really should accept that Obama knows what he's doing in DC, even if Karl Rove doesn't advise him. (And maybe Obama will end his term NOT the most unpopular president ever, huh?)

Considering that NO Republicans voted for the bill, I think maybe Obama would be right to let go of something he doesn't believe in. That big a tax cut was only proposed to get a few Republican votes, and they didn't go for it, so why bother to try? The American people voted for a Dem president and a Dem congress for a reason, because we tried the other way, and that way lay disaster.

Tax cuts = trickle down, the Repub mantra. Of course, if you ain't got no income, no matter anyway. Eat cake. As far as I am concerned, the generic tax cut jibberish is just that. Political nonspeaksence.

This win-lose narrative is really tiresome. The real story here is the Republicans, unpatriotically rooting for failure, are refusing to participate in the legislative process in any substantive way.
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Just as they rubberstamped every disastrous Bush policy, they are obstructing every Obama policy. Regardless of merit.

Or maybe...Obama really doesn't believe in tax cuts, since he is a liberal Democrat and massive tax cuts are not really the style of his type. He will claim he wants them, let the House and Senate do the dirty work of whittling them down, and then when he's given the bill say "Well, it seems those rascally Democrats took out the tax cuts I wanted soooo much. Darn." Then he'll sign a bill that he and the Congressional Dems are all happy with, while maintaining a pretense of bipartisanship.

I've got it! The Republicans are the love children of Samuel Gompers and his ultimate creation - the UAW. They only see negotiations as win-lose and the only answer to how much tax cuts or corporate welfare they know is MORE! MORE! MORE!
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Morons.

Maybe they give Obama room to ride in on his bipartisan white horse in the final hours to make peace with tax cut-hungry Republicans.
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Or maybe you're a f@cking moron, and nobody really gives a rat's ass about what the Republicans want because they're going to try to block everything anyway.

"On Friday, the Congressional Budget Office scored the bill passed out of the House last week. It contains only $182.3 billion of tax cuts, or about 22 percent of the total cost."

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Actually, much of those so-called "tax cuts" are, in fact, welfare payments to the 40% of households in the United States who pay NO federal income taxes. Obama confiscating property from Republican taxpayers to give to his voters (citizens and illegal aliens) who pay no federal income taxes ain't a "tax cut".

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MS: ...task of controlling his own party's Congressional leadership, a problem that always dogged and eventually damaged President George W. Bush.
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'Always', Michael? You could argue that was the case after the '06 elections when the Congressional GOP fell into the minority - no harm in distancing themselves from Bush then...But you have to have some form of severe memory loss to forget about the six years prior to that.

As a bemused spectator (in a nation in even more dire fiscal straits), where in the hell is the sacrifice? Tax cuts, regardless of amt. or to whom, tax cuts!?
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And maybe I'm outside the US media bubble, but is Obama sufficiently selling this to the American people? I don't care about Super Bowl parties with GOP invites (great PR leading to votes?), but is he explaining the disconnect between his inaugural call for sacrifice and this bill? Cuz I gotta tell ya, the time political and popular stomach for "sacrifice" is never going to get riper.

"outside the US media bubble"
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Mind you, this is said, sniffle, with extreme regret.

"...eventually damaged President George W. Bush". Did you mean the eternally damaged President George W. Bush? Bush was damaged before he ever took the oath of office in 2001. Drawing a parallel between Obama's 1st 10 days in office and the republicans repudiating their own president seems iffy at best. I think the congressional democrats know what horse their wagon is hitched to.

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jc,
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no you are right. Neither Obama nor the congressional Dems are doing a very good job with message management. It's pretty appalling. Ask Mr. Scherer, Time White House Correspondent, what a disorganized mess the Obama press office is. Or read this: Who's Undercutting Obama? : CJR
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And the media message management for the House and Senate is incompetent to non-existent. Meanwhile, Repub message management is effective and superb. It's maddening.
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Here's what I heard from one reporter Wednesday in response to my question (and Josh's question Talking Points Memo | Where are They?):

Just taking today:
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I called and emailed Brendan Daly [Nancy Pelosi's press flak] at 10 am today. Nothing. I have had maybe 15 email exchanges and phone calls with his counterpart on the GOP side.
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Call or email GOP press aide, you get a response somewhere between 2 mins (best) and 3 hours (worst) but usually within 20 minutes. Call or email Dem press aide, you get a response somewhere between 15 mins (best) and never (worst) but usually not for at least three hours.
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But here's the basic outlook: You're a reporter with an end-of-day deadline. You call up X# Republican spokespeople, including from the leadership, and X# Democratic spokespeople, including from the leadership. What happens?
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GOP leadership calls and/or emails within two minutes. They call back if needed. Dem leadership press folks never call back.
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After that, for the rank-and-file, or committee chairs, the best GOP time was about 2 minutes. On the Dem side, about 15 mins. The worst GOP time was three hours. The worst Dem time was "never." Most GOPers called or emailed within about 20 minutes. On the Dem side, it was at least three hours.
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Now, reporters are not entirely dependent on flaks to do their work. In some cases, the bosses of the people I was trying to reach came out and spoke in public, which answered my question. But if Team A gives me quick, substantive answers and Team B gives me silence, how do you think that affects the story?
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On the Democratic side, leadership flaks won't or can't answer questions about policy (like whether they are for/against a given bill) rather than procedure (like what's coming next on the floor).
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I don't get the same warnings from the GOP on the Hill. Boehner's main press guy, Michael Steel, drops what he's doing and calls me back usually within 15 mins. And is ALWAYS pleasant and knowledgeable.
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But Hoyer's people are pretty quick. So are Durbin's. So it's not that bad across the board.
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This is a straight reporter, not a hack.
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So, what does that tell us?

