Shuler a show pony?

There’s been a lot of ink recently in the Hendersonville Times-News and the Asheville Citizen-Times about Heath Shuler’s decision not to seek re-election in the 11th Congressional District. One of the major themes that emerged in the recent coverage of Shuler’s decision treats him favorably as a moderate who worked to build bridges between the extremists of the far right and far left in the House of Representatives.

For example, in a long editorial the Times-News states, “In his six years in Congress, Shuler will be remembered for his leadership in the moderate to conservative Blue Dog caucus.” It goes on to say, “Moderate voters, however, will remember Shuler as someone who listened to all sides and tried to bridge the ever-growing partisan divide.”

The problem with these round words of praise for Mr. Shuler is that, in my opinion, he doesn’t deserve them. One of the first things that I learned when I worked in the Senate long ago was to be able to distinguish between a “workhorse” and a “show pony” in Congress.

Heath Shuler has been a show pony. And the bitter and divisive battle over health care reform proves it.

We all know that the battle over HCR tore the nation in half. It produced a bill that, in my opinion, a majority of Americans believe is too costly and won’t work. Moreover, its constitutionality has been challenged and the Supreme Court’s decision this summer will weigh heavily on who wins the White House in November. But it didn’t have to be this awful way.

In 2009-10, as the battle over HCR raged, The Blue Dogs, with Heath Shuler as their whip, had more than 50 votes. Had Shuler been a workhorse and done his job, he could have “whipped” the Blue Dogs behind a compromise bill that would have profoundly transformed the outcome. Without the support of a unified Blue Dog Coalition, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans could have gotten any HCR bill through the House. Obama, Pelosi and Boehner all would have been forced to compromise with the Shuler-led Blue Dogs. That’s what workhorses do.

I feel Shuler did none of this. Instead the show pony ran for the hills, voted against the bill and came back here proclaiming “mountain values.” What Shuler did was designed to advantage his prospects for re-election. That’s what show ponies do. His gambit paid off at the polls in 2010. But it was a pyrrhic victory.

Outrage at Obamacare fueled the Republican tsunami in 2010. It gave the GOP control of the legislature in Raleigh for the first time in more than a century. And that led to the redistricting plan that has ended Shuler’s career. Wouldn’t it be refreshing if the 2012 stable had a workhorse in it? I’ve yet to see one.

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We need a leader to lead

The president’s obligation in his State of the Union Address was to acknowledge the gathering national darkness and tell us how it can be overcome. He did not do that. Instead he first told us about the heroism of our armed forces and then said, “imagine what we could accomplish if we followed their example.” He imagined that we would lead the world in education, manufacturing, energy, and prosperity.

But we did not elect President Obama to imagine our way out of the crisis we’re in. We’ve got Hollywood for that. We elected him to lead us out of crisis. And the inescapable truth is that he hasn’t.

Near the end of his address he told us, “Anyone who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned, doesn’t know what they’re talking about.” The problem, Mr. President, is that most of the American people already know what you don’t have the courage to believe or say.

The president is caught in a box largely of his own making. He won election by promising to turn the nation around by ending the dysfunctionality of Washington politics. But he took office and immediately did just the opposite. With control of all of the levers of power in Washington he rammed his stimulus and health care legislation through Congress with virtually no bipartisan support. The net effect of his inexcusable blunder was to propel the Tea Party to power in the 2010 election. He created his worst enemy through his hubris and his incompetence.

Contrast all of this with Gov. Daniels’ response for the Republicans. He stated, “The president did not cause the economic and fiscal crises that continue in America tonight. But he was elected on a promise to fix them, and he cannot claim that the last three years have made things anything but worse.”

Daniels goes on to say, “In our economic stagnation, we are now only a short distance behind European countries facing economic catastrophe.”

And he tells, us, “The mortal enemies of Social Security and Medicare are those who, in contempt of the plain arithmetic, continue to mislead Americans that we should change nothing.”

The only thing missing in Daniels’ brief address would have been to have reminded us of what President Obama said to Diane Sawyer on ABC World News two years ago. He told her, “I’d rather be a really good one-term President than a mediocre two-term President.”

The tragedy is that he hasn’t been a really good president and the Republicans seeking the nomination to oppose him are so flawed and/or goofy that it’s likely that Obama will get the chance to give us four more years of imagined leadership and real mediocrity. It’s four years we can’t afford.

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