As bargainer, Obama is not in LBJ’s class

December 12, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON

President Barack Obama isn’t a great negotiator.

He’s not as bad as some liberals claimed last week when he gave in to Republican demands to extend tax breaks for the wealthy in order also to extend expiring tax cuts for the middle class and unemployment benefits.

But he’s seldom been able to match the promise of his campaign, when his soaring rhetoric and ability to sway voters suggested he might do the same in Washington. He’s had more luck in world capitals, such as in negotiating a new nuclear arms treaty with Russia. Yet even in foreign policy, where a president has more leeway, he’s found his ability to drive a grand bargain limited.

The key reason may have more to do with his office and his times than with the man himself. The truth is that on major issues, there’s little any president can do to convince a member of Congress to change firmly held positions.

In his tentative deal to extend the tax cuts, liberals argue that he caved too quickly to Republican demands that the rich get their tax reductions extended or no one would.

“He has the image of giving away the store,” said Dennis Goldford, a political scientist at Drake University in Iowa. “If he looks like he’s responding to events and negotiating out of weakness, it won’t help him. ... He’s not exactly been a Lyndon Johnson in dealing with Congress.”

Johnson is considered the model of presidential wheeling and dealing with Congress. A former Senate majority leader, Johnson knew how Congress worked, and he muscled a breathtaking liberal agenda, including Medicare and civil-rights legislation, through Congress in 1964 and 1965.

More than changing votes, Johnson saw that he had a moment of opportunity to push his Great Society agenda through Congress, particularly after a Democratic landslide in 1964 gave him huge Democratic majorities for the next two years.

Obama saw opportunity his first year, with a solid majority in the House of Representatives and, briefly, a 60-vote majority in the Senate. He used it to push through a massive package of spending and tax cuts to stimulate the economy, a sweeping health-care overhaul and regulation of Wall Street.