Bob Herbert: Obama's Credibility Gap

[depakid]

Americans are still looking for the answer, and if they don't get it soon - or if they don't like the answer - the president's current political problems will look like a walk in the park.

Mr. Obama may be personally very appealing, but he has positioned himself all over the political map: the anti-Iraq war candidate who escalated the war in Afghanistan; the opponent of health insurance mandates who made a mandate to buy insurance the centerpiece of his plan; the president who stocked his administration with Wall Street insiders and went to the mat for the banks and big corporations, but who is now trying to present himself as a born-again populist.

Mr. Obama is in danger of being perceived as someone whose rhetoric, however skillful, cannot always be trusted. He is creating a credibility gap for himself, and if it widens much more he won't be able to close it.

Mr. Obama's campaign mantra was "change" and most of his supporters took that to mean that he would change the way business was done in Washington and that he would reverse the disastrous economic policies that favored mega-corporations and the very wealthy at the expense of the middle class and the poor.

"Tonight, more Americans are out of work, and more are working harder for less," said Mr. Obama in his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in August 2008. "More of you have lost your homes and even more are watching your home values plummet. More of you have cars you can't afford to drive, credit card bills you can't afford to pay, and tuition that's beyond your reach."

Voters watching the straight-arrow candidate delivering that speech, in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Depression, would not logically have thought that an obsessive focus on health insurance would trump job creation as the top domestic priority of an Obama administration.

But that's what happened. Moreover, questions were raised about Mr. Obama's candor when he spoke about health care. In his acceptance speech, for example, candidate Obama took a verbal shot at John McCain, sharply criticizing him for offering "a health care plan that would actually tax people's benefits."

More: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/26-1

This was entirely predictable- and it's going to make it difficult for the administration to recreate the narrative in an effective manner that people like George Lakoff and Drew Westen suggest is required.

[flpoljunkie]

1. Yes, we need to 'know who our president really is.'

I am no longer sure.

[Armstead]

2. Bill Clinton -- That's who he seems more like to me

A clean-living version of Bill

[Captain Hilts]

4. I said that during the primaries and no one listened to me. nt

[quantass]

5. Here's hoping you weren't a Hillary supporter then.

seeing as how Hillary would have done pretty much the same thing as Obama up to this point.
If you were for Kucinich then my hat would be off to you.

[Captain Hilts]

6. I went from Clark to Hillary, and,yes, I noted that there were no significant

policy differences between Clinton and Obama. No one listened to that either.

The primaries went centrist too quickly. Dems knew they'd win in November and started courting the center too early.

[Larkspur]

7. I said it too

but the cult of Obama was quick to slap us down.

Bill Clinton is the wrong choice for Obama. Under Clinton Democrats LOST power and didn't get it back until 2006, when Howard Dean was DNC Chair.

I guess Rahm and Obama want Dems to lose Congress, just like Bill did, so that they can play the split ticket voters for chumps.

[n2doc]

3. And his new "deficit reduction plan" will make this worse

cutting 0.8% of the budget and claiming it is major deficit reduction is no way to tackle the problem. It is the best way to make oneself into a one termer.

[dave29]

8. certainly fun shootin bb's at the President all day, aint it

:hi:

or is it just the solemn responsibility you have undertaken to inform those who already agree with you of every possible negative interpretation of his actions --- on an anonymous message board?

[paulk]

10. are you talking to Bob Herbert?

He's the one who wrote the article.

Otherwise, what's your point?

[dave29]

11. sure it was for Bob. And all his friends.

:hi:

[paulk]

14. if you've got a point to make, then make it!

Make a fucking argument why Herbert is wrong!


I'm sick of the snot nosed putdowns of apologists like you - Obama is our President , too - and if we think his actions are hurting the party or the country, then we've got a duty to say it. If you don't agree, then say why! Instead of yet another anonymous putdown!

[dave29]

16. my point was extremely clear

no need to cuss it me, call me an apologist, or whatnot. You (and Bob) are more than welcome to say your peace, even if it is repetitive, intrinsically biased, and wallowing in the sort of groupthink that leads us into oblivion again and again. There is no need for me to argue the merits.... you are not going to listen to me. This is one lesson I have learned from folks like you... and Bob.

[paulk]

18. as near as I can tell, Obama is the one leading us into oblivion

or maybe losing Ted Kennedy's seat was just bad luck...

putting your fingers in your ears and labeling criticism of the President's leadership as "repetitive, intrinsically biased, and wallowing in the sort of groupthink that leads us into oblivion again and again" is a shallow argument, imo.


If anyone needs to be listening, it's the Obama administration. Listening to Democrats, not Chuck Grassley, for instance.

[dave29]

20. You have to listen to everyone when you are President.

Thems the breaks.

