Greg Sargeant says something that crystallized my thinking about the state of the Administration today.
The question is whether Dem leaders will decide they’re tanking because voters don’t like the health reform bill they’ve been trying to pass, making them decide to shelve it – or whether they’ll conclude that voters don’t like failure, making them redouble their efforts to pass something they can call a historic accomplishment. Anyone taking bets?
The issue from my POV is that what attracted many of us to Obama was the competence that his campaign displayed. He was on message, unflappable, his campaign consultants weren’t eating their young on national TV and I think it’s safe to say that pretty much everyone – even those whose eyes cross with rage at his politics – believed he had a handle on things. So even if you disagreed somewhat with his politics or policies, you had comfort that the nation would be well-run.
For me it was a combination of that and a belief that his core values (government should help the powerless and keep the powerful in check) were balanced by a novel perspective for a liberal (part of the problem is that government itself has become too powerful and needs to be kept in check).
That’s what I read into the speeches and policy papers.
The problem, as I see it, is that in his first year he’s shown very little domestic competence (I think foreign affairs are a separate matter), and that he either never believed in the “new^2 liberalism” or got completely stuffed by the interest groups and their Congressional sponsors.
So the question is “now what?”
In foreign policy, I think he’s done some things right, some things wrong; I think we’re drawing down in Iraq too soon, and I worry (a lot) about making Afghanistan the centerpiece of our battle against violent Islam worldwide.
I think he’s taken the conciliatory road, bowing (literally, sometimes) to foreign leaders in the hopes that the anti-Bush rhetoric was right, and that the problem was just that we were mean.
He’s discovering – and Hillary is voicing – that that’s not the case, and that we need to be more forceful in our speech and acts.
That’s a really good thing, and exactly what I’d hoped for in supporting him – that he’d be conciliatory and either a) it would work; or b) it wouldn’t and then the commentariat and the non-shackled swing voters would follow him down either path.
So now the question is – having been slapped internationally and pivoting toward a more assertive national role – what will he do having been slapped domestically?
My hope, obviously, is for the Obama that I voted for and supported – one with liberal ends and novel means. That Obama can still be a terrific President – even a terrific two-term President.
The Obama we’ve seen so far – the one opening the interest-group buffet – won’t be.
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For me, Obama has surprised me in foreign policy- pleasantly by and large. Not that that means i give him an A grade, but i was expecting a D at best. He’s stumbled and looked foolish on some relatively little things, but he seems to have the big ideas right. As AL indicates, that gives him a great opportunity to re-asses his approach. He’s not Jimmy Carter in this realm I’m pretty sure, so he’s not going to keep walking into the same doors time and again as the world continues to snicker. His pride is too great to allow it if nothing else.
On the domestic side, however, I’m utterly unsurprised by how things have shaken out.
Where AL saw competence in Obama campaign approach, I saw only the wrecklessness that accompanies a man that doesn’t really have a plan. He _said_ he did, he probley _thought_ he did, but at the end he demonstrably didn’t, which is how Congress ended up writing the Stimulus bill, the budget, the cap n trade, and especially the healthcare bill with nothing but modest (and elastic) parameters set out by the whitehouse.
This shouldn’t be a shock! What Obama promised was simply not possible, and anytime someone challenged him to explain how it was possible they were simply called cynics and told ‘trust me’. Believe. Hope. Well, now we all know hope is not a plan.
And now we’ve seen enough sausage making and this administration and congress playing us for chumps with backroom deal, egregious abuse of accounting figures, and flat out telling us we are too dumb to know whats good for us to know that indeed his promises were impossible. All the hand waving in the world cant provide free stuff for everybody at no cost and we’ll only hurt the rich guys (who happen to be the job makers and campaign donators). It was a silly dream and were worse off for having dreamt it. Now we have to deal with reality and hard choices and sacrifice.
Well, I think a lot of people read things into Obama that weren’t there. Heck, I think that was the basis of his campaign. As far as this:
You clearly weren’t listening to the many, many people (self included) who were saying that the only thing he’d ever run was a campaign, and his performance in those offices he had held to that point was too little to judge him on.
For me, there were two critical additional points, that bear very strongly on his present course of action. I was in Chicago when he took down Ryan in a most vile way. Without making any judgement on how Ryan would have done in the Senate, it was very clear that Obama was just another Chicago Democrat, with all that implies. Second, his statement that he wanted to fundamentally change America gave away that a moderate and carefully considered was not in the cards.
Given that he’s a typical Chicago politician, with little experience (even now, since he outsourced most of the decisions for the last year to Congress or his political advisors), and with a huge drive to remake America in his preferred image, my bet is that he doubles down and goes down in flames.
I hope I’m wrong.
_“Let’s just clarify. I didn’t make a bunch of deals,†Obama told ABC. “There is a legislative process that is taking place in Congress and I am happy to own up to the fact that I have not changed Congress and how it operates the way I would have liked.â€_
“Obama to ABC News”:http://weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-lack-transparency-health-care-was-mistake
This tells you a lot about the president. First- the very first thing he _personally_ did was “cut a deal”:http://www.alternet.org/story/141856/obama%27s_$80_billion_deal_with_pharma_is_a_very_bad_deal_for_us/ with the drug companies to keep them on the sidelines. For that he broke a whole bunch of campaign promises way back in July before anybody was paying attention including the CSPAN thing, importing drugs from Canada, and driving down drug prices via Medicare negotiations.
Secondly- Obama campaigned on changing the way Washington runs, which assumedly included Congress. He obviously has no intention of interfering with the way Congress crafts _his_ signature bills. There is a reason America seldom elects legislatures to the presidency, and this is exactly it. Obama comes from a legislative background, and he has a kneejerk reaction against the executive interference. But _that’s what he campaigned on doing._ Again, it goes back to the magical thinking of just how he ever intended to keep his promises.
This bothers me the most, because it isn’t a strategy issue. It’s something built into the man. He defers to Pelosi and Reid and nothing i’ve seen suggests that will change. So far its been disastrous.