Week In Politics: Obama's Team, Congress, Budget

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MELISSA BLOCK, host:

And for more on this week in politics, we're joined now by our regular Friday political contributors David Brooks, the columnist for The New York Times and E.J. Dionne, a columnist with The Washington Post. Welcome back to both of you.

Mr. E.J. DIONNE (Columnist, The Washington Post): Good to be here.

Mr. DAVID BROOKS (Columnist, The New York Times): Good to see you.

BLOCK: And let's start with the shuffling this week of the White House staff. We were just hearing from Scott about Gene Sperling taking over as chief economic adviser. We heard about his background with Goldman Sachs. We also had William Daley being named yesterday as chief of staff, bringing with him a strong background in the business world and on corporate boards.

And liberal groups, E.J. Dionne, you're hearing from them, everybody seems to be. They are rankled. They do not like this one bit.

Mr. DIONNE: Right. Well, there are two ways of looking at the Bill Daley, sort of nomination, or appointment. One is ideologically, and, yes, the liberal groups, a lot of liberal groups said this is terrible because he didn't like the health care plan. He really didn't like the Wall Street reform bill, so, what's he doing there?

But there are other liberals including, notably, Howard Dean, who's probably been his leading defender the last few days, who say, wait a minute, this is an okay guy.

And I think the other way to look at it is not ideologically, but in terms of competence, connections and even the possibility that if he can broker some piece with the business community, he actually buys Obama some room to be more progressive. I think the key - somebody who worked with Daley for many years said, look, whatever you think of his views on this or that, he's somebody who actually takes other opinions seriously and takes people who work with him seriously.

And in the White House, having somebody who hears you is really important. And even when somebody is disagreed with, if they know they have a hearing, that matters. And I think Daley in that sense could be a very sort of helpful force to a White House that's a little bit closed in.

BLOCK: Well, David Brooks, what do you think? Does this indicate for you a more pro-business centrist tilt to the Obama administration?

Mr. BROOKS: Not necessarily. I do think it is more about competence. For Daley, I think the job is first to clarify lines of authority in the White House. Second, to make sure that when the president makes a decision it actually gets carried out by people in the administration, which isn't always happening right now. And so I think that - it's an exceptionally good choice. And mostly on technical grounds; he's chief of staff, not a policymaker.

And as far as Sperling goes, it's overstated to say he is a moderate Democrat anymore. I think he was maybe when he wrote that book, "The Pro-Growth Progressive." I think he shifted a little left as economic conditions have changed. And he's incredibly valuable because you wake him up at four in the morning and read him part of your speech you want to give on economic policy, he'll spew out nine policy programs that you can then put into practice. I mean he's incredibly prolific in coming up with 90 million different policy programs.

BLOCK: You're waking him up at four in the morning on a regular basis?

Mr. BROOKS: And if you wake him up, believe me, he's at the office.

Mr. DIONNE: You won't wake him up because he's already there. I mean, the one law he regularly violates is the Fair Wages and Hours Act because he works all the time.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. DIONNE: And I thought Laura Tyson had it right when she called him a progressive centrist because, yes, he's pro-free market, but he has a real passion for poor people, particularly the education of poor people both in the U.S. and around the world.

One other thing that hasn't been noticed, Ron Bloom, who was involved in the auto rescue, has been given a new job to help rescue American manufacturing jobs in the White House. I think it's going to be very important, A, because a lot of progressives and labor people are going to like that, and, B, when you look at the whole swath of Democratic losses from upstate New York all the way to Wisconsin, blue collar manufacturing employment is really important to Obama's re-election.

BLOCK: It was of course a big week on Capitol Hill with the swearing in of the new Congress and, of course, the Republicans taking the majority in the House. Let's listen to the new speaker of the House, John Boehner, in his address on Wednesday.

Representative JOHN BOEHNER (Republican, Ohio; Speaker of the House): But above all else, we will welcome the battle of ideas, encourage it, engage it openly, honestly and respectfully.

BLOCK: And, also, we heard this week from the new House majority leader, Eric Cantor. Let's take a listen to him.

Representative ERIC CANTOR (Republican, Virginia; House Majority Leader): We're going to be about cutting spending and cutting the job-killing regulations that this administration has been about over the last two years.

BLOCK: E.J. Dionne, talk a bit about the new tone for Republicans in Congress.

Mr. DIONNE: I think it's a kind of emotional whiplash that we confronted this week. On the one hand you had that nice, humble speech that John Boehner gave, and he got a lot of credit for being so humble. And then on the other hand you had Eric Cantor and occasionally Boehner himself saying, we won, we're right, we're going to govern the way we want.

It's ironic because Cantor, among others, criticized President Obama for saying after the last election, elections have consequences. Yet Cantor himself is saying exactly the same thing on health care. He said it has been litigated according to the American people. So there is humility but not really in this new leadership.

BLOCK: David Brooks, what do you see happening with the Congress here? The divided Congress now, Democrats still control the Senate, but with a narrower majority and Republicans taking charge in the House.

Mr. BROOKS: Yeah, that's most likely going to be gridlock, but maybe a chance of not else, because things have to pass. You have to have a debt limit ceiling. And to me the interesting psychological dynamic is between the senior Republicans, who sort of know what's doable, and some of the freshman who want to cut government, but we're not quite sure if they know what's doable.

And so the senior Republicans are trying to throttle them back and say, we're with you ideologically, but you just can't cut $100 billion in the middle of a fiscal year because a lot of things have already been committed to. There are all these restraints on how we can act and they're trying to ease them into that and the psychological sort of tension between those two mentalities is really, to me, fascinating.

BLOCK: And which mentality do you see sort of taking supremacy there?

Mr. BROOKS: Well, I think at the end of the day what's going to happen is they're going to say, if you don't raise the debt ceiling, we go into chaos. And what's going to happen then is that Glenn Beck, Mark Levin and a lot of the talk radio guys are - they're going to go into chaos and you're going to have a - quite a dramatic moment in the conservative ranks.

BLOCK: E.J., briefly, last word.

Mr. DIONNE: John Kennedy, whose inaugural we're celebrating this month, said he who rides the back of the tiger usually ends up inside. And I think the danger for the Republicans is they're going to push this debt limit thing and then may lose control of it at the end. That's a big danger for the country.

BLOCK: Thanks to you both. Have a good weekend.

Mr. DIONNE: Thank you.

Mr. BROOKS: Thank you.

BLOCK: E.J. Dionne, columnist for The Washington Post and David Brooks for The New York Times.

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