Barack Obama

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Just watch. All of it.

Like the Bartlet/Richie debate, there’s no need for further commentary. It wouldn’t be tasteful.

Oh, okay, one comment. When I say we need Prime Minister’s Questions in this country — this is why. A true statesman will stand out for his ability to punch through the politics of distraction, as Obama did yesterday.

The Tools We Need to Persevere

Before examining President Obama’s first State of the Union address (transcript), we must acknowledge this: no matter how well he did, and how good immediate poll numbers appear, the goal for last night was not to change the game, but to lay out the rhetorical tools his party needs, and we must use, to turn the tables on the Republican opposition. Yesterday must be the beginning of a hard-fought campaign to capitalize on the event, and win back momentum on health care, and a host of other issues. Viewed properly, I think we got what we needed. Here’s why.

Populism: throughout the speech, we saw  brief mentions of an us/them dichotomy, a tactic geared towards rebranding Obama as, once more, the outsider. The American people “deserve a government that matches their decency,” Washington is “unable or unwilling to solve our problems,” “we all hated the bank bailout” but had to follow through on “the last administration’s program,” etc. Speaking once more in the language of popular need was, to reclaim the momentum it confers, a necessity, and one that was pointedly accomplished. Substantively, the entire front end of Obama’s address stressed tax cuts — not crushingly expensive cuts that benefit only the wealthy, but small-time credits that, combined, benefit the majority. In what could make a pretty good campaign ad, John Boehner (R-OH) sat on his hands, and Obama called him on it:

Framing: campaign finance isn’t about freedom of speech; it’s about corporate control of elections and, more importantly, foreign control of elections.

With all due deference to separation of powers, last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations, to spend without limit in our elections.

I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests or, worse, by foreign entities.

Focusing on foreign influence is clever, in that it’s easy to understand, clearly problematic, and avoids opening a needless front in the war against corporate greed. Also, where the transcript says “entities,” I could swear I heard “enemies.” One minor quibble: it’s not clear what, apart from clever changes to corporate law, can be done about Citizens United, and President Obama didn’t really offer an answer. But we now have a way to talk about the decision along valence issue lines.

Similarly, health care isn’t an entitlement program; it’s an “investment in our people” — and his plan is the only game in town:

But if anyone from either party has a better approach that will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare for seniors, and stop insurance company abuses, let me know.

That’s not strictly true. But the GOP plan is, to date, a paper tiger (elephant?), one penned to check a box, not as a serious proposal. Don’t believe me? Ask yourself this: when have you heard anyone mention the Republican alternative, except for the fact of its existence? Which leads us into the next note.

Reality checks: Obama “set the record straight” (his words), disabusing his more popular detractors of their myths about finance –

At the beginning of the last decade, the year 2000, America had a budget surplus of over $200 billion. By the time I took office, we had a one-year deficit of over $1 trillion and projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next decade. Most of this was the result of not paying for two wars, two tax cuts, and an expensive prescription drug program. On top of that, the effects of the recession put a $3 trillion hole in our budget. All this was before I walked in the door.

And party control –

And if the Republican leadership is going to insist that 60 votes in the Senate are required to do any business at all in this town, a supermajority, then the responsibility to govern is now yours, as well. Just saying no to everything may be good short-term politics, but it’s not leadership. We were sent here to serve our citizens, not our ambitions.

As indicated by this post’s title, these rhetorical innovations are the tools we need to persevere. But that’s all they are. The best issue articulation in the world, which this speech probably approximated, does nothing if it’s only used for one day. We need to pressure our legislators for the solutions Obama offered, using the cues he provided. And the President needs to remain visible, to ensure that the contours of the debate remain defined by his office, or his allies. King’s to us.

Did You Just Catch That?

Game changer:

President Obama: Let me repeat that. We cut taxes. [. . .] We cut taxes for eight million Americans paying for college. [Applause]

President Obama: [Looking at seated Republicans] I thought I’d get some applause for that.

John Boehner: [Seated. Hands in lap.]

Picture when one’s available.

UPDATE: scattered Republican frontbencher applause for putting taxes from bank fees towards community banks. John Boehner, mouthed: “How are you going to pay for it?” Yes — John Boehner is tonight’s Joe Wilson. Just a cowardly one.

