There are only a few pivotal moments in politics that really live up to the billing; most incremental, tactical decisions matter far less than reporters and strategists are inclined to believe.
But every year, there are a handful of decisions, good and bad, that shift an election cycle in meaningful ways. A good number of those choices fall into the category of ?amazingly self-destructive political malpractice.?
Continue ReadingThis last year had more than its fair share of those moments, but we?ve narrowed it down to a short list of 10. Here are POLITICO?s choices for the worst political strategic decisions of 2011:
Obama pivots to deficits
Battered by the midterm Republican wave election, President Barack Obama went to Congress in January with a proposition: let?s get serious about debt reduction.
?Now that the worst of the recession is over,? Obama said in his 2011 State of the Union address, ?we have to confront the fact that our government spends more than it takes in.?
The trouble was, most Americans were still more alarmed by 9 percent-plus unemployment than they were by the ballooning size of the national debt. That didn?t stop the president from spending months emphasizing deficit reduction, avoiding any new economic stimulus that might require additional spending and chasing a grand bargain on the national debt.
During all that time, the subject Obama didn?t own was jobs ? the most important issue of the 2010 campaign, and likely the 2012 race as well.
The worst setback for Obama came in early August, when months? worth of talks with House Speaker John Boehner over the national debt ceiling ended in a paltry and conciliatory final agreement, and a lot of wasted time for a president with little to spare.
Republicans vote on the Ryan budget
It was the most famous piece of legislation proposed in 2011 ? a sweeping plan, trumpeted by Republican leaders, to restructure taxes, spending and entitlement programs and bring the federal budget under control.
The backlash against the plan was powerful and immediate. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan?s proposal passed the House. The Senate stopped it cold, but not before a powerful backlash against the Ryan plan?s proposed changes to Medicare handed a GOP-leaning New York congressional seat to the Democrats.
The Ryan plan will be back next year, just in time for Democrats to accuse vulnerable Republican lawmakers of trying to ?end Medicare.? As one congressional aide predicted to POLITICO in April: ?You have a couple dozen members who are going to pay a pretty serious price for this vote if they end up in a tough race ? It?s not just cuts to Medicare. It?s ?Republicans are ending Medicare as we know it.? That?s not demagoguery. That is the case.?
Defenders of the Ryan plan say that it helped the GOP corner the market on fiscal conservatism and point out that the website Politifact called the Democrats? Medicare argument the ?lie of the year.? None of that changes the fact that marginal Republican members are heading into 2012 with the Ryan budget on their voting records, and without a law to show for it.
Tim Pawlenty bets it all on Ames
As the Republican primary race has cycled through a list of would-be challengers to Mitt Romney, one question keeps popping up: what if Tim Pawlenty hadn?t dropped out in August?
We wouldn?t have to imagine if the former Minnesota governor hadn?t decided to stake his entire White House bid on a summer straw poll in Ames, Iowa ? a costly, activist-dominated event with no actual delegates at stake. When Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul relegated Pawlenty to a distant third, he pulled the plug on his campaign.
Pawlenty advisers now reflect with some frustration that if they had treated the Ames contest for what it is ? a circus-like state party fundraiser ? their guy might still have had a shot at the big time. At an October event unveiling his official portrait in state Capitol, Pawlenty said that he, too, regretted the decision to put all his chips on Iowa.
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