I Like This New "Fighting" Obama

President Obama is not a fighter by nature. He would much rather handle things on a bipartisan basis, by letting all sides present their case and then work out a compromise that can be acceptable to all parties. This proclivity of the president's became very clear in the first couple of years of his term, when he bent over backward to include the Republicans in all decisions and legislation. Sometimes he went so far to cooperate and find consensus that many in his progressive base became disillusioned (and I admit I was one of them).

All the president got for his efforts at bipartisanship was a slap in the face by Republicans. They not only refused to cooperate or compromise, they intentionally opposed everything the president tried to do. They opposed his effort to create new jobs, to cover more Americans with health insurance, to regulate Wall Street, to help the unemployed, to stop the off-shoring of American jobs, to make the rich pay their fair share of taxes, and many other things. If President Obama proposed it, the Republicans opposed it -- even if it was something they had themselves proposed in the past (like health care reform).

But enough is enough. After nearly three years of Republican obstructionism, the president has decided that he must do what he can to help ordinary Americans -- whether the Republicans cooperate or not (and they won't, since their electoral plan is to keep the economy in a mess and try to blame it on the president).

One of the things the Republicans have obstructed is the president's ability to make government appointments. One of the most glaring examples of this has been his appointments to head a new federal agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (which would protect Americans from being abused by the financial industry). The president first submitted the name of Elizabeth Warren to be the new agency's head, but Republicans refused to even let her appointment come up for a vote.

Professor Warren finally gave up and returned to Massachusetts, where she is running for the Senate seat currently held by a Republican. The president then submitted the name of Richard Cordray to head the CFPB. Republicans have also blocked all efforts to have a confirmation vote in the Senate for Mr. Cordray. The truth is that they don't want anyone to head the new agency. They opposed it when it was created, and when that failed, they have blocked efforts to put someone in charge of it. The new agency can't make the Republicans' buddies in the financial industry obey the law if they don't have a leader.


Yesterday the president decided he could wait no longer. The American consumer needed to be protected from the abuses of the financial industry, so the president made a "recess appointment" and went ahead and put Mr. Cordray in charge of the CFPB.

Of course the Republicans are screaming and whining about the president's action. They claim he couldn't make a recess appointment unless unless the Senate recessed for 10 days or more. To try and prevent a recess appointment, they have been having some of their members in the Senate every three days (even though no official business was conducted). But they really don't have a legal leg to stand on. The Supreme Court has ruled in the past that there is no minimum time that a Senate recess must last before a recess appointment could be made.

Their charge that the president is abusing his right to make recess appointments also doesn't hold water. The fact is that President Obama has made less recess appointments than any president in recent history. Including the appointment of Mr. Cordray, President Obama has only made 29 recess appointments. Ronald Reagan made 243, George W. Bush made 171, Bill Clinton made 139, and George H.W. Bush made 77. As the chart above shows, President Obama trails all of those presidents on recess appointments even when it is broken down on a yearly basis.

But the president is not through. He has also announced that he will be making three recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board. Republican obstructionism regarding the NLRB has brought the working of that board to a virtual standstill. These three new appointments will insure that American workers get the protection they deserve.

I have to admit I like the "new" President Obama. It looks like he has finally realized he will get no cooperation or help from the congressional Republicans, so he has made up his mind to do what he can to help American consumers and workers in spite of the Republican efforts to obstruct. These appointments are a good example of the president's new willingness to fight for ordinary Americans (as was his refusal to compromise on the payroll tax extension). This could serve the president well in this election year, because voters like people willing to fight for them.