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Rearranging the Deck Chairs Tonight

U.S. Senator Mark Udall, Democrat of Colorado, thinks Republican and Democratic members of Congress should sit with each other, rather than separately by party, when President Obama makes his State of the Union speech tonight in the Capitol. In a letter to the leadership of the House and the Senate that has gotten a lot of attention in D.C., Udall said that “partisan seating arrangements at State of the Union addresses serve to symbolize division instead of the common challenges we face in securing a strong future for the United States…. The choreographed standing and clapping of one side of the room – while the other side sits – is unbecoming of a serious institution. And the message that it sends is that even on a night when the President is addressing the entire nation, we in Congress cannot sit as one, but must be divided as two.”

Udall is right about the symbolism of the tradition, which dates back two centuries, but his proposal is just more symbolism.

This isn’t one of those dinner parties where the hosts break up the married couples to inspire more lively conversation. Sitting next to each other isn’t going to stop the Democrats from applauding, or the Republicans from sitting on their hands or worse, like when a congressman from South Carolina screamed “you lie” during a health care speech by Obama to a joint session of Congress in 2009, or when at last year's State of the Union, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito visibly disagreed when the President criticized one of the Roberts court’s more extreme examples of judicial activism. With differences so deep, putting congresspeople within reach of each other may not be a good idea at all.

So what exactly is the attraction of Udall’s proposal? As in every mass tragedy in recent years – from JFK’s assassination to 9/11 to the carnage in Arizona – there is a brief period in which people want to reach out, beyond politics, for reassurance that we are all, or at least most of us, still human beings. We’re still within that gauzy penumbra. Speaking in Tucson, Professor Obama got high marks from the opinionators and the public for pointing out that incivility cannot explain insanity – and thus smothering the debate over the name-calling and extreme partisan politics of our era. But is that really the problem in America today?

True, the majority of Americans probably are uncomfortable with the current decibel level. We remember wistfully an America when things were better all around – or perhaps merely seemed so. But there is, without any question, plenty of reason to be angry right now. Not since the Depression have so many people suffered while so few prosper. Our American spirit has been shaken, maybe shattered. We have been betrayed by those we entrusted to protect us.

I don’t agree with many of the loudest, angriest people, but I don’t blame them for being loud or angry.

Sometimes that’s the only way you get things done.

Addressing another exercise in symbolism – a new non-profit political organization called “No Labels” dedicated to “bipartisanship” – New York Times columnist Frank Rich recently made the point: “The notion that civility and nominal bipartisanship would accomplish any of the heavy lifting required to rebuild America is childish magical thinking, and, worse, a mindless distraction from the real work before the nation.”

When you look at what has happened to this country, the dire conditions at home and the dangers we face abroad, and what we have to do to make sure our kids have some measure of the security and prosperity we enjoyed, talking about where members of Congress sit is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Obama's 'Hostage' Crisis

Tonight’s state of the union speech will be the least important of President Barack Obama's political career. No doubt it will be a dazzling performance, as the president pivots from pugilistic to professorial, from left to right. We know the president comes through with the rhetoric in the clutch. But the true test of his presidency is no longer what he says he will do or how he says it.

The test is whether Obama and his team wage a credible and effective fight for financial reform and economy recovery for Main Street, with the same vigor and urgency they threw into the Wall Street bailout. That will take more than a speech or even a series of speeches. It will take a real self-critical assessment of the president's strategy up til now and a tough, savvy and sustained political battle plan in the face of significant obstacles.

Both have been lacking in the president's approach so far. That’s the real pivot he needs to make now, and it has only partly to do with oratorical skills.

Obama’s credibility is suffering because he and his team keep suggesting that they have overseen a recovery that most people aren’t enjoying. They helped engineer a bailout that they say was absolutely necessary that helped the financial sector but left out the rest of us. Obama and his team don’t have credibility because they’re working Capitol Hill as hard as they can, not to create jobs for millions of out of work Americans, but to save the job of one of the few Americans who could have helped forestall both the financial crisis and the Wall Street –friendly bailout but didn’t, Ben Bernanke, head of the Federal Reserve.

Sen. Tom Harkin summed up what many people are feeling in reacting to comments from Tim Geithner, Obama’s treasury secretary who had warned that the stock market would tumble if Bernanke were not confirmed.

Geithner was just acting as a messenger boy for Wall Street, Harkin suggested. “How long will our economic policy be held hostage to Wall Street who threaten us that there’ll be total collapse if we don’t do everything they want? Wall Street wants Bernanke,” Harkin said. “They’re sending all these signals there’ll be this total collapse if he’s not approved. You know, I’m tired of being held hostage by Wall Street.”

Wall Street doesn’t like key planks of the president’s financial reform plan, like the Consumer Financial Protection Agency and his recently announced plan to separate some of the largest bank’s risky business from its more traditional functions. The Senate’s banking committee chair, Christopher Dodd has signaled he’s ready to surrender on the consumer protection agency. Will the president announce tonight how he and his team plan to win that fight when congressional leaders are giving up? Or will the president treat the consumer protection agency and bank size as just details that should be left up to Congress, as he did in the battle over crucial aspects of health care reform?

A different kind of hostage crisis helped bring down a previous Democratic president. All Jimmy Carter had to grapple with were a bunch of Iranian revolutionaries holding 53 Americans in an embassy in Tehran. President Obama’s challenge is much tougher – 250 million people and our entire political process held hostage by some of the world’s wealthiest corporations and individuals. Carter’s hands were tied. Are Obama’s?