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CNBC's chief Washington correspondent comments on deals being cut in Washington, DC to get legislation passed. (1:12)
 

Full interview. (11:16)
 

Tavis: John Harwood is chief Washington correspondent for CNBC. He also covers politics for "The New York Times," of course. His most recent book has been updated and is now out in paperback. The book is called "Pennsylvania Avenue: Profiles in Backroom Power, Making Washington Work Again." He joins us tonight from Washington. John, nice to have you back on the program, sir.

John Harwood: Hey, Tavis, thanks for having me.

Tavis: Let me ask you what the - how do I want to phrase this - what the seminal change is thus far in how Washington works in the Obama era, or is it too early to even - it's like the 100 day question, is it too early to tell?

Harwood: Well, to some degree it's too early, Tavis, and there are multiple ways to think about how Washington has been dysfunctional, because it's been dysfunctional in many ways. One is that you could change the way that we're polarized by party, and people are so far apart ideologically. That does not look very promising for Barack Obama so far.

But the other way in which it hasn't worked is that not much has gotten done in recent years and Barack Obama has a more promising outlook on that score. He got through his stimulus package very quickly, by the President's Day recess, as he wanted. That money is now preparing to move through the pipeline and the administration is hoping the economy will turn around.

But now they've got to try to get through healthcare, energy, financial regulation - all things that he has strong majorities in the House and Senate behind, and he's got at least a shot to get significant steps forward - down payments, if you will - on these issues that have not moved in Washington for decades.

Tavis: To your earlier point, John, as long as he controls, obviously, the White House and the House and the Senate - and who knows, maybe one day the Supreme Court, the way this thing is going - but as long as he controls the House and the Senate, for all his talk about bipartisanship and with all due respect to the book and how Washington works, why does he have to be bipartisan? He's got the votes he needs, doesn't he?

Harwood: Well, you would think so, and if Al Franken gets seated, as I expect he will, eventually, Barack Obama will have 60 votes in the Senate with Arlen Specter. But we've seen time and again, Tavis, that people who have a particular party label, that when you get down to needing the last couple of votes those people hold out for more concessions.

So can Barack Obama really count on Joe Lieberman to vote down the line with him? Arlen Specter, Ben Nelson of Nebraska? Some of these conservative Democrats? No, he can't. Bill Clinton found that out during the 1990s. He's going to have to reach across the aisle and get some support from Republicans to get healthcare through, to get energy through in particular, and I think that's the drama that we're going to see play out is on healthcare.

The Democrats have signaled that they may try to ram things through and get past a Republican filibuster, but that's not going to be easy at all. And on energy, it's going to be very, very difficult because Democrats are actively resisting what Barack Obama wants to do in terms of capping carbon emissions.

Tavis: To your point now, John, about politicians holding out in public when they know the president needs their support, does that suggest that the way Washington used to work in terms of these back room deals is no longer the way that it works?

Harwood: Well, a lot of the back room deals now take place in the front room.

Tavis: Exactly, yeah.

Harwood: Because there's so much media exposure 24/7 - blogs, cable television, we're in their face all the time with cameras. But you still do have some back room maneuvering that goes on, and you can bet that Barack Obama, while publicly, for example, he came out today and said he wants the Congress to move his energy legislation through very quickly, cap carbon emissions, there's so much resistance to that among conservative Democrats, Democrats from energy states - Louisiana or the coal states; Ohio and West Virginia, for example - that you can bet that there's some deals that are going to get cut to try to get that legislation through.

The one thing that we've seen from Barack Obama, he's very oriented toward the bottom line, toward the finish line, and I would not bet against him getting legislation through. The only question is how much of his goals does that legislation achieve?

Tavis: Beyond energy, it's almost startling to see pundits darn near universally now start to suggest that they believe there's a real chance that universal healthcare may actually get done. How does that juxtapose against what's in the book about how Washington works?

Harwood: Well, I think, Tavis, that healthcare reform will get done, but I've got real questions about whether universal care will get done. There's a huge expense associated with that. Democrats believe it'll cost between $1 trillion and $2 trillion over 10 years to bring in all those 50 million people who don't have health insurance.

There's so much resistance already to the ways in which Obama wants to raise money to pay for that health coverage that I think he's got a very, very tough fight to try to hold his party together.

Things that you might not think are controversial - limiting the itemized deductions that people who make more than $250,000 a year would take is getting push-back from Democrats. That was very consistent with Barack Obama's campaign rhetoric, and yet it's hard to achieve.

