Obama enters 'The Matrix'

As the president moves forward on his ambitious legislative agenda, it might seem as if he is entering "The Matrix," a surreal world that only has the vaguest connection to real life.

And, indeed, the Congress has its own rules that make quick legislative action, no matter how popular with the American people, hard to achieve.

The Obama agenda is breathtaking in its scope and eye-popping in its cost.

He seeks to completely recast the health care, energy, financial services and automobile sectors of this country, as he seeks to make the tax code more progressive, retirement programs more sustainable, and the immigration system more welcoming to immigrants. And he also wants to stimulate the economy and get us out of what some people are calling the "Great Recession." But can it all get done, and in a form that makes his political base happy?

The president insists that he can get this all done, and his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, has implied that the financial crisis has actually given the White House more momentum to get it all done. But history tells a different story.

Congress has its own code, and cracking that code usually means taking into account five different factors. These five factors are:

Money: It may seem trite, but the biggest factor in determining the size and scope of a legislative agenda is how much money -- and more importantly, the perception of how much money -- is available for the government to use. Bill Clinton's legislative agenda was necessarily limited because his budget constraints made it difficult to spend money on big things.
George Bush, who inherited a fairly large budget surplus, had money to burn, which allowed him to pass a prescription drug benefit. President Obama has no money, which means that if he wants to pass a big new entitlement like a health care public option, he will have to make the Congress take the painful step of raising a lot of taxes.

Time: The legislative calendar is simply not that long. A new administration has a little less than a year to pass its big-ticket items, mostly because it is very hard to get major initiatives done in an election year. Take away the three months it takes to hire key staff, a couple of months for the various congressional recesses, and you have about six months to really legislate.

Since Congress is supposed to use some time to pass its annual spending bills (there are 12 that need to be passed each year, not counting supplemental spending bills), time for big initiatives is actually very limited. Each day the president takes time to travel overseas or to throw out the first pitch at an All Star game, he is taking time away from making contacts with legislators whose support is crucial for the president's agenda. Time is not a limitless resource on Capitol Hill.

Political capital: A president enters office with the highest popularity ratings he will ever get (barring a war or some other calamity that brings the country together), which is why most presidents try to pass as much as possible as early as possible in their administrations. The most famous example of that was Franklin Roosevelt's Hundred Days. But there are other examples. Ronald Reagan moved his agenda very early in his administration, George Bush passed his tax proposals and the No Child Left Behind law very early in his White House. They understood the principle that it is important to strike while the iron is hot.

President Bush famously misunderstood this principle when he said that he was going to use the "political capital" gained in his re-election to pass Social Security reform. What he failed to understand was that as soon as he won re-election, he was a lame duck in the eyes of the Congress, and he had no political capital.

President Obama believes he has a lot of political capital, and perhaps he does. But each day he is in office, his political capital reserve is declining. And each time he goes to the well to pass things like "cap and trade" makes it more difficult for him to pass his more important priorities like health care.

Focus: Congress can walk and chew gum at the same time. But focus is essential to achieving results. Presidential focus quite often moves off the domestic agenda and into the wider world of diplomacy. But that can spell greater political danger for a president and his party.

George H.W. Bush spent most of his presidency winning a war against Iraq and successfully concluded the Cold War conflict with the Soviet Union. But neither of those foreign policy successes helped him win re-election. His son, George W. Bush, understood that he had to keep a tight focus on the economy and one big domestic policy item (education), and while the war on terror did end up dominating his presidency, Bush never forgot to focus on his domestic achievements.

The biggest danger to President Obama is not just foreign entanglements, it is also competing domestic priorities that threaten to undermine his ability to get big things done. For example, the House vote on cap and trade has made it very hard for conservative and moderate Democrats to join with Speaker Nancy Pelosi on a more important health care bill.

After the cap and trade vote, opponents deluged the offices of centrist House Democrats with loud complaints about the costs of the energy bill, and according to media reports, that has made these critical members even more nervous about the budget ramifications of the health care reform package being pushed by the president.

Ego: Probably the most intangible and most unpredictable part of the legislative process is the rather large egos of the legislators. Despite having generally milquetoast reputations, each member of Congress has a variety of factors that impact how and why they vote. Of course, their chief motivation is political survival. But each assesses their political viability differently, and loyalty to the White House is not always top of the list. Some members of Congress, who have been in the trenches for decades, have healthy egos that need love and affection from the Obama administration.

