THE OPTICS OF THE IMPERATIVE TO COMPROMISE
Been mulling this NYT piece over for a week.
That Gibbs still thinks he doesn't have a communications problem is a problem, where "problem" includes, not technical failure, per se, but not being the equal of an enormous challenge, of falling behind.
It is a serious gap that so many hoped for transformative politics (a technical term), a new spirit of progressivism, a chance at a lasting realignment; but that they got delivered instead historic legislation, evidenced by the fact that candidates aren't running on the record.
We are a warrior culture. People want more than quiet competence, from their politicians.
Until someone shows a winning New Way, they want all the things for which Obama is a welcome antidote. For his prized and demonstrated ability to not turn every Washington flap into a giant showdown, to bowing regularly to the imperative to compromise, they also want to see his ability to be Rainmaker (and not just firing Generals) and a Quest Leader, not just they guy who has the discipline not to be smug when signing "victorious" legislation.
One forgets that the Right is a nimble adversary. When Obama started to do "Town Hall" meetings on Health Care, to get the message out, the Right was ready, this time. They didn't let him use this technique that Clinton perfected. They sent hecklers. Rather than find the workaround, as best I recall, Team Obama surrendered the ground, sort of.
We forget, also, that Democrats asked for a consultative process, by explicitly rejecting Clinton as having "brought the tablets" on health care to The Hill last time, rather than teasing it out of them, where them includes, proverbially, the Senator from Aetna. It seems unfair and incorrect to blame the President for trying to work through and with Congress. At the same time, it's a political failure of massive proportions to have failed to size up your political opponents correctly, including your Democratic opponents, to underestimate their ability or willingness to not be "on the level", as the article suggests and some seem to concede.
Aravosis thinks that Obama didn't get involved enough. I'll let those who know the process far better than I make that call. But, Reagan was an effective political leader, and no one ever accused him of even knowing what was going on. And this is the lesson that Obama seems to be struggling with - how to be part of the process, which is natural for him, yet how to stand apart and over it, how to use whatever skills he has to be a day-to-day Great Communicator, how to pull off a public message like, "No deal is better than a bad deal", for instance, and make it stick, even in the era of epistemic bubbles. How to use, what diplomats call "public diplomacy". And frankly, what technologies, what people, and who in the Congress can be force multipliers.
He wasn't and hasn't been willing to use the whip of the White House to strike at Congress or those who have made themselves grit in the wheels. Perhaps, because his strategists think that type of rhetoric turns off "independent voters", if it is done without a solution to fix the broken third branch? Perhaps, he thinks wrongly the country can be governed by Senate rules. Perhaps, he finds it counterproductive, because he just needs those same people in the next round of legislation, so why piss 'em off.
Whatever the case, against the backdrop of the rise in the indecent right, we can be sure that a House in GOP hands will not return him the favor.
Indeed, the tea leaves are already suggesting that they are planning the same fate for Obama that he thinks will befall the GOP, now that they have some reins, i.e. 'heightened accountability for blatant obstructionism'. In short, "Beck" and his ressentiment exits (or tones down) and the New Power will seek to hang a sign around the President's neck that he's the problem "in Washington", not them.
Monday, October 18, 2010
The Education of a President