I'm still waiting for someone to explain to me why the Republicans are obsessed with tax cuts? Tax cuts or spending both inject money into the economy to the same degree. When done with spending, the money can be directed by a legislative process to where it can do the most good. Tax cuts on the other hand end up in the hands of people we hope might do something good with it but history teaches up won't.
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Never mind. I answered my own question.....
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This tells us that Micheal and the Village suffer from the same short term myopia that misjudged Obama's campaign during the primary and the general election. Republicans are trying to play McCain's "Win the news cycle" game that produces headlines but won few votes.
By the time the stimulus bill is passed, signed, and executed, a lot of us will look back and see that the patient, careful, and diligent work that characterizes Obama's leadership style overcame the short-sighted and cynical GnOP tactics. Again.

Micheal, everyone wrote the "Dems in disarray" article last week. If you want to be unoriginal, at least have the decency to do it when everyone else is.

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I see this as a long term problem that the Dems need to deal with. This is the big time, and there is no excuse for this kind of disorganized amateurism. The Dems, both in the WH and Congress, should always have someone available to answer a questions from a reporter, period. It is the Democrats who suffer from myopia in letting the Republicans manage the mainstream news message. The Dems got punked on Wednesday.
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Thanks for posting that J-LA. Calls into ? GOP "scorn" for the "liberal" media. Don't shoot the messenger, hack or otherwise.
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In the end, I'll take the bill, but it could and should be better. Thus far I'm not seeing the muscular role the times demand of Obama--letting the likes of Boner or MS & co. massage a message that should be unquestionably his. Screw the radio address--he should be on the soapbox, on live TV, daily if necessary, fighting for a clean bill and the change he's selling. Thus far I'm seeing a far too cautious president, resembling his transition persona--again, from my narrow window in Asia (and no P-luk, it's not manufactured by Overton). I turn on CNN international and puke rice literally within moments. So far, too much William Jefferson Clinton and too little FDR.

I don't disagree that they got punked, but when you look at Wed. terms of a Senate debate and passage, a joint committee negotiation, and a final vote that will take place in the next 2-3 weeks (with cash-strapped GOP governors chiming in as well), and a signing with public fanfare, it might not look like a big deal.

Can the stimulus still be bipartisan with the support of the governors and not the Repub members of Congress?

All I'm saying is that process is more important than message right now.

iwasindy:
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I want to look at it that way, but Obama has to proactively counter the media inclination to turn on the saints they've built up. God knows they're gnashing their teeth. His popularity and political capital are fleeting commodities--he shouldn't allow things to settle into their comfortable slots, including his own. Midterm elections are right around the corner. In other words, don't go prevent with a lead you overestimate. And what worked in a campaign against deeply flawed candidates might not work while in office, in times of nearly unprecedented freefall.

Where did all that money the theives stole go (not all Repubs, mind you)? Did it evaporate? Where is it? Just a random thought I had while enjoying the posts.

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All I'm saying is that the message is ALWAYS important. The Democrats are always going to get punked until they can compete with the GOP on media message management.
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I think it's a mistake to think that competent media message management should somehow be a secondary strategy. A reporter who calls up wanting a Dem side message to include in his/her story ought to be cheerfully accommodated in a timely manner, period. How frickin hard is that? Real hard, apparently.
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Thursday, the message that got out was that Obama "failed." Okay? The bill lost handily, the Repubs boycotted and obstructed, but Obama's efforts at bipartisanship "failed." That is catastrophic messaging on the Dem side. That's what I mean, they got punked. The GOP won that round.
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The GOP will win in the Senate too, unless the Dems get their sh!t together. Remember "Harry Reid failed to get 60 votes" versus "The Republicans filibustered"? THAT'S media message management, my friend. It isn't trivial.
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"passed handily"

no you are right. Neither Obama nor the congressional Dems are doing a very good job with message management. It's pretty appalling.
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that's because Team Obama doesn't know what its doing, and the Dem Congressional leadership doesn't want to undercut Team Obama.
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Ultimately, the biggest problems are with the word "stimulus", and Obama's obsession with creating his "post-partisan" image. Talking about a "stimulus" includes the necessary assumption that we are just experience a cyclical downturn, rather than an economic meltdown whose origins lie in fundamental, structural flaws of the financial system.
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And Obama's obsession with creating the illusion that he can "change how Washington works" makes it impossible to create an effective message -- we're looking at an economic crisis that requires swift and decisive actions, and Obama is focussing on "process". Maybe if Obama had been elected to succeed Clinton, worrying about "process" would not be so problematic. But Obama came into office after eight disasterous years of Bush, and faces a host of extremely complex, and absolutely critical, issues -- "changing the way washington works" should be very low on the list of priorities right now, but it seems to be what Obama cares about most.

Or perhaps Nate Silver was right three weeks ago: Barack Obama's plan all along was to start out with a mediocre bill and make it better.
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See how he tried to work with House Republicans? Apparently conservatives love Rush more than they love America.

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My concerns about this go beyond the Obama "post-partisan" thing, pluk. I'm talking that the Dems in Congress are incompetent at message management and it is an ongoing problem and hasn't gotten any better. How frickin hard is it to hire flaks that can call a reporter back and answer his/her question? As it is, the Dem leadership ends up getting punked by the GOP on every issue. I've been trying to pin down exactly why that is, and what I posted above is one big reason, and one big reason that can be improved.
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