For example, when the White House concluded deals with health care providers, legislative leaders like Charlie Rangel and Henry Waxman, who weren't party to the talks, threw a fit, said the deals didn't apply to them, and sent a strong message that they weren't going to honor those commitments. That of course, threw the larger health care negotiations into disarray. Egos matter on Capitol Hill, and stroking them is an essential part of cracking the congressional code.

In the movie "The Matrix," Keanu Reeves, playing Neo, ends the film with the line, "Anything is possible." In a Hollywood movie, anything is possible. But in Congress, with limited money, limited time and limited patience, the president can't get everything he wants. And after watching his cap and trade proposal fall flat in the Senate, his health care bill lose support in both chambers, his tax proposals meet stiff resistance from the business community and key centrist Democrats, and his financial service reform proposals go nowhere, he risks getting nothing that he wants.

Policy on detaining terror suspects : Deadline missed

In a move already drawing fire from liberal activists, aides to President Obama acknowledged the administration will miss its own Tuesday deadline to submit a report detailing its policy on detaining terror suspects.
The report is a key part of laying out the White House's plan for shutting down the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay.
In a briefing for reporters, four senior administration officials confirmed the task force dealing with detention policy has been granted a six-month extension to flesh out its plans. A separate task force dealing with interrogation policy has been given a two-month extension to submit its own report to the president. The reports had been mandated to be completed this week by executive orders the president signed during his first week in office.
The administration will miss its deadline to submit a report detailing its policy on detaining terror suspects.

Meanwhile, the task force did issue a preliminary report late Monday regarding the process of determining whether suspected terrorists will be prosecuted in federal courts or military commissions. However, the memo gave few details, instead reiterating the administration's intent to reform the military commissions and affording basic protections for detainees.

Despite the delays, the four senior officials insisted the Obama administration is making strong progress in resolving the thorny legal issues surrounding the 240 terror suspects that were detained at Guantanamo as of January of this year, and is still on track to shut the prison down next January as spelled out by executive order.

"I think we're all comfortable with where we are in the process," one senior administration official said of shutting the controversial prison.

A second senior administration official said it is the administration's "goal" to still shut the prison. When pressed by reporters on whether this was a softening of the promise to actually close the prison down, this official insisted there has been no change and the administration is still planning to comply with the executive order.

This second official downplayed the delays in finishing the reports. "We wanted to get this right," said the official. "We wanted to do this carefully."

But officials at the American Civil Liberties Union criticized the delay in the release of the report on detainee policy in particular, noting Obama officials have also left the door open to holding some Guantanamo detainees indefinitely without charge or trial.

"The Obama administration must not slip into the same legal swamp that engulfed the Bush administration with its failed Guantanamo policies," said Anthony Romero, the ACLU's executive director. "Any effort to revamp the failed Guantanamo military commissions or enact a law to give any president the power to hold individuals indefinitely and without charge or trial is sure to be challenged in court and it will take years before justice is served."

Romero added, "The only way to make good on President Obama's promise to shut down Guantanamo and end the military commissions is to charge and try the detainees in established federal criminal courts. Any effort to do otherwise will doom the Obama administration to lengthy litigation. A promise deferred could soon become a promise broken."

But a third senior administration official insisted the White House is making good progress in dealing with all the terror suspects being held at Guantanamo. This third official told reporters the administration is "over halfway through reviewing the detainees at Guantanamo" by either transferring them to other countries or moving toward putting them on trial for prosecution.

This third official said that "substantially more than 50" of the detainees are prepared for transfer, while a "significant number" are being prepared for prosecution.

A fourth senior administration official said the White House is making "great progress" in getting European countries like Italy to publicly agree to take on some detainees. The official said other European countries have privately agreed to take detainees, but will not publicly discuss it yet.

"In the weeks and months ahead we will build on that strong foundation," said the official.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell criticized the administration for announcing its intent to shutter the Guantanamo prison "before it actually had a plan."
"Bipartisan majorities of both houses and the American people oppose closing Guantanamo without a plan, and several important questions remain unanswered," he said.