Where it all went wrong on US climate policy

by | Jan 16, 2013 | Climate and resource scarcity, Influence and networks, North America

Remember back in 2006 and 2007 when it looked as though the US was about to get really serious on climate policy? You know, when not only Hillary Clinton and John Edwards and Barack Obama but even John McCain supported legislation on cap and trade? Well, Harvard political scientist Theda Skocpol has just published a 140 page report (pdf) about what happened next and where it all went wrong, commissioned by the Rockefeller Family Fund. It’s very very good. David Roberts at Grist has the best summary I’ve seen if you’re too busy to read the whole thing: here are the key messages that he picks out from the report:

Enviros vastly overstated Obama’s agency throughout the process and his responsibility for the outcome. Skocpol exaggerates enviro cluelessness a bit here — I doubt all that many really think they would have won if Obama had just made a few more speeches — but she’s definitely on to something. An amazing amount of the commentary around the bill was devoted to criticizing Obama, or saying what Obama should do, or questioning Obama’s heart. Enviros were constantly “calling on” Obama to say or do this thing or the other. But Obama was not at the center of the action. The dynamics that mattered took place in Congress. Obama did not exactly distinguish himself as a climate champion, but he was a sideshow — he could not have changed the outcome.

On public opinion, cap-and-trade supporters were too concerned with breadth and too little concerned with intensity. An enormous amount of time and money went into national polls and national advertising. National polls tell enviros what they want to hear: In the abstract, majorities always support clean air and clean energy. Enviros mistook these poll results for constituencies. But poll results do not attend town halls or write members of Congress or exhort their fellow citizens through ideological media. Constituencies do that.

Failure to fight back in the summer of 2009 was a fateful mistake. Just after the Waxman-Markey bill passed the House, summer arrived, legislators went home, and enviros cracked a beer and put their feet up. Meanwhile, a well-funded, well-organized Tea Party invaded town halls, dominated talk radio and Fox News, and generally scared the bejesus out of Republican legislators. They bashed on “cap-and-tax” for months, with very little pushback. By the time the Senate returned to consider the bill, members had learned their lesson.

Most of all:

Enviros were slow to perceive and understand the accelerating radicalization of the Republican Party. The USCAP strategy was based on securing the support — or at least defusing the opposition — of key business constituencies. The presumption was that the GOP is the party of business and would follow the lead of key corporate constituents. It was further based on securing the support of key “maverick” Republicans like John McCain and Lindsey Graham. The presumption there was that their support would provide cover for other moderate Republicans to cross the line. Both presumptions were based on an outdated model of the Republican Party.

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Republicans give up on world

by | Jun 16, 2009 | Global system, North America

A few weeks ago, I nearly blogged about growing opposition to IMF funding in the US, but thought it was something of a fringe position. I was wrong. House Republicans are so enraged by Obama’s G20 commitment to the IMF that they are voting to block a $106bn war-spending bill because an additional $5bn for the IMF has been included.

According to House Republican, Mike Pence:

Once the American people learn that the Democrats are using a war-funding bill for a global bailout, they’ll know what to do. We’ll take the message to the floor and to the American people, and I expect we’ll win this fight.

John Boehner, House Minority Leader, agrees. According to his spokesman:

It is the Democratic leadership that is playing politics with our troops by insisting on using them as leverage to pass over $100 billion in global bailout money for the IMF.

Republicans are inching close to advocating complete US disengagement from the global system – UN, World Bank, IMF and all. It’s a worrying trend.

Update: Politico notes how Boehner’s position has hardened over the years.

Boehner now derides the inclusion of IMF cash in the bill, calling it a “global bailout,” despite President Obama’s request that Congress make a down payment on the $100 billion he’s committed to keeping the financial crisis from swamping developing countries, including Pakistan.

That wasn’t Boehner’s tune in 1998, when the Clinton administration requested $18 billion in IMF funding to ameliorate the effects of the Asian financial crisis.

“I have been as critical about the IMF as many, but given the crisis we have around the world, the U.S. needs to provide leadership,” the Ohio Republican told the [Newark, N.J.] Star Ledger in Oct. 1998. “The only real avenue is the IMF.”

His trajectory, it seems, is typical of the whole of his party.