The Velcro President
The Obama administration is starting to look like an old couch, the kind you see at the dump with six or seven springs sticking out. But it is not an old couch; it's a new couch. It is not supposed to look like this just yet. Have all the czars been coming over in the evening to jump on it?
One thing after another. As National Review put it, he's holding all the cards -- and still losing. Cap and trade got bogged down. The stimulus got us a national mortgage that will be paid off when the sun goes out. Obama adopted numerous key elements of Bush's foreign policy, down to and including Bush's Secretary of Defense. More quietly, he has become a Bushie on issues like war tribunals and rendition programs. That made the Left hopping mad, and his only hope was to placate them with a bunch of Pinko Programs here at home.
But then his health care program got town halled, out in the broad light of day. The Prophet got the Bronx cheer. His fan base responded by calling middle America a bunch of names. Speaking of calling names, the president thought he ought to mix it up a little bit with a local police department. So now he can't placate the Left domestically, which appears to have led to the (politically) insane decision to let Eric Holder investigate the possibility of prosecuting interrogators of terrorists from the Bush years. That will fly like three helium balloons tied to an anvil. Enter Van Jones.
Now the thing to note about all these dust-ups is not the fact that they are occurring. They occur under every president. Like clockwork, somebody in every administration is regularly found in the wrong bedroom, the wrong boardroom, or the wrong backroom. There are teams of experts in Washington, working diligently for both parties, to make them happen. And so they do happen. The various sinners and ninnyhammers employed by every administration do their part to help the process along. Big whoop. So the stories are not the story here.
The story is the fact that Obama is starting to look like he has an innate capacity to become the velcro president. The stories are sticking to him. Reagan had his series of incidents, resulting in front page stories pretty regularly, but he had some mysterious ability summed up by the phrase the teflon president. Nothing really stuck to him. Reagan and Carter had different surfaces, and only Reagan's was of the non-stick variety. Obama is starting to look a lot like Carter.
Another way of describing this is that Obama is being successfully named by his opposition. The opposition always says these sorts of things. You are not in trouble if the opposition says these things. That's what they do. It's their job. You are in trouble if they say these things, and what they say resonates with a bunch of other people. As a result, a received wisdom forms, and it forms outside the ranks of the political wonks and activists. From death panels to his Dear Leader speech to the kids in public schools, it is becoming increasingly apparent that Obama is sticky. For what it is worth, Bush was sticky too, and he was successfully named by the opposition -- but not nearly as quickly.
In the campaign, all this was not readily apparent. Obama was the teflon candidate, and what better way to get a teflon president than to run a teflon candidate? Well, surprise.
Obama's tactical decisions have to be set against this backdrop. The congressional elections of 2010 are about a year out now. There is not the slightest chance that Obama's political position will be improved in those elections, and there is a robust chance that they will plummet drastically. That means that what he really needs to get done, he needs to get done now. But the more he tries to accomplish in the coming months, the more he will continue to freak everybody out. In order to overcome the perceptions that have formed about him (long term), he will have to act in a way that will reinforce them drastically in the coming months. It is starting to look as though he will have a very hard time.
But of course, let it never be forgotten that the Republicans have a genius for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
First posted in Blog and Mablog, 5th September, 2009
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