The Politics of Personal Responsibility

Last year marked, or should’ve marked, a major transition in American political symbolism: the utter forfeiture of any Republican claim to fiscal responsibility. It didn’t, though, because GOP messaging is as good as their policies are bad. Too bad.

Now might be the time to claim another mantle — gone are the days when the Republican Party could plausibly pretend to be the party of personal responsibility, writ large. The last Republican president put his entire agenda on credit, with no exit in sight, whether from war or from debt. He never admitted errors, and is already purging his record of those mistakes which he should admit. It’s the very antithesis of leadership. On the other hand, President Obama, set to end his first year in office, has made a habit of candidly acknowledging rather than spinning his own faults.

It probably hasn’t helped him, but it’s a credit to the President that he’s chosen to take the path of greatest resistance. We can hope this return of a semblance of leadership won’t go unnoticed.

Two Paragraphs, Six Subtle Attacks

You have to give Politico credit — for all their subtle evil, they’re good at what they do. From today’s headline story (emphasis ours):

For the sixth time in 11 days, President Barack Obama was back before the cameras Thursday, talking about airline safety and anti-terrorism. He then left quickly for a second White House room to meet with Senate chairmen and press them to have a health care bill on his desk no later than next month.

[. . . .]

As a candidate, Obama’s cool was never fatal because so many voters simply imposed their own dreams on him. But wrapped in the bubble of the Oval Office and surrounded by Ivy-educated budget and economic advisers, this detachment is magnified and hurts him with lawmakers and voters alike, looking for more of a connection amid tough times. For all he shares with FDR, “Mr. Fireside Chat” Obama is not.

Count the tricky rhetorical attacks:

1. Too popular: Obama appears on television. But does he do it too much? Set against later arguments that Obama hasn’t done enough to assuage a concerned public, this is kind of contradictory, but feeds in to popular Beck/RedState memes, which don’t really need consistency to have the desired effect.
2. Too ambivalent about terrorism: “left quickly” implies a reluctance to continue the first dialogue.
3. Too insular: “…a second White House room” is superfluous information. Obama is the President. This implies his meetings are at the White House. Reminding us of the fact serves no purpose except to feed the notion that, by virtue of his office, Obama is somehow “too connected” to govern.
4. Too unexperienced: grace under pressure isn’t a sign of moral clarity — it proves the President is a blank slate.
5. Too elite: that some of his advisers are “Ivy-educated” adds nothing to this article, and doesn’t support the contention that Obama is disconnected. There’s nothing wrong with being “Ivy-educated,” and the origin of one’s degree gives no information about how connected to “real America” a graduate is. But, of course, we’ve been trained by the right to fear earned knowledge.
6. Too liberal: “For all he shares with FDR…” sounds to me like a compliment. But consider the audience. Despite his many successes, and iconic place in twentieth century history, Republicans (and especially Politico) have been been pushing for a while now the revisionist claim that the New Deal prolonged, rather than shortened, the Great Depression.

Careful word choice can convey a lot of information quickly, and really, you have to appreciate the work of a master. But set Politico‘s ability to stack culture war attacks against the facts you receive in the two paragraphs:

1. On Thursday, Obama gave a speech about terrorism.

At what point do we stop regarding Politico as a news source? Reporting on plausible attacks on President Obama is not journalism.

Obama & American Exceptionalism, Continued

The New Republic does a fairly good job dissecting Bill Kristol’s last screed of 2009 — but I think they missed something. A regular in Kristol’s arsenal is the assertion that President Obama somehow betrays the notion that America occupies, and ought to occupy, a special place in the world:

The American public seem to have decided–personal goodwill toward the man notwithstanding–that President Obama is not doing a particularly good job, that more big government liberalism is the last thing we need, and that, yes, American exceptionalism isn’t a bad thing or an out-of-date idea.

We’ve covered this before. Kristol’s conception of American exceptionalism — the notion, shared by many of his fellow travelers, that America can do no wrong — is a fairly narrow one, and at odds with any responsible view of world power. If we are an exceptional nation, it’s because our forefathers have made us so; exceptionalism is an occasion to which each generation must rise, not a birthright to be squandered. Because humanity is fallible, nations are fallible, and accordingly, we owe it to ourselves, and the potential we still possess, to take a hard look at our actions at home and abroad, and ensure their conformity with our ideals. For a leader to “believe in American exceptionalism,” then, he must be committed to the idea that America is unique, and can alter the world for the better through this uniqueness — not to any particular means to that end.

