Commentary
The only issue uglier than health care reform right now is climate change/cap-and-trade; there just haven’t been any town hall meeting brawls to draw drooling media attention. And while any member of Congress with more than a single term under his/her belt understands intuitively there is no way you’re going to make everyone happy in the political world, if you intend to try and steamroll an issue through the process, you ought to sit down and think hard and long about the list of constituencies potentially affected, and how that potential impact will affect the country at large, as in, “How will the voters react?”
Climate change barely squeaked through the House even at the lightning speed with which it moved, and is now seriously bogged down in the Senate. The House victory was a gift handed to Obama acolytes House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) and House Energy & Commerce Committee Chair Henry Waxman (D, CA) by Rep. Collin Peterson (D, MN), the chair of the House Ag Committee. Peterson, a good, solid Minnesota DFLer, is the man who at the 11th hour threatened not only to hold the bill hostage, but to kill it outright if had to. Why? Peterson was being true to his school. He honestly believed the original bill would wreak disproportionate havoc on farms and ranches, translating into economic suffering in rural America, fundamentally creating more problems than it solved. The real surprise to Pelosi and Waxman was Peterson had enough Democrat allies to make good on his threat.
In the Senate, about a dozen members, a bipartisan gaggle and mostly from midwestern and southern states – “fly-over states” to the folks on the coasts – are following the Peterson battle plan. They’re signaling Sen. Barbara Boxer (D, CA), chair of the Environment & Public Works Committee and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, NV) that no climate change bill will move without agriculture and rural America getting their due. This intransigence translates into the Senate schedule on climate change/cap-and-trade slipping by more than a month – so far.
This ability of agriculture to coalesce in pursuit of a common goal surprises many in the mainstream and financial media, but it really shouldn’t if they’d been paying attention. One reporter was so naïve as to trumpet “the rebirth of the farm bloc, which many believed disappeared with the Eisenhower Administration.” The term “agracrats” was coined by another pundit to describe the House Democrats, many members of the ag committee, who successfully demanded changes in the House climate change bill. This is no “phenomenon,” this is simply how the agriculture political machine operates.
The beauty of being part of the ag community in Washington, DC, is that the “industry” and the elected members of Congress who, by virtue of constituency if not philosophy, are both almost textbook examples of bipartisanship. The differences, when they emerge publicly, break out by region and commodity, not by political leaning, and they’re generally not aired or resolved on the front pages of the Washington Post or the New York Times.
Perhaps the DC media is too comfortable covering politicians from the East and West Coasts or the major cities in between, such as Detroit and Chicago, to believe members from Minnesota, Iowa, the Dakotas, Kansas, Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio or Nebraska have little political value or muscle to move legislative mountains. If that’s so, then they should take the lessons learned from the climate change debate and go back and do some good old fashioned research into just how “insufficient” the collective political clout of agriculture really is.
For starters, check out which states and districts are represented by the members of the Blue Dog Democrats, those fiscally conservative maverick Ds who are Speaker Pelosi’s worst nightmare, but who, if listened to, could save her bacon come the 2010 elections. Examine the evolution and politics of any Farm Bill, multi-billion-dollar legislation that touches nearly every American, not just farmers and ranchers. At the heart of these issues are some of the smartest members of Congress who understand it’s the issue and it’s impact that are important, not the party.
It is a serious mistake to underestimate the agriculture community. When a common goal is identified, such as seeking reasonable legislation to control greenhouse gas emissions or a united front beating back ill-conceived activist-inspired regulation, not only will you see those “flyover” state members of both parties pull together, you’ll see multinational corporations courting the “farm vote” because they understand there is greater political and public empathy for food producers than there is for food purveyors.
It’s been said that politics is the art of the possible. A whole lot more is possible with the aggies on your side.
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