“Barack Obama has grandly failed to lead the nation emotionally as well as rationally,” Newsweek's Jon Meacham wrote. “What works in a classroom or a think tank does not work on Capitol Hill or in the White House. Obama sometimes seems to be running the Brookings Institution, not the country. Like all of us, Obama has the vices of his virtues. He is cool and steady, but can seem cold and remote. He is thoughtful and thorough, but can appear eggheady and out of it. He appeals to the intellect, but often fails to make the visceral case for something.” Meacham’s engaging essay, The Trouble With Barack, is well worth the read. It is, despite my choice of quote, here, quite positive of the president, making the case that the conservative right’s scare tactics present a distorted view of Obama, presenting him as an extreme liberal when a sober review of the president’s record fins him just slightly right of center (including the president's health care reform ambitions, which Meacham describes as "just to the right of those of Richard Nixon").
But I agree with Meacham’s assessment of the president’s biggest failure thus far: to lead, to inspire. He’s been, for the most part, the Negotiator-In-Chief, wasting enormous amounts of time working within a Pollyannaish view of Congress—specifically the Senate—and, from what I can tell, wrongly assuming these men and women are, in fact grownups. The sheer vitriol going on in Congress, on both sides of the aisle, paints a picture of a deeply insecure gang of children. The sheer level of childishness—from petty agendas to dirty tricks—going on in the face of the worst economic crisis this country has ever faced defies description. These folks seem concerned exclusively with their own reelection chances. Their focus on the coming midterm elections inhibits every choice, every decision, as conservatives bank hard right and liberals move to the center, nervous about being blamed if things go wrong.
Well, guess what, Sherlock: things HAVE gone wrong. And we DO blame you—all of you petulant, snotty-nosed children running the country. Democrats: you absolutely will get voted out of you fail to act, to do what we voted you nitwits in to do. Democrats spent eight years tip toeing around conservatives. Now we’ve thrown the bums out, but the Dems, idiots that they are, are still tip-toeing.
Meanwhile the president seems to be living in some alternate universe. He seems oblivious to the preposterous level of sophomoric behavior up on the hill. Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan—these guys would have strong-armed, threatened, insulted people’s mothers. Would have gone on TV and embarrassed them. These men set the tone. Instead, President Obama seems to be insisting on an admirable path of hands-off legislating. But all it’s done is drag his numbers down, push moderates and independents to the right, and bog down the president’s hopeful agenda in a mud wrestle of name-calling.
I was heartened to see the president finally talk tough last week. Rumors abound that the president’s chief of staff, Rohm Emanuel, is the likely author of Obama’s thus-far professorial tip-toeing, and that the president is fed up with the foolishness in Congress and had finally gotten the message: Step Up, Mr. President. All of which could be clever White House maneuvering, or it could be table setting for Emanuel’s long-planned departure, with, hopefully, a more determined president emerging in Emanuel’s wake.
Much like Mr. Clinton, President Obama has done a great deal of simply amazing work under impossible stress and in difficult times. And, like Mr. Clinton, he has thus far done a terrible job of telling his own story. Modesty has absolutely no place in Washington, where whomever shouts the loudest tends to be the one telling the story. Only, the loudest voice, in any room, at any time, is that of the president of the United States. Thirteen months later, Mr. Obama has finally made a good start. I hope and pray he continues, now, to do what he should have done from the very start: lead. Bully if he has to. But, we’re begging you, Mr. President, get something done.
