Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun

> Firewing wrote:

> Bush II ruled for so long and achieved not very much either.

O rly?

Now remember, for this particular question, we're only analyzing the number of agenda items in question, not necessarily whether they were good or bad (because, subjectively, if Obama passed 40,000 agenda items, but I think they all suck, it would count for less than if Bush only achieved 1 item, but I liked it... but from a question of the number and significance of items passed, you can create a more objective analysis).  I'm honestly not interested in talking "which president did more good for the country," but just want to take a moment on who was better at their job (with the assumption that their job is to get their agenda items turned into law).

Note: I'm excluding executive orders from this analysis because a president can issue an executive order on pretty much whatever they damn well please, as long as Congress doesn't say no... so it says little about what people actually achieve, especially since presidents so often overturn one another's executive orders on particularly sensitive issues.

Remember, we're nearing on year 3 of Obama's presidency... so it's equivalent to compare it to 3 years of Bush's presidency.

Obama:
Got the stimulus package passed, then spent a year trying to get one agenda item passed: the health care reform bill.  This being with a majority in the House and supermajority in the Senate during those years.  Year 3, having a mixed House and Senate and residual antagonism from the fact that health care reform was mainly a party line vote, broken by a couple Republicans who broke ranks for their own deals... is pretty much a dead year.

Bush:
With a starting legislative composition of a GOP majority in the House, but a split Senate, Bush got his tax cuts in in 2001 (that's before 9/11).  Following, and as a direct consequence of 9/11, the Patriot Act was signed into law only a few days later... and was subsequently re-approved, year after year.  Then we have the No Child Left Behind Act passed in the beginning of '02 (but worked on during the '01 period) and the Iraq war (depending on your interpretation of an agenda item and your opinion of the Iraq war, this may be considered an agenda item).  2003 brought the Iraq war budget battle, the partial birth abortion ban, and the Medicare part D bill.

Yeah, that's... between 4 and 7 major agenda items on Bush's end, depending on your definition... and 2 on the Obama end.  From a political capital perspective, Obama's capital got drained completely on the health care bill just from trying to manage his own party... and now that he has not only an opposing, but an outright antagonistic House to deal with, agenda items are going to be difficult until a new election.  And really, presidencies tend to slow down during election season, barring a crisis such as the '08 financial crisis which sparked the giant bank bailouts, so seeing groundbreaking legislation is extremely unlikely, unless its sole purpose is to create a short term shift in public perspectives.

One thing you'll notice very consistently is that the presidents tend to have solid political capital as long as they significantly attempt to work with both sides.  I know, it's hard to think this with the rhetoric surrounding him, but Bush's early agenda items were very bipartisan... because he knew he was operating in a legislature that wasn't necessarily GOP-friendly, so he had to bring bipartisan items in first.  Once the party lines changed hands to become a GOP-dominated legislature, though, the more polarizing political items came to the floor, and Bush could pass them because he still hadn't expended much political capital to get early agenda items passed.  But passing politically polarizing legislation is risky to a president, because it means they'll isolate some legislators, which could hurt their relations in future agenda-setting.

In comparison, Obama started with the type of legislative setup Bush had in '02, only better with the supermajority.  With a political makeup unseen in decades, it seemed like the best opportunity to pass the most aggressive agenda items, under the impression that the first 2 years would be the most important part of his presidency.  It's a decent gamble, honestly... except that by being so aggressive early on in the presidency, Obama would almost guarantee he burned his bridges during those first 2 years, so that when he needed the GOP starting in '11, he was faced with a GOP that had grudges amazingly early, hurting possible bipartisanship on issues like the deficit.

Translation: From a pure political science perspective, Bush is a much better politician than Obama was.