Obama lives up to this test on a daily basis. Imagine, if you will, a room filled with shelf upon shelf of crystal balls, each containing one sentence from the President’s public speaking career. It would be nearly impossible to throw a rock in this presidential “hall of prophecies” without hitting an elegant description of what America should (and must) be. This week was no exception. Kristol may dispute Obama’s policies, but the claim that the President does not believe in American uniqueness has no merit.

It’s long past time to put an end to the idea that the Republican Party, or the conservative movement, have a monopoly on patriotism. They don’t, and neither do we.  Thomas Paine keyed his belief in America’s promise — his early version of American exceptionalism — to the country’s relative novelty. Free of old Europe’s divisions, a new nation, physically distant from her creator, could prosper without being weighed down by old grudges. It worked; but in the intervening centuries, we’ve managed to build new grudges. It might be time to retrace the roots of American exceptionalism, to better ensure its continuity.

RedState’s Christmas Gift: Historical Revisionism

I intended to let Christmas pass without a note of partisanship, but because our honorable friends opposite have opted otherwise, I feel obligated to reply. RedState’s Erick Erickson wants to make much of the fact that, per Time, the First Family did not attend Christmas services:

• No Churchgoing Christmas for the First Family: Why should we be surprised or upset by this? The Obamas are not, to my knowledge, Christians and typically only Christians go to church on Christmas. At least he’s not trying to pretend anymore. Good for him.

But Erickson glosses over the source article’s context:

Other Presidents and their families have opted to stay in Washington for the holiday. The Clintons traditionally went to midnight mass at the Washington National Cathedral and woke up in the White House on Christmas morning before heading south for vacation. President Reagan also remained in Washington over Christmas — reportedly so members of the Secret Service could be near their families — although Reagan didn’t venture out to a local church service. (Emphasis ours)

A moment of further research reveals that Reagan’s ecclesiastical absenteeism even became a campaign issue:

President Reagan’s spokesman said today that the President seldom attended church services because he disliked inconveniencing parishioners. He also said that Mr. Reagan did not intend to make morality a campaign issue.

Larry Speakes, the deputy press secretary, faced questions about the President’s religious habits in the wake of Mr. Reagan’s overtly religious speech Tuesday to the National Association of Evangelicals and his push for approval of a constitutional amendment allowing voluntary prayer in public schools.

Apparently, empty words about religious faith are enough for Erickson. What a surprise.

Keeping Obama’s Polls in Perspective — Again.

Per Telegraph UK, we learn that “Obama’s popularity is the lowest of any American president at the end of his first year in office since polling began” — and that this is a sign of “buyer’s remorse.” Apparently, the reasoning goes, we should’ve elected Hillary, whose ratings are soaring.

This descriptor is more than a little misleading, because no modern president since FDR has faced the problems which the previous administration bequeathed to President Obama. An honest comparison would include a look at FDR’s first-term numbers.

That, however, is impossible. Gallup began operations (under a different name) in 1935, and its first recorded presidential polls occurred in 1937, rating President Roosevelt’s handling of the Great Depression. It was… not good. Even if he never dropped below the magic number (50), in ’37, still a fairly bad point in the Depression, FDR flirted with the number repeatedly. Although we lack data, it’s easy to imagine he would’ve gone below 50% in the early years of his presidency — say, by the end of his first year, in December of 1933. Without this data point, apocalyptic “never before”-type evaluations of Obama’s approval are pure speculation.

Further, with utmost respect to Secretary Clinton (who I feel would in fact be a good president, in 2016), a secretary of state’s approval ratings are not the most accurate reflectors of how the individual would perform as president. If this fact isn’t immediately clear to you, I don’t know if I can help.

We should worry about polls. But we should worry more about fixing the current recession. When that shapes up, as it appears to be doing, his poll numbers will drift towards a more accurate evaluation of his actual messaging. Pray that happens before November.

