By Fred Barnes - The Wall Street Journal
The White House wants to pass as much legislation as possible before losing its big majorities no matter how unpopular its proposals are.
President Reagan had a sign on his desk that said Its amazing how much you can accomplish if you dont care who gets the credit. If President Obama had a sign it would say Its amazing how much you can accomplish if you dont care what the public thinks.
Washington has never been held in lower esteem by Americans than it is today. Yet those in control of WashingtonPresident Obama and congressional Democratsare bent on enacting a series of sweeping domestic policy changes this year that have one thing in common: They are unpopular in whole or in part.
This is unprecedented and a bit weird too. A revival of civility and an end to the ugly political polarization in Washingtongoals stressed by Mr. Obama in his presidential campaign and again last Saturday in a speech at the University of Michiganwont be furthered by passage of an unpopular agenda.
A more likely result is years of partisan resentment and bitter fighting over efforts by Republicans to repeal the unwanted policies.
Its true that presidents have imposed foreign and national-security policies despite popular objections. President George W. Bush did so in 2007 when he ordered a surge of troops into Iraq along with a new counterinsurgency strategy. President Jimmy Carter and the U.S. Senate defied public opinion in 1978 when they gave up American control of the Panama Canal.
There are countless more examples.
But I cant think of a single major domestic initiative that became law in recent decades without public approval. Even the much-maligned Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act of 1988 which was repealed in 1989 was reasonably popular when it passed Congress the year before.
Energy and climate legislation dubbed cap and trade immigration reform a value-added tax (VAT) to narrow the budget deficit and Sen. Chris Dodds financial reform bill (now on the Senate floor)all are unpopular in one way or another. Mr. Obama and Democrats are determined to pass them anyway.
The model for such a strategy is the health-care legislationObamaCareenacted in March. For months nearly every opinion poll found either a solid majority or a plurality of Americans 
opposed to the bill.
And it was assumed to be dead after Republican Scott Brown campaigned against it and won a special election in January for the Massachusetts Senate seat of the late Edward M. Kennedy.
Mr. Obama and Democrats in Congress refused to give up. Instead they relied on their one irreducible source of power in Washington: overwhelming Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. Democrats control the Senate 59 to 41 the House by 254 to 177 (with four vacancies). They passed the health-care bill in March with zero Republican support.
Now theyre trying to win approval of Sen. Dodds financial-reform legislation with as little Republican help as possible and thus as little compromising as they can get away with. Rather than encourage negotiations on a bipartisan bill Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is attempting to crack Republican unity. But three successful filibusters supported by all Republican senators prevented Democrats from moving forward and now Sen. Dodd is negotiating with Republican Sen. Richard Shelby on changes to the bill.
Republicans havent ruled out another filibuster if Sen. Dodd refuses to make significant concessions.
The presence of big majorities now and the likelihood theyll vanish in the midterm election in November have spurred Mr. Obama and Democrats to pursue their entire agenda in 2010. Republicans are expected to cut deeply into the Democratic majorities possibly capturing one or both houses.
This to put it mildly would make it extremely difficult to gain approval of their very liberal 
agenda in the next Congress.
Democrats I suspect have made a quite rational calculation about the election. Its baked in the cake that theyll lose seats but how many more might they lose if they pass a series of unpopular bills? Maybe only a few. Given this theres a case for going all out this year which is exactly what theyre doing.
It wont be easy.
While stiffer regulation of Wall Street is popular the Dodd bill lacks the two things the public wants most of all in financial reformelimination of the phenomenon of banks too big to fail and the prospect of more government bailouts. Their absence has given Republicans an appealing talking point.
Though virtually nothing about cap and trade has public support Sen. Reid is undeterred. But the Democratic bill has suffered two recent setbacks. Sen. Lindsey Graham has withdrawn his sponsorship and the plan to attract skeptical senators by authorizing more offshore oil drilling has been jeopardized by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
The Obama administration has a fallback plan. Since CO2 has been declared a dangerous pollutant the Environmental Protection Agency could on its own set a cap on emissions a step bound to prompt angry Republican protests.
The president has vacillated on his desire for immigration reform this year nor are top administration officials active in pushing for a bill. Nonetheless Democrats last week drafted a white paper outlining an immigration bill that would be vulnerable to attacks for adopting an amnesty to allow illegal immigrants already in the country to stay.
That alone would make the bill unpopular. And the administration is also bucking public opinion by threatening to file suit against Arizonas new immigration law.
Recently the president and his allies have been talking up a VAT without quite endorsing it. (House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has urged adoption of a VAT.) It has the political advantage of being an indirect tax imposing a levy at every level of production. Its a hidden sales tax with the potential of raising an enormous amount of revenue.
Its unpopular but one can imagine Democrats might seek to enact it. The presidents National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform which began its work last week is required to submit a plan for serious deficit reduction by Dec. 1 four weeks after the November election.
Its recommendations are non-binding but a lame duck Congress would be in position to take them up including a possible VAT. Should Democrats suffer a landslide defeat their large majorities would still be in place for the lame-duck session.
What would Democrats whod been defeated for re-election have to lose by voting for a VAT? Not much.
This scenario isnt as far-fetched as you might think.
In a speech at a Democratic reception in Boston on April 1 Mr. Obama boasted of his willingness to do the unpopular:
If you govern by pundit and polls then you lose sight of why you got into public service in the first place he said. His job he said isnt to husband my popularity and make sure that Im not making waves. . . . So I resolved to do not necessarily what was popular but what I 
thought was right.
