Enter
Central America, and I would
hope that the outcome would be
an outpouring of support from
Americans … But the polls usually found that large numbers
of Americans cared little or not
at all about what happened in
Central America … and, among
those who did care, too few cared
… to apply the kind of pressure I
needed on Congress.
More broadly, let’s engage in a
thought exercise. Say that the current occupant of the White House is
a silver-tongued devil of a speaker
— the most gorgeous orator in the
history of the realm. And let’s say
that I am not blogger Jason Linkins,
let’s say that I am Sen. Jason
Linkins (I-WTFistan). Give all the
speeches you want, Mr. President
Silver Tongued-Devil. Go out there
and emote. Rend your garments. If
I can rustle up a super-minority of
senators to quietly filibuster what
you want to do, I beat you and your
bully pulpit every time.
That’s largely what’s happening
now. The word “filibuster” never
appears in Cillizza’s column, and
it really should, because that right
there’s the whole shooting match.
The good news here is that persuasion from a sort of “pulpit” is
LOOKING FORWARD
IN ANGST
possible. As Sides has pointed out
many a time, “What presidents can
do, Edwards argues, is ‘facilitate’
change in favorable environments.”
The takeaway then, is that “bully
pulpit persuasion” doesn’t have a
short game. It’s a long and circuitous and time-consuming process,
in which a president does not so
much “persuade lots of recalcitrant
voters or members of Congress,” as
merely “signal the president’s in-
Remember FDR’s
‘fireside chats?’ If you
do, you are probably
remembering them way
too fondly.”
tention to push for these policies
and, equally if not more important,
to bargain about these policies.”
Let me give you a cheap, sideof-the-cereal-box example of how
“facilitating change in a favorable
environment” works. One day, Vice
President Joe Biden is on Meet the
Press, and he says, “I am absolutely
comfortable with the fact that men
marrying men, women marrying
women and heterosexual men marrying women are entitled to the
same exact rights.” The next thing
HUFFINGTON
06.30-07.07.13