The Decade’s Strange Silver Lining

When the first decade of the third millennium (the “decade from hell”; h/t N.P.) closes next week, few will miss it. The “aughts” opened with a controversial election that raised serious questions of democratic integrity, many of which linger to this day, and continued into the first serious attack on American soil… ever. If this attack constituted a test of our moral character, we failed it, horribly, rushing to abandon our values and those unique qualities that make us, as Americans, justifiably proud of what we’ve built here. Realization and redemption came, but rather late, and true recovery finds itself complicated by another crisis of responsibility, this time financial.

Have we learned something in the process? Maybe. But how many times must we be tricked into thinking “conservatives” are actually capable of balancing a budget? And how many times do we have to learn not to go overboard in wartime, before the lesson finally sticks? So far, the answer to both is “at least four.”

Amidst this chaos, it’s somewhat difficult to find a story that is, at a national level, worth celebrating. Here’s one: the experience of the last ten years flatly rebuts the theory, popular in 1999, that politics doesn’t matter. The 2000 election was viewed by most of America as inconsequential, and the candidates were roundly satirized for it. This was the natural consequence of a more secure time. Life was good, and unlikely to deviate from that course; if the pace of growth was slackening, this was inevitable, but not concerning. In the space of a few months, President Bush showed us just how divisive and nasty politics could be, just how little campaign messaging matters, and just how carelessly the country could be ripped apart. President Obama passionately inverted the message, winning a somewhat cathartic campaign premised on the idea that politicians can build, and not just destroy. Whether he’s delivered on the promise is another question: he’s made us believe in something. And his opponents have done the same, for better or worse.

The result is a more active electorate. Turnout in presidential elections has steadily increased since 1996, as voters realize that voting does, in fact, make a difference. Some of the attendant consequences are negative, reflecting poor voter education, and a toxic environment of disinformation. And there’s real concern for a backslide in next year’s midterm elections. But believing in something is better than believing in nothing. An interested electorate is the first step to an informed electorate.

The Routinization of Obama’s Charisma

For a lot of us, the past year, which began with so much promise, has become a bitter series of disappointments, culminating now in the loss of a parallel government health plan — robust or otherwise — and prompting re-evaluation of whether we got the President we wanted. Some on the left have answered no. While I share their disappointment, I think we may be overstating the case. Here’s another way of looking at it.

Although I do not intend to imply he lacks substance — nothing could be further from the truth — President Obama is a charismatic leader, depending on his personal magnetism and leadership skills to hold together disparate coalitions. Naturally, though, governing towards the center is harder than campaigning in that direction. What we could be witnessing is the difficulty of translating charismatic ideas into rational/legal action — the routinization of charisma on a political scale.

Usually, when we talk about the “routinization of charisma,” per Max Weber,* we refer to the difficulty of transitioning a movement into an organization, following the death of a charismatic leader. Examples abound — whether successful (Jesus of Nazareth to Paul; Mohammed to Abu Bakr) or otherwise (Augustus to Tiberius), charismatic movements tend to make it into the history books.

Of course, President Obama is still alive — but Candidate Obama is not. That man is gone, merged with the Office, as all Presidents must. It falls to President Obama to put Candidate Obama’s plans into action, but he cannot rely on the flexibility of his former self, or the charismatic tools that flexibility bestows. In a very real way, the charismatic politician ceased existing on January 20th, and Obama has been rebuilding ever since.

Other Presidents have suffered similar difficulties (and recovered): Lincoln, elected on a similarly aspirational platform, was forced to drop all of his plans in the short term to fight a losing war. His first year was bleak, owing to an intractable (and violent) opposition, and dissent within his cabinet. He hit his stride in course. But translating ideas into action in the restrictive, ultra-sensitive D.C. atmosphere takes time.

This perspective is, obviously, artificial, but it’s a different way of approaching the real challenges the President faces. He’s entered office facing generational, existential crises, and a massive agenda, and to his credit, he’s chosen to approach them from a nuanced and consensus-building direction. That’ll be hard to effectuate, but we should be glad he’s trying.

I do not mean any of this to excuse the mistakes Obama has made thus far. We, his friends, should hold him accountable. But we should appreciate the difficulties that accompany big-picture thinkers.

* = Weber’s actual work is only available online in the original German. If you’re interested in learning more, read this essay analyzing it from another perspective.