Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from Allie Bice. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Alex | Email Max President JOE BIDEN’s address to the nation last night may have been an effort to outline specific gun policies he’d like enacted in response to a slew of recent mass shootings. But below the surface, it was a nod to political realities: He’ll take what he can get. Twice during the speech, Biden proposed reforms he’d support should his preferred ones be rejected. He bemoaned that any bill would require the support of 10 Senate Republicans and called it “unconscionable” that those Republicans would filibuster debate. But he didn’t dare broach rules changes — he doesn’t have the votes, after all. Of equal note, he applauded the bipartisan talks currently underway on a compromise bill incorporating modest reforms to background checks, red-flag laws, and school safety measures. It’s a “failure is not an option” approach to governance. And if that wasn’t clear, Biden made it so. “We can’t fail the American people again,” he explained. Of course, failure is very much an option here. And more than anyone else in politics, Biden knows how narrow the line is between that fate and success when it comes to gun reform. He helped secure passage of the last major gun-related legislation: the 1994 crime bill that included the assault weapons ban. But that legislative effort would be utterly unrecognizable to consumers of modern politics. Dozens of House Republicans supported the bill while the chief opponent of the assault weapons ban was one of the longest-serving Democratic members of the House, Judiciary Committee Chairman JACK BROOKS (D-Texas). Then-Speaker TOM FOLEY (D-Wash.) privately lobbied President BILL CLINTON to get rid of the ban and negotiators agreed to sunset it after 10 years to win over Rep. JOHN DINGELL (D-Mich.) and others. Biden, who chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee at the time, won over chamber Republicans, not just by pleas to common decency but by procedural gimmickry. Eighteen years later, he had no such luck. Granted the gun portfolio by President BARACK OBAMA following the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Biden convened a task force to come up with a slew of policy recommendations. But the group took its time. In retrospect, that proved to be a misstep — though not one that Biden’s allies have conceded. They insist it was vital to work through the specifics of the executive actions to ensure they’d pass legal muster. They argue he had needed the space to try and win over a conservative Senate Republican (his main target, TOM COBURN of Oklahoma, ultimately said no). And they stress that, in the grand scheme of things, he moved fast. “We ran at a breakneck speed, but we had literally dozens and dozens of meetings,” VALERIE JARRETT, Obama’s senior adviser, told our EUGENE DANIELS. But the weeks it took to unveil the legislative suggestions zapped political momentum. The effort to renew the assault weapons ban only got 40 votes in the Senate. The background checks reforms didn’t clear a filibuster either. This go around, Biden has seemed to internalize the lessons from both ’94 and ‘13. Rather than centralize the legislative process in the executive branch and go big on reforms, he's giving Congress the space and implicit go-ahead to aim at low-hanging fruit — though he insists his team is in close touch with negotiators. No one is optimistic that it will work. There is no secret sauce left unmixed, no legislative lever that Democrats have somehow failed to recognize, let alone pull. But for veterans of the past battles, there is a weird comfort that Biden, and Democrats writ large, are not pretending as if policy nirvana is on the horizon. They’ll take what they can get. “What they recognized this time around is that time is your enemy on guns. And that if you don’t get something done quickly, legislators and the public get distracted,” said JIM KESSLER, a longtime operative in this space who worked on both the ’94 bill and the post-Sandy Hook efforts. “I think there is realism there.” TEXT US — Are you MICHAEL HALLE, senior adviser to PETE BUTTIGIEG at the Transportation Department? We want to hear from you. And we’ll keep you anonymous if you’d like. Or if you think we missed something in today’s edition, let us know and we may include it tomorrow. Email us at westwingtips@politico.com or you can text/Signal/Wickr Alex at 8183240098.
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