Obama meets the marshmallow test
Washington Post Writers Group
Updated: 11/07/08 6:57 AM
WASHINGTON — President-elect Obama needs to think about how to handle the marshmallows.
In the classic psychology experiment on delayed gratification, researchers gave 4- year-olds a marshmallow, then promised a second if the children could refrain for 20 minutes from eating the first.
Some did, some didn’t. Years later, the 4-year-olds with greater impulse control were better adjusted, more dependable and had higher SAT scores.
We’re about to conduct a rerun of that test — with Democrats substituting for 4-year-olds.
Obama will have to contend with the hydraulic force of pent-up Democratic demands for action. After eight years without the White House, and two years in which a Democratic majority in Congress found itself stymied in delivering on its promises, the leftward precincts of his party are not inclined to either compromise or patience. There is some basis for their urgency: A new president has a small window to launch major initiatives if he hopes to see them enacted.
Yet the experience of President Clinton’s rocky early months— remember gays in the military? the BTU tax? — suggests the steep political price of governing in a way that is, or seems, skewed to the left. This risk is particularly acute for Obama, whose opponents have painted him as a leftist extremist. The good news is that his advisers seem exquisitely aware of this trap and determined not to fall into it.
There are other reasons to be hopeful that Democrats can resist overreaching. For the current congressional leadership, the memory of losing control in 1994 still sears; when Clinton took office, it seemed unimaginable that Democrats would ever lose the House. Now, the enlarged contingent of Blue Dogs and other conservative Democrats applies additional countervailing force.
But the new president also will need to produce some evidence he can produce the change that he promised. Some of this can be accomplished by grabbing low-hanging fruit: reversing President Bush’s order prohibiting federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, signing the Bush-vetoed expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program and enacting an equal pay law overturning the Supreme Court decision in the case of Lilly Ledbetter.
On energy, which is shaping up as a major focus, the new administration could reverse the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to deny California the ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks. Paradoxically, the economic crisis may give Obama more fiscal flexibility to spend money on projects now— expect to hear a lot about the “green recovery,” with stimulus money dedicated to renewable energy — if he can show a plausible pathway to restraint in the future.
But there are treacherous minefields ahead. With a bolstered Senate majority, unions will press for the Employee Free Choice Act allowing them to be recognized without secret ballot elections if a majority of employees signed cards supporting unionization. Obama has promised to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay — but it will by no means be easy to figure out what to do with the remaining detainees.
Women’s groups want Obama, as Clinton did, to lift the rule prohibiting federal funding for international family planning organizations that perform or promote abortions. Gay rights activists want an end to “don’t ask, don’t tell” in the military and to job discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. There will be clamoring for marshmallows. Obama’s ability to resist, and to dispense available goodies in orderly fashion, will be key to the success of his presidency.