[paulk]

21. No, you don't have to listen to everybody.

That's Obama's biggest fault, his community organizer style of leadership. After 8 years of extreme partisanship, what the Democrats needed was a partisan Democrat Presidency - not Obama's "hold hands and sing Kumbaya" style of "please, sir, can I have another" bipartisanship.

[Skittles]

25. NO YOU DO NOT HAVE TO LISTEN TO EVERYONE

THAT IS HIS FUCKING PROBLEM

[depakid]

13. If one wanted to shoot BB's, a compelling case could be made for Obama behaving like Hoover

And- as it happens, someone made such a case- and a very prescient one back in July:

Excerpt from the insightful, historical piece (Note: readers will learn that Hoover wasn't the villain he's made out to be- in fact, quite the contrary):

A major theme of Obama’s 2006 book The Audacity of Hope is impatience with “the smallness of our politics” and its “partisanship and acrimony.” He expresses frustration at how “the tumult of the sixties and the subsequent backlash continues to drive our political discourse,” and voices a professional appreciation for Ronald Reagan’s ability to exploit such divisions. The politician he admires the most—ironically enough, considering the campaign that was to come—is Bill Clinton. For all his faults, Clinton, in Obama’s eyes, “instinctively understood the falseness of the choices being presented to the American people” and came up with his “Third Way,” which “tapped into the pragmatic, non-ideological attitude of the majority of Americans.”

This is an analysis consistent with Obama’s personal story. Like Herbert Hoover, Obama grew up as an outsider and overcame formidable odds—hence his constant promotion of personal responsibility and education. He came of age in a time when hardworking young men and women like him went to Wall Street or to Silicon Valley, and—once properly “incentivized” by the likes of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton—seemed to save the national economy, creating what appeared to be great general prosperity while doing well themselves. There’s no need to do battle with these strivers and achievers, individuals as accomplished in their fields as Obama is in his. All that’s required is to get them back on their feet, get the money running again, and maybe give them a few new rules to live by, a new set of incentives to get them back on track.

Just as Herbert Hoover came to internalize the “business progressivism” of his era as a welcome alternative to the futile, counterproductive conflicts of an earlier time, so has Obama internalized what might be called Clinton’s “business liberalism” as an alternative to useless battles from another time—battles that liberals, in any case, tended to lose.

Clinton’s business liberalism, however, is a chimera, every bit as much a capitulation to powerful and selfish interests as was Hoover’s 1920s progressivism. We are back in Evan Bayh territory here, espousing a “pragmatism” that is not really pragmatism at all, just surrender to the usual corporate interests. The common thread running through all of Obama’s major proposals right now is that they are labyrinthine solutions designed mainly to avoid conflict. The bank bailout, cap-and-trade on carbon emissions, health-care pools—all of these ideas are, like Hillary Clinton’s ill-fated 1993 health plan, simultaneously too complicated to draw a constituency and too threatening for Congress to shape and pass as Obama would like. They bear the seeds of their own defeat.

Obama will have to directly attack the fortified bastions of the newest “new class”—the makers of the paper economy in which he came of age—if he is to accomplish anything. These interests did not spend fifty years shipping the greatest industrial economy in the history of the world overseas only to be challenged by a newly empowered, green-economy working class. They did not spend much of the past two decades gobbling up previously public sectors such as health care, education, and transportation only to have to compete with a reinvigorated public sector. They mean, even now, to use the bailout to make the government their helpless junior partner, and if they can they will devour every federal dollar available to recoup their own losses, and thereby preclude the use of any monies for the rest of Barack Obama’s splendid vision.

MUCH MORE: http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/07/0082562

[dave29]

17. sure, a compelling case can be made for

anything

as I'm sure you know.

[depakid]

19. I invite you (and everyone else) to read the Harper's article

It's a very impressive piece, and well sums up the sorts of times we're in- and were in- as well as the responses to them (and the choices that could be made).

What's more, since we have 7 months hindsight on many of the matters- one can see where the author got it right- and what that portends for future tendencies, actions and dynamics.

[impik]

9. Oh well, hand in there. Three more years and you'll have a better president

I'm sure.

[Armstead]

12. That's missing the point -- Many would like Obama to be a better president

[Skittles]

24. ABSOLUTELY CORRECT

[TheKentuckian]

15. Accept this nasty dung or you'll get vile diarrhea, huh?

What's wrong with doing the people's business and putting us first? Maybe we demand leaders that work for and represent the common citizen and the future of the nation.

Throw the moneychangers out of the temple, Mr. Obama!

[hulka38]

23. The irony is that people who continue to make these lame rationalizations

are at the same time strong advocates of the status quo two party system. Don't take away my best defense for the ineffectual mediocrity that I've come to know and love.

[democracy1st]

22. K & R