The Republicans, in what seems like a smart, cynical move, will be offering a substitute financial reform bill in an effort to stave off passage of the Democrats' bill. You'd think that might work. Maybe it will.
But a Washington Post report this afternoon suggests that they may be hanging themselves. A majority of Americans supports strict reform, according to the newest poll.
About two-thirds of Americans support stricter regulations on the way banks and other financial institutions conduct their business, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Majorities also back two main components of legislation congressional Democrats plan to bring to a vote in the Senate this week: greater federal oversight of consumer loans and a company-paid fund that would cover the costs of dismantling failed firms that put the broader economy at risk.
A third pillar of the reform effort draws a more even split: 43 percent support federal regulation of the derivatives market; 41 percent are opposed. Nearly one in five - 17 percent - express no opinion on this complicated topic.
Now throw in the Obama factor.
...Compared with congressional Republicans, Obama has a clear advantage. A slim majority - 52 percent - of all Americans says they trust Obama over the GOP on the issue, while 35 percent favor the Republicans in Congress. Independents prefer Obama 47 to 35 percent, with 16 percent trusting neither side on the issue.
Fred Hiatt, by the way, has an interesting take on why Obama governs the way he does, to the enormous frustration of ambitious and anxious progressives.
My theory: The culprit is less ideology than Obama's fidelity to a strategy he can't, for tactical reasons, publicly acknowledge. Given the hand he was dealt, the evidence suggests he resolved that he had to choose only one domestic and one foreign objective for his first two years in office.
An ambitious set of goals motivated Obama's candidacy, and early in his presidency the rap was that he was taking on too many. But the legacy of wars abroad and the Great Recession at home threatened his ability to accomplish any of them. Simply managing that bleak inheritance, he realized, might consume his entire term.
To avoid that trap, Obama had to govern with discipline.
In fact, this president has accomplished a good deal already, using deft work-arounds.
As for Republican strategy on financial legislation, the first test will come a couple of hours from now in the Senate's procedural vote. The Times' David Herszenhorn reports:
Some Republican senators seem reluctant to continue delaying the measure, given that there is broad agreement on most of its provisions. Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, sided with Democrats on the Agriculture Committee in favor of tight new rules for trading derivatives, the complex financial instruments that were a major factor in the 2008 economic crisis, and Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine, has also expressed support for those rules.
Democrats on Sunday bridged their own differences and coalesced around a plan to tighten regulation of derivatives by combining the overlapping proposals on derivatives by the banking and agriculture committees.
