Yesterday I wrote about Obama's savvy, speak softly but carry a big, unobtrusive stick strategy for getting the key things he wants (Obama's Brilliant Strategy To Get His Transformative Policies Enacted).
Today, the NY Times' lead Web story both confirmed my thesis about the wisdom and likely effectiveness of Obama's approach and how its subtlety can be missed--including by the Times--in our macho, instant gratification, short attention span culture.
The challenge for the media, politicians, and all of us in fact, is that Obama represents not just, as it's widely reported, a change in temperament, tone and generation but also a change in how to use & display power. At 46, President Obama is the first President to grow up after the Feminist revolution had made its mark on society and he embodies many of its views on "male" vs. "female" power (and power displays).
Obama is our first post-Feminist President and this confuses the media ... and the GOP.
I yesterday's post I wrote:
As has been said many times before, President Obama and his team are very smart. While it's true he is trying to make many gigantic, fundamental changes at once (his top 3: health care, energy and education) he's not so naive as to simply throw his ideas out there and hope they're enacted by Congress. No, he has a legislative strategy and yesterday's EPA annoucment fits right into it.
Recall how the Obama administration and Democratic leaders have said that if the Republicans don't reach some accommodation with them on health care reform, they're going to use the controversial parliamentary maneuver of "reconciliation" (a Senate technique that negates the filibuster threat and only requires a simple majority to pass legislation). In effect, they've given the Party of No an ultimatum: negotiate with us on health care in the next few months or in September, we'll pass our own bill without you. (Not surprisingly, the GOP has had a hypocritical response.) ...
Now Obama has a similar lever he can apply to move the second of his three key priorities. He can now say to both the Dems & Repubs in Congress either come to agreement in the next few months on energy & environmental legislation (whether it's a cap and trade system or something else) or I'll have my environmental agency unilaterally issue new rules on carbon on its own.
When I think about Bush vs. Obama I realize Bush was all loud bluster without any thought or plan while Obama seems to be speaking softly while carrying (unobtrusive) big sticks.
Bush had a boogie man approach to getting what he wanted from Congress (and the American people): he'd use fear of some danger (terrorists, Saddam Hussein) to force legislators into line and stifle dissent. For this approach to work, the danger had to be trumpeted, repeated and hyped to get the body politic's hormones (adrenaline and especially testosterone) flowing. Bush's approach was emotional, unintellectual, spontaneous, simplistic and very superficial.
Obama's legislative strategy in contrast is like an iceberg: on the surface there doesn't seem to be much there but what lies below, and what takes some thought to notice, can get any ship on the sea to change course.
Today, the NY Times' lead Web story both confirmed my thesis about the wisdom and likely effectiveness of Obama's approach and how its subtlety can be missed--including by the Times--in our macho, instant gratification, short attention span culture.
The story begins by claiming Obama is weak and girlie because he's willing to compromise:
President Obama is well known for bold proposals that have raised expectations, but his administration has shown a tendency for compromise and caution, and even a willingness to capitulate on some early initiatives.
It was inevitable that Mr. Obama’s lofty pledge to change the ways of Washington would crash into the realities of governing, including lawmakers anxious to protect their constituents and an army of special-interest lobbyists.
Mr. Obama has not conceded on any major priority. His advisers argue that the concessions to date — on budget items, for instance — are intended to help win the bigger policy fights ahead. But his early willingness to deal or fold has left commentators, and some loyal Democrats, wondering: where’s the fight?
"The thing we still don’t know about him is what he is willing to fight for," said Leonard Burman, an economist at the Urban Institute and a Treasury Department official in the Clinton administration. "The thing I worry about is that he likes giving good speeches, he likes the adulation and he likes to make people happy."
They then offer more or less standard defenses and talk about how Obama is being pragmatic and focusing on his key, fundamental priorities:
Mr. Obama’s top aides dismiss suggestions that he has shied from confrontation, saying they ignore his achievements, the need to move quickly to address economic woes and the fights he has picked against some big interest groups in Washington, including components of the Democratic base, like organized labor.
Pragmatism, they add, is an Obama hallmark, and among the changes he promised — and has delivered — is a break from his predecessor’s often uncompromising style.
The extent to which he is willing to yield to lobbyists, Congressional committee leaders and interest groups, however, will be determined as the White House tackles health care and other big issues on a list that seems to grow: immigration, for instance, is now in the mix.
"We’re not taking on a fight; we’re taking on a multiple-front fight because we’ve taken on a series of entrenched interests across the waterfront — from education to health care, and the defense industry, and the lobbying industry as a whole," the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, said. "There will be a scorecard at the end of which ones we won and which ones we didn’t, but every one of those policy challenges have been initiated by us."
Mr. Obama’s allies point to his winning the second $350 billion in financial bailout money from a reluctant Congress; a pay-equity law for women; expanded government health insurance for children, including — at his insistence — legal immigrant children; and the $787 billion economic recovery bill that reached his desk, as demanded, by mid-February ...
Wider Democratic majorities in Congress, while beneficial to the White House agenda, also mean a wider range of demands to be met ...
Then the tone shifts and all of sudden, what's going on below the surface, below the headlines and first few paragraphs of the stories, Obama's savvy strategy is touted:
On complex issues like health care, Mr. Dallek said, there is advantage in angling for the final say.
"It’s kind of a technique to keep power in your hands," he said. "Let these guys in the House, let the folks in the Senate battle with one another, battle it out. They are going to have to come to the president and have him adjudicate."
Administration officials say the approach to the economic stimulus bill is likely to be a model for dealing with Congress and interest groups, reflecting a style that fits the president’s temperament and a West Wing with deep experience on Capitol Hill. Even before Mr. Obama took office, the stimulus started with a draft in the House that reflected his bottom line, his spending priorities and more tax cuts than many liberal Democrats wanted. Harder negotiations occurred in the Senate, where Democrats remain short of the votes needed to overcome Republican filibusters.
In the end, there was no grandstanding about big ideas. Instead, Mr. Emanuel and the budget director, Peter R. Orszag, set up shop in the office of the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, and worked through the final demands to get the votes to clinch an agreement.
The administration seems content to let Democrats like Senator Max Baucus of Montana, a moderate to conservative, and Representative Henry A. Waxman, a California liberal, take the lead on health care, knowing that Mr. Obama can flex his political muscle later.
It does not hurt that Jim Messina, once chief of staff to Mr. Baucus, is a deputy White House chief of staff, or that Philip M. Schiliro, Mr. Waxman’s former chief of staff, is Mr. Obama’s chief liaison to Congress.