CFR's Stephen Sestanovich in the Post on how Obama has to wade into hostile territory to make more than incremental change happen: Congress:

Last week, 30 Columbia University graduate students and I spent two long days in meetings with senior officials at the State Department and National Security Council; on Capitol Hill; and with experienced Washington journalists, economists, consultants and lobbyists. Most of us probably expected to come away wondering whether, in its overhaul of American foreign policy, the Obama administration has found a winning strategy for dealing with tough problems such as Iran or North Korea. By the end my conclusion was different. What the president and his team really need is a strategy for dealing with Congress.

Our field trip came three days after President Obama announced his refashioning of Cuba policy. Not surprisingly, my students asked why the changes were so limited, especially since -- as we were frequently told -- the administration believes the U.S. embargo has been "a total failure for decades." Ah, we heard, anything more far-reaching would require action by Congress. [...]

But if the Obama administration ends up relying on a give-a-little-here, get-a-little-there strategy to move its foreign policy agenda through Congress, it will probably fail. New presidents who want to push for big changes usually conclude that they need more power to make them work. They challenge Congress to defy them by treating it as an out-of-date institution, slow in its ways, poorly adapted to new realities and overly influenced by parochial interests.

There is already a not-so-gentle hint of this approach in the administration's suggestion that if Congress can't reach consensus on sound climate policy, it will exercise its own regulatory authority to achieve the same result. It's not hard to imagine a more aggressive approach on other issues, particularly defense spending. (Richard Nixon, remember, called his defiance of the congressional budget process "sequestration" -- the Obama administration may simply need a fresher term.)

It would be ironic if Barack Obama, following a president whom he scorned for abusing executive power, concluded that he can't reorient foreign policy in the ways he wants without more unhampered authority. But deferring to Congress too often carries a high price. If the president really wants a new foreign policy, he won't want to pay it.

My terrific boss Susan Glasser and I were honored to speak to his group of students, and curious what he heard from the NSC's Samantha Power, undersecretary of State Burns, and deputy policy planning chief Derek Chollet, but alas, their remarks were off the record.

Posted by Laura at April 24, 2009 10:29 AM