Obama Ambush Leads To Cancellation Of Bi-Partisan Summit
Nov 17, 2010 4 Comments ›› Pat Dollard
The roots of the partisan standoff that led to the postponement of the bipartisan White House summit scheduled for Thursday date back to January, when President Barack Obama crashed a GOP meeting in Baltimore to deliver a humiliating rebuke of House Republicans.
Obama’s last-minute decision to address the House GOP retreat – and the one-sided televised presidential lecture many Republicans decried as a political ambush – has left a lingering distrust of Obama invitations and a wariness about accommodating every scheduling request emanating from the West Wing, aides tell POLITICO.
“He has a ways to go to rebuild the trust,” said a top Republican Hill staffer. “The Baltimore thing was unbelievable. There were [House Republicans] who only knew Obama was coming when they saw Secret Service guys scouting out the place.”
That dynamic, coupled with the GOP’s post-midterm swagger, emboldened leaders to insist that the president reschedule Thursday’s much-anticipated meeting until after Thanksgiving to accommodate their schedule, not his. The first post-election meeting between Obama and congressional leaders, billed by Obama as the fundamental first step in the post-election reconciliation process, will now take place Nov. 30th.
A senior White House official told POLITICO, “We wanted to meet but they decided they couldn’t yet. But we have been flexible through the whole process.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) both claim Obama had presented the Nov. 18 date as a fait accompli – without their consent or any attempt to accommodate frenetic schedules following the midterm recess. For weeks, staffers have been warning the White House not to assume the invitation had been accepted, apparently to little avail.
The scheduling snafu is a vivid illustration of the complex, tetchy, at times petty negotiations likely to attend every Obama-Republican get-together for the foreseeable future.
Stung by the Baltimore fiasco, Republican leaders carefully stage-managed a televised health care summit at Blair House in February, helping to choreograph every conceivable detail, from the order of speakers to the precise configuration of the horseshoe table occupied by Obama and Congressional leaders. Wary of what they perceive to be potential traps when it comes to appearing with Obama, that kind of precautionary behavior is likely to continue.
House and Senate Republicans made a point of emphasizing Tuesday night that the postponement of the meeting wasn’t payback or petulance, just a desire to better accommodate their own timetables.
According to the White House, McConnell and Boehner – soon to be Speaker Boehner — cited “scheduling conflicts in organizing their caucuses” as the reason for requesting the postponement on Tuesday.
“The meeting will happen on Nov. 30,” said Don Stewart, a spokesman for McConnell, who had long warned Obama’s staff that this week was too crowded with freshmen meetings and party conclaves for a big bipartisan conference at the White House.
“We’ll have a meeting so that we can discuss issues that Republicans have long said can be accomplished together: These include reducing spending, growing jobs through increased trade and increasing domestic energy. The leader is encouraged that the president wants to discuss these areas of agreement.”
Obama first broached the topic of a meeting during a phone conversation with McConnell on election night, Nov. 2nd after the magnitude of the GOP victories became apparent.
McConnell, aides say, was eager to set up the sit-down after a productive, no-leaks meeting with Obama in early August. But he didn’t immediately commit to the president’s suggestion of Nov. 18th – and was surprised the following day when Obama told reporters the meeting with McConnell, Boehner and Democrats was already booked.
Soon after, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs announced an expanded list, including Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), who said that statement was never followed up with a direct request to his office.
“I never received a formal invitation, so no, it was never on my schedule,” Kyl told POLITICO Tuesday afternoon. “This week was never propitious for that kind of meeting anyway.”
White House officials, led by Obama’s legislative director Phil Schiliro, were still pushing for the summit as late as Tuesday morning. But top Republican staffers, including Boehner’s feisty chief of staff, Barry Jackson – a former Bush administration political aide – remained adamant that the timing was bad, according to a person familiar with the talks.
When they do meet, the two sides will have plenty to talk about: The stalled START treaty, the looming expiration of Bush-era tax cuts, lifting the debt ceiling and the fate of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.”
Obama cast the meeting as the first of many – and a consequential opportunity to make a fresh start, as he flew back from Asia on Air Force One on Sunday.
He said then that it was his expectation, “when I sit down with Mitch McConnell and John Boehner this week, along with the Democratic leaders, that there are a set of things that need to get done during the lame duck, and that they are not going to want to just obstruct, that they’re going to want to engage constructively. … Then we’re going to have a whole bunch of time next year for some serious philosophical debates. And they should welcome those debates next year.”
