We like our Presidents imperturbable, except when we don’t. We expect them to be dispassionate in times of difficulty, equable and unruffled in the face of setbacks, slights, and partisan attacks. Yet we also, from time to time, want to see a flash of indignation, a controlled burn. President Obama has shown so little of that kind of passion that his self-control has long been seen as a liability. In his performance at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner last month, Obama made light of that fact; he introduced “Luther,” the Presidential “anger translator,” who gave voice to Obama’s inner churn. The twist at the end of the skit was an outburst by Obama himself, making clear that, when provoked, he can express outrage perfectly well on his own.
This, it appears, was not a joke. Obama’s running argument with congressional Democrats over the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a pending trade accord, has flared up dramatically over recent days—eliciting, from the President, not indignation so much as raw irritation of a surprisingly personal nature. His potshots at Senator Elizabeth Warren, who has spoken out against the T.P.P., have been played and replayed by the White House press corps—and it would be churlish to deny them this pleasure; Obama gave good copy. He accused his sometime friend Warren of cynicism: “The truth of the matter,” he told the reporter Matt Bai last Friday, “is that Elizabeth is, you know, a politician like anybody else.” (This is the unkindest cut: when politicians call politicians “politicians.”) “And you know, she’s got a voice that she wants to get out there.” Warren’s arguments, the President added, are “hypothetical, speculative,” and unable to “stand the test of fact and scrutiny.”
The Presidential peeve was on further display in a speech that day in Oregon. Obama characterized his critics as panicked protectionists who want to “pull up the drawbridge and build a moat around ourselves,” and who are “making stuff up” in an attempt to obstruct the T.P.P. On Tuesday, Senate Democrats blocked the “fast-track” authority that the White House had sought for the trade pact, which would have given it the ability to speed its passage by keeping it free of amendments. It’s unlikely that the President’s huff cost him the vote, but it’s unlikely that it helped him, either. Representative Louise Slaughter, of New York, called his criticism of congressional Democrats “completely inaccurate”; Senator Sherrod Brown, of Ohio, complained that Obama “made this more personal than he needed to,” and wondered why Obama had referred to Warren by her first name, “when he might not have done that for a male senator, perhaps?” (Politico reported that the President has, on at least one occasion, referred to Brown publicly as “Sherrod.” The White House press secretary predicted on Wednesday that Brown will “find a way to apologize” to Obama for the allegation.)
Presidents, like parents, expect from their kin certain deference, if not outright obedience, and intra-party disputes do not tend to bring out the best in our commanders-in-chief. As Peter Baker, of the Times, has pointed out, George W. Bush, at a similar point in his Presidency, lost his patience with Republicans who were obstructing an immigration bill he had developed in collaboration with Democrats. In a speech in Glynco, Georgia, in May of 2007, Bush charged that conservative critics didn’t “want to do what’s right for America” and were “trying to frighten our fellow citizens” by using words like “amnesty.” In response, a Heritage Foundation analyst used words like “yelling” and “screaming” to describe what Bush was doing. The following month, Senate Republicans killed the bill. “A lot of us worked hard to see if we couldn’t find common ground. It didn’t work,” Bush said flatly.
Sometimes, though, Presidents pick a fight. In 1993, as a condition of their support of the North American Free Trade Association, Republican leaders on Capitol Hill told President Clinton privately that they would “release” their votes if he started a public battle with his base. “They wanted him to bleed some political capital,” recalled a senior Clinton aide who was involved in the negotiations. That November, Clinton attacked “labor forces” for applying “real roughshod, muscle-bound tactics” on undecided Democrats, “telling these members in private they’ll never give them any money again, they’ll get them opponents in the primary.” This had its intended effect: it infuriated a key Democratic constituency. (It also necessitated a Presidential apology to Lane Kirkland, the president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O.) But Clinton had managed to keep Republicans on board without impugning Democrats who saw NAFTA as a threat to American jobs. “I understand those fears,” Clinton said in an interview. “I mean, I have never questioned the integrity of anybody’s anxiety.”
But these are mere spats, snits, and tiffs when compared to Franklin Roosevelt’s attempt, in 1938, to drive from the Democratic Party the “reactionaries” who had killed his plan to pack the Supreme Court. That August, F.D.R. stood on a stage in Barnesville, Georgia, in the presence of Senator Walter George, one of the recalcitrants, and endorsed his opponent in the primary election. “On most public questions,” Roosevelt declared, George “and I do not speak the same language.” Roosevelt defined his “test” for any Democratic candidate: whether he “really, deep down in his heart” shared the Party’s objectives—as determined by Roosevelt. F.D.R.’s “purge” was a disaster: not only did he fail to dislodge even a single senator who had opposed him on the Court plan, but he pried wider the divisions that existed in the party.
In May, 1966, after Lyndon Johnson delivered a public scolding to antiwar Democrats, Harry McPherson—the wisest of Johnson’s White House aides—warned L.B.J. that “those who disagree feel further estranged by high-powered shouting.” This is still good counsel. Petulance is rarely rewarded. Displays of pique are displays of weakness. In Obama’s case, they signal a slide in political standing and a slackening of personal discipline, neither of which will serve him well during his remaining time in office. Trade, after all, is not the only issue that puts him at odds with Democrats on Capitol Hill—tax reform and energy exploration are others—and Obama needs Congress at this point more than Congress needs him. He should, at the very least, contain his obvious contempt for those who see things differently than he does. They might indeed be wrong—even “absolutely wrong,” as Obama said of Elizabeth Warren—but not all of them are benighted; not all of them are cynics. And none of them will be shouted down.
