To hear House leaders tell it, both Barack Obama and John McCain worked the phones to make sure the bailout bill passed the House in today’s re-vote. And roughly equal numbers of members from both parties appear to have switched their votes from “no” to “yes” between Monday and today: 33 Democrats and 25 Republicans.
But for whatever reason — a better P.R. machine, or perhaps just because of the more critical coverage of McCain’s campaign suspension last week — Democrats were louder about publicizing Obama’s lobbying role today than Republicans were about discussing McCain’s role.
At a press conference after the vote, House Democratic Conference chairman Rahm Emanuel said Obama “made numerous calls not only to all of us, but to members of our caucus, and helped us gather the votes on the Democratic side to pass this legislation.”
And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Obama “really gave them confidence that this was the right decision for the American people, even though it wasn’t, in our view, a great bill for them to vote on.”
Of course, Emanuel is Obama’s Illinois colleague, and Pelosi has every reason to help Obama by making him sound as effective as possible. So take their comments for what they’re worth. But there was also independent evidence that Obama had, in fact, reached out to at least two crucial factions of Democrats who had opposed the bailout the first time: freshmen and members of the Congressional Black Caucus.
CQ’s Kate Hunter reports that Obama talked to several members of the Class of 2006 on a conference call yesterday, including Betty Sutton of Ohio, Mazie K. Hirono of Hawaii, John Yarmuth of Kentucky, and Bruce Braley of Iowa. Hirono said Obama “made a commitment that the taxpayers would not be left holding the bag.” Yarmuth said Obama also promised to push for another economic stimulus package, a commitment he also has made publicly.
And on a conference call with reporters, Braley described a separate phone conversation he had with Obama on Tuesday, and described Obama’s lobbying style as more of a soft sell than twisting arms.
“He did not call and tell me I needed to change my vote. He asked me why I had voted no. He wanted to know what concerns I had about the original bill,” Braley said. Then, Obama said his economic advisers had convinced him that the bill was urgently needed, according to Braley, and he promised to follow up by pushing for more protections for homeowners and the “financial stability fee” he has proposed to make the banks pay for any losses to the taxpayers.
“It was helpful to me to have that conversation and know that he was definitely going to be taking a different direction in his approach to these issues than our current president,” Braley said. He, Sutton, Hirono, and Yarmuth all voted for the bill today.
By contrast, the lawmakers McCain had called didn’t seem to be doing much to publicize that fact, and McCain’s campaign didn’t call attention to his efforts either.
It was House Minority Whip Roy Blunt who sang his praises at a separate press conference this afternoon. “I think on Tuesday night, I got my third call of the day from John McCain at about 10:15 at night saying, ‘Who can I call now that’s, you know, on the West Coast, where it’s not too late to call them?’ ” Blunt said.
McCain did call at least two of his Arizona colleagues who opposed the bill on Monday: Reps. Jeff Flake and John Shadegg, both Republicans. But Flake still voted against the bill today, and while Shadegg switched and voted for it, he didn’t cite McCain as a factor in his decision. Instead, he said in a statement that he changed his mind because he was getting calls from small business owners worried about the credit crunch, and because the new bill included an accounting rule change he had wanted.
In the end, though, most Republicans still opposed the bailout: 108 voted against it today, while only 91 supported it. Maybe that wasn’t quite the talking point McCain was looking for.
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