October 26, 2010--Obama Post-Mortem
Even before the votes are counted next Tuesday, pundits are writing Obama post-mortems.
They are assuming, probably correctly, that the Democrats are about to get spanked. The House of Representatives, they are saying, will for certain have a GOP majority and the Senate could as well. One thing they agree about is that if the economy had turned upward we would be talking about modest Democratic loses.
New York Times columnists Frank Rich and Paul Krugman, both serious liberals, have in recent days pinned the anticipated debacle squarely on Obama.
Rich on Sunday wrote that he and Democrats are in trouble because they were too timid in confronting the banks and other financial institutions that were responsible for the economic tsunami. The Democrats should have launched investigations and prosecutions; and Obama should have paid more attention to rooting out and exposing the malfeasance and fraud and corruption that were at the heart of the problem.
Instead, in Rich's view, Obama and his economic team paid more attention to restoring the banking system to it pre-crash status and ways of doing business than to the widespread fallout that affected all but the well-sheltered wealthy elites. Thus the continuing wave of foreclosures and losses of savings and jobs and the resulting, understandable anger. Anger which is now the rage that has spawned and emboldened Tea Partiers and many, many others. (Rich column linked below.)
Yesterday Krugman offered his own version of what went wrong and why scores of Democrats are about to be tossed out of office. He also sees this to be the result of Obama's timidity. For Krugman the game was lost when Obama opted to press for a very limited form of economic stimulus. He misread history, thinking the system just needed some tweaking and modest pump-priming. This kind of approach didn't work in Japan and lost its force during our Depression when Roosevelt, who initially had intervened successfully, backed off from helping the economy in a massive way because his opponents prodded him to worry unduly about the growing deficit. Sound familiar? To Krugman it does and thus, in his view, the on-going economic and linked political problems.
Rich and Krugman have it more or less right but are missing a few other things that have contributed to Obama's troubles. And so my own preemptive post-mortem:
Timidity in Obama's case is partly the result of his reflective personality which has often been described as, in the best sense, his interest in doing things in thoughtful and bipartisan ways. He signaled this in his Inaugural Address. But more in truth, after seeing all Republicans but one or two line up in lockstep to oppose his stimulus package, operationally, in spite of his continuing public rhetoric, Obama broke off all serious attempts to work with the GOP. For example, for a full 18 months he never once met one-on-one with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. It is obvious that Obama can't stand McConnell and his colleagues and they know it. This is a sure recipe for legislative disaster.
Further, also as the result of timidity, this time caused by his inability to displease key colleagues and associates, Obama made a series of strategic errors both at home and abroad. He tried to placate the generals and members of his own cabinet, namely Hillary Clinton and Robert Gates--both hawks--by agreeing to triple the number of ground troops in Afghanistan rather than, as a real commander in chief, issuing orders to scale back the counter-insurgency strategy (which was and is failing) and concentrate, as Vice President Diden argued, exclusively on confronting and defeating al Qaeda, the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11.
Domestically, snookered again by Hillary Clinton who made health care reform her top priority, he embraced it as his. There was no James Carville around saying, "It's health care, stupid." In fact, Carville and others, correctly continued to advise, "It's the economy, stupid."
Jobs, jobs, jobs and foreclosures, foreclosures, foreclosures from day one should have been Obama's mantra. If he wanted to put his stamp on major domestic legislation he could have opted for the much less controversial reform of No Child Left Behind. And there is even some significant bipartisan energy for the redrafting of George Bush's signature education reform program.
And then, though roundly criticized for being too cool and not being able to show that he shared people's pain, a Bill Clinton specialty, Obama should have worked hard to shed that public persona. And then, rather than feeling our pain, he should have shown that he was feeing our anger as this is a time more of anger than pain.
They are assuming, probably correctly, that the Democrats are about to get spanked. The House of Representatives, they are saying, will for certain have a GOP majority and the Senate could as well. One thing they agree about is that if the economy had turned upward we would be talking about modest Democratic loses.
New York Times columnists Frank Rich and Paul Krugman, both serious liberals, have in recent days pinned the anticipated debacle squarely on Obama.
Rich on Sunday wrote that he and Democrats are in trouble because they were too timid in confronting the banks and other financial institutions that were responsible for the economic tsunami. The Democrats should have launched investigations and prosecutions; and Obama should have paid more attention to rooting out and exposing the malfeasance and fraud and corruption that were at the heart of the problem.
Instead, in Rich's view, Obama and his economic team paid more attention to restoring the banking system to it pre-crash status and ways of doing business than to the widespread fallout that affected all but the well-sheltered wealthy elites. Thus the continuing wave of foreclosures and losses of savings and jobs and the resulting, understandable anger. Anger which is now the rage that has spawned and emboldened Tea Partiers and many, many others. (Rich column linked below.)
Yesterday Krugman offered his own version of what went wrong and why scores of Democrats are about to be tossed out of office. He also sees this to be the result of Obama's timidity. For Krugman the game was lost when Obama opted to press for a very limited form of economic stimulus. He misread history, thinking the system just needed some tweaking and modest pump-priming. This kind of approach didn't work in Japan and lost its force during our Depression when Roosevelt, who initially had intervened successfully, backed off from helping the economy in a massive way because his opponents prodded him to worry unduly about the growing deficit. Sound familiar? To Krugman it does and thus, in his view, the on-going economic and linked political problems.
Rich and Krugman have it more or less right but are missing a few other things that have contributed to Obama's troubles. And so my own preemptive post-mortem:
Timidity in Obama's case is partly the result of his reflective personality which has often been described as, in the best sense, his interest in doing things in thoughtful and bipartisan ways. He signaled this in his Inaugural Address. But more in truth, after seeing all Republicans but one or two line up in lockstep to oppose his stimulus package, operationally, in spite of his continuing public rhetoric, Obama broke off all serious attempts to work with the GOP. For example, for a full 18 months he never once met one-on-one with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. It is obvious that Obama can't stand McConnell and his colleagues and they know it. This is a sure recipe for legislative disaster.
Further, also as the result of timidity, this time caused by his inability to displease key colleagues and associates, Obama made a series of strategic errors both at home and abroad. He tried to placate the generals and members of his own cabinet, namely Hillary Clinton and Robert Gates--both hawks--by agreeing to triple the number of ground troops in Afghanistan rather than, as a real commander in chief, issuing orders to scale back the counter-insurgency strategy (which was and is failing) and concentrate, as Vice President Diden argued, exclusively on confronting and defeating al Qaeda, the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11.
Domestically, snookered again by Hillary Clinton who made health care reform her top priority, he embraced it as his. There was no James Carville around saying, "It's health care, stupid." In fact, Carville and others, correctly continued to advise, "It's the economy, stupid."
Jobs, jobs, jobs and foreclosures, foreclosures, foreclosures from day one should have been Obama's mantra. If he wanted to put his stamp on major domestic legislation he could have opted for the much less controversial reform of No Child Left Behind. And there is even some significant bipartisan energy for the redrafting of George Bush's signature education reform program.
And then, though roundly criticized for being too cool and not being able to show that he shared people's pain, a Bill Clinton specialty, Obama should have worked hard to shed that public persona. And then, rather than feeling our pain, he should have shown that he was feeing our anger as this is a time more of anger than pain.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
5:18 AM
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