So I think one of the things that we're likely to see, and it's a reflection of some of that resistance to change that we talk about in the book, is that Barack Obama is likely to scale down the number of people who are covered by his health reform bill and the generosity of the benefits that he's offering. I think he'll make some progress, but he's not going to get all the way home.

Tavis: In the book you talk about certain individuals - you actually profile persons in Washington who do get things done; folk who don't necessarily get a lot done. The leader of President Obama's team obviously is the chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who used to be on Capitol Hill. Tell me from your covering this what he has to change about the way he led in the Congress in terms of leading the White House on this legislation that we've been talking about.

Harwood: I'm so glad, Tavis, you picked out Rahm Emanuel, because he is the center of the action in the Obama White House. He's the guy who's going to go to Barack Obama, go to Nancy Pelosi, and say, "Look, this is the deal that we can cut on energy, on healthcare. Now's the time to say don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good, and let's get it done."

Rahm Emanuel had an interesting career. He started out in the Clinton White House, then he got rich in the investment banking world. Then he decided he was financially secure and went into politics. His hallmark in Congress was finding a way to reach out to the center in enough districts that Democrats were able to win the majority back.

Now he's got his eye on the center of the spectrum now in terms of what gets me 218 votes for Barack Obama's program and 60 votes in the Senate or 51 if you push it through the special procedures. Rahm Emanuel's going to have so much to do with cutting that final deal.

He did on the stimulus package - in fact, Barack Obama has credited Rahm Emanuel for basically camping out in the Capitol and getting that done. I think that's an example of a pragmatic, new age politician who wants to achieve this turning of the page that Barack Obama's talked about toward a more results-oriented Washington.

Tavis: Speaking of a results-oriented Washington, how do Republicans, given the numbers game, honor their call, if you will, to be the loyal opposition to the president and yet not be seen as obstructionist on the legislation that's coming their way?

Harwood: It's very hard to do in the abstract, but in practice what we see, and we saw it with Republicans when they were opposing Bill Clinton in the 1990s, with Democrats when they were opposing George W. Bush, is parties tend to fall back and achieve a greater amount of unity in opposing the incumbent president's party.

Republicans are a smaller party than they were at the start of the Bush era because so many people who were moderate Republicans before now call themselves Independents. They're siding with Barack Obama. That means that you have a harder core of conservatives within the Republican Party.

They look pretty isolated and out there, but one of the things that happens, Tavis, is when you have the economic cycle, when you have the political cycle, and we usually see in mid-term elections that the president's party loses seats because people then make the president the focus of whatever discontent they have, and when we see the unemployment rate expected to peak at 10 percent next year, that's potentially good news for Republicans.

So I think it's going to be less about the solutions they have to offer right now than hanging back waiting for Democrats to make mistakes, to over-reach, and hope that the economic and political oscillations of the cycle bring them at least back to a modest degree of health.

And then you've got a presidential campaign and they'll define themselves around a new candidate.

Tavis: Here's the exit question, then. His being in the White House as president notwithstanding, President Obama has not spent a whole lot of time in Washington. He wasn't in the Senate, as we know, very long before he made this historic move to the White House, so he hasn't been in D.C. a lot, not nearly as long as you or other folk who've been on the Hill or covering the Hill.

What is the one thing, respectfully, that he's going to learn in the White House trying to get this legislation that's important to him through? What's the one thing he's going to learn that he don't know just yet about the way Washington works?

Harwood: Well, it's interesting, Tavis. We saw at his 100 days press conference the other day he got a question about what had surprised him most about Washington, and what he talked about was some of the themes of our book - how intractable that party polarization is, how difficult it is as president to go out, even when you're popular, and you give a speech and people cheer and you say I want Congress to do something.

Well, guess what - oftentimes, Congress doesn't go along because special interests get mobilized and campaign donors get mobilized and party apparatuses get mobilized and it doesn't happen.

But I think, Tavis, that the fact that Barack Obama has not spent decades in Washington is an asset for him. The American people know that he's new; they know that he's fresh, and the more time he spends outside of that bubble communicating with the American people, the better chance he has of actually getting the results he wants here in Washington.

Tavis: The book, out in paperback now, from John Harwood is called "Pennsylvania Avenue: Profiles in Backroom Power, Making Washington Work Again." From your mouth to God's ears, John. (Laughs) Nice to have you on the program; congrats on the book.

Harwood: Hey, thanks so much, Tavis.

Tavis: My pleasure.