Barack Obama was not as popular and powerful as he seemed on January 20, 2009, and he is not as unpopular and weak as he seems today. His first year in office demonstrated his strengths and his weaknesses—the first half mainly the strengths, the second half the weaknesses, which is why Democrats are in despair and Republicans surging with hope today. Obama signed a number of important pieces of legislation, especially the Recovery Act, he headed off the very real possibility of long-term depression, he cleared the toxic air of anti-Americanism in many parts of the world, he brought a measure of sanity and decency to the war on terror. Under his leadership, climate change, health care, and financial regulatory reform were given the central role in American policy that they deserve, and if it weren’t for the Senate’s perversion of its constitutional role, all three would now be landmark laws bearing the signature of President Obama.
And yet the whole drift of political currents—especially in the wake of last night’s Massachusetts result—is away from Obama’s agenda, and toward a kind of populism that, like a wild fire, can shift directions with any light wind that blows through and quickly burn up large tracts of land (it just immolated Martha Coakley). This is a politics that Obama has never been comfortable with. His preferred approach, as we’ve learned this past year, is to bring together his relatively non-ideological advisers, let each one argue a point of view, then make a decision on the rational basis of evidence and expertise, and explain it to the public in a detailed, almost anti-inspirational manner. Thus the bank plan, the Afghanistan policy, the “jobs summit,” etc. A Democratic politician recently told me that the best way to get Obama to do what you want is to tell him that it’s the unpopular, difficult, but responsible thing.
If Obama has any ideology, it’s this process. It is not an approach that’s easily adapted to leading and guiding the volatile hearts and minds of a beleaguered and cynical public. My guess is that it’s driven his political advisers around the bend many times.
Read more on Obama’s first year.
Part of Obama’s weakness has been this unwillingness or inability to say a few simple things passionately, which would let Americans know that he is on their side. Reagan knew how to do it, which meant that, even when his popularity was sinking at a similar point in his presidency (remember 1982?), the public still knew where he stood, not necessarily on the details of policy, but on a few core principles that he could at least pretend never to sacrifice. This is partly a problem of communication, worsened by a tendency of the White House (as if the campaign never ended) to make Obama’s the face on every issue, so that the more he says, the less people know what he wants. But presidencies never rise or fall by P.R. Any difficulty with “message” only amplifies a deeper problem.
In Obama’s case, I think it’s two-fold, and the halves are connected. First is his distaste for political conflict. He came into office truly believing that Washington partisanship was a quarter or a third of the country’s problem (read “The Audacity of Hope”), and that he was the one who could carry us all beyond it. Before the month of January 2009 was over, it was clear to many congressional Democrats that the other party had absolutely no interest in cooperating and indeed saw its way back to power in unwavering intransigence. Somehow, the White House needed the rest of the year to figure it out, and even now I wonder whether Obama has completely abandoned the dream of post-partisanship, since successful people are loathe to give up on their most cherished ideas. This long hesitation gave the weakened Republicans a tactical advantage that gradually amounted to a second life. It made the Administration and Congress seem weak, divided, more focused on legislative process than on real problems. Drawing bright lines, making combative noises, and asking which side are you on can be a crude and often demagogic thing, but it creates an appearance of strength, and Americans like people who know their minds and are prepared to fight.
But the fundamental reason why the soaring emotions of the inauguration have soured just a year later goes beyond anything that Obama can do. The country is in deep trouble, not just with ten percent unemployment (though that accounts for a lot of unhappiness), but with chronic, long-term social and economic problems. Whatever responsibility George W. Bush and his Republican Party might bear is almost forgotten; in the age of the iPhone and cable news, that was half a century ago. These problems, which can be summed up as the decline of the American middle class, have been so resistant to solutions that the readiest and most reasonable stance is profound skepticism. It is so much harder politically to do something affirmative than to stand in the way and say it can’t be done. Obama has made his job all the more difficult by trying to do something—and in some cases succeeding—without offering much of a challenge to the people standing in the way. So he pays the price, and they do not.