From an AP article on President Obama’s recent silence on the controversy in Wisconsin:
Doug Schoen, a Democratic political strategist, said Obama’s strategy seems to be “keep your distance, avoid direct engagement, say most of the right things most of the time, and hope for resolution through sources other than your own.”
I know I’ve been pretty down on the President lately; and I don’t want to become some ranting left-wing critic of Obama who spends all of his time complaining about how the most liberal President–by far–of the past 40 years isn’t good enough, when there are clearly no viable alternatives. But I just have to get this one off my chest.
The quote above is everything frustrating, annoying, and troublesome about the President reduced into the simplest terms. (OK–there are other not-so-great things, namely “Win the Future,” which, every time I hear it, makes me feel like I’m in “Office Space”, but they’re minor in comparison.) The fact is that he’s a smart strategist, a brilliant public speaker, and–if politics is reduced simply to the act of getting people to like you and vote for you (and we skip all that boring policy stuff)–a supremely talented professional politician. But he’s not a leader. I for the life of me cannot think of any moment–any one moment–in which the President stuck his neck out, even an inch, any more than to graze the outer-most flank of the absolute middle.
And from a political science perspective, that’s a big part of his success.
But being President isn’t about impressing political scientists with your grasp of the fundamentals. I don’t want my President to be the political equivalent of a Steely Dan record (i.e., tailor-made to please the aficionados of the scene). Sometimes doing the job well is about taking risks. And that’s something Obama is (in)famously loath to do.
The way I see it, there are basically only 2 moments (that I can think of; I may be wrong) where one could conceivably say Obama took a risk. They are:
1. The famous “Race Speech” of his campaign
and
2. Going for broke on the healthcare bill after Scott Brown won Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat
In both instances, Obama’s maneuvers had nothing to do with national leadership. They had everything to do with saving his own hide. And that’s fine! I’m not saying it wasn’t impressive for him to “go big,” as he reportedly put it, in dealing with the Rev. Wright scandal and to use the opportunity to deliver a nuanced and thoughtful speech on the defining issue of American history. But it was a move he made when he was backed into a corner and, more importantly, it was the smart move for his career. It defused the issue significantly, turning what was increasingly looking like the death of his Presidential aspirations into one of his shining moments. It didn’t attempt to push the national dialogue or consciousness in directions that some had previously thought out of bounds.
On the healthcare bill, the calculation is even more obvious. For one thing, although, reportedly, nearly all of Obama’s top advisors told him to pull back after Scott Brown won and to try to pass some small-bore measures, there was at least one prominent, powerful and influential national Democrat who told him to go for it: then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. For another, this is, again, an example not so much of Obama being braver than the rest, but, rather, smarter. Going small after the Scott Brown win would’ve been a political disaster for the President; not only would it have made him look weak and absolutely gutted his base, but it also would’ve made the narrative that he had wasted an entire year focusing on something besides the economy (never mind that HCR was very much an economic issue) even easier for his opponents to make than it already was (and it was plenty easy).
Now I suppose one might argue that his speech in Arizona after the assassination attempt of Rep. Giffords was a moment of leadership. In a sense, I’d agree. When it comes to the nation’s spiritual or emotional state, it was a profound moment of leadership. Obama was our Pastor-in-Chief. I know that if I were to die any time soon, I’d want him giving the eulogy (pencil me in, Barr’!).
But, again, it was not an example of the President doing something that the conventional wisdom previously said he couldn’t do.
Now is this that big of a deal? It depends. If you want a decent, OK, B-/B Presidency from Obama, then the answer is no. If he played it this way throughout his second term (assuming he wins it), he’d probably get to the finish line with far less bumps and bruises than most Presidents. He’d be like a Democratic version of George H.W. Bush, if he hadn’t had the misfortune of running for reelection while a recession was still for all intents and purposes in swing. Or maybe a better version of Clinton. People would think of him fondly, Democrats would romanticize his administration, nostalgia would kick-in. And we’d still be stuck in the same-old far-right morass in which we’ve found ourselves for a generation.
In short, Barack Obama would be A-OK.
And this country would be the worse for it.
Because, in case you haven’t noticed, we’re not living in normal times. With regards to the economy, the environment, equality and our foreign policy, we need big changes. We’ve been doing things bass-ackwards for decades, but this is the moment–as another prominent African American political figure might’ve said–of our chickens coming home to roost. We absolutely cannot just muddle through.
I’m not saying anything new here. In fact, I’m saying what the President once said not so long ago.
Maybe–as a lot of liberals I know are hoping–we’ve just got to grin and bear it until he locks in that second term. Perhaps then we’ll see some real leadership with regards to how we hold our prisoners, tax our wealthy, respond to climate change, run our foreign policy, or treat our gay brothers and sisters. Maybe he’ll act like he’s the President of the United States–a supposedly transformative one at that–and he’s got the ability to change minds.
But I gotta tell you, I’ve been watching this guy very closely for years now, and I’m less than optimistic. Maybe Obama’s right, and between now and 2016 things will somehow work out, even if we “keep [our] distance, avoid direct engagement…and hope for resolution through sources other than [our] own.” If that happens, it’ll be wonderful. It’ll be miraculous. It’ll be vindication.
But it still won’t be leadership.