Obama’s Presidency Has Not Been Timid; Congress, Media Fumbling Facts

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3 November 2009 :: J.E. Robertson

The president is being vilified by the Republican opposition for being a “radical”, despite governing so much from the center that his own party is beginning to worry about his presidency being too timid and not breakthrough enough to justify the massive groundswell of support for reform that swept him to power. If we look at the way he has governed, Pres. Obama’s first year in office has been ambitious and groundbreaking —he has implemented key policy reform at home and achieved important diplomatic breakthroughs—, but the Washington establishment has slowed reform and Democratic politicians have waffled on support for major legislation.

The media have obsessively propagated a morally relativist pseudo-debate in which even dangerous distortions are treated as “equal” in merit to serious policy, and the most brazen attacks are given credibility by the mere fact of the party making them having no other ideas to offer. The media environment remains toxic to the promotion of conscious and thoughtful political engagement of the kind Pres. Obama has called for and consistently seeks to create — despite his opponents’ constant promotion of the idea that the supposedly “liberally biased” media adore and promote him wherever possible.

The media’s dumbing down of debate persists, and is reponsible for much of the distortion, confusion and division of the political moment. Indeed, this has hampered his ability to effectively spread his message of systemic change, but Pres. Obama’s biggest problem has been the unwillingness of conservative Democrats to back major reform, even in a time of historic crisis, urgent necessity and massive and overwhelming public support for major reform — be it in healthcare, energy or financial regulations.

Conservative Democrats have been grossly inadequate in explaining how specific major reforms are actually strong improvements in long-term fiscal responsibility and economic stabilization. Instead, they have adopted Republican bullet-points as the hard-and-fast logic of fiscal conservatism, despite those bullet-points being put forward by the same leadership of the same party that expanded spending by more than at any other time in history, molding out of raw clay the worst economic crisis for three generations.

This has empowered the Republican opposition to hold the line on uniform, unanimous opposition to everything proposed by Pres. Obama. The Republican opposition has not benefited from its sclerotic rhetorical position on taxes or deregulation, but rather from the inability of conservative Democrats to explain the distinction between the irresponsible, flagrantly pro-corporate, anti-market policies of Republican ideologues and the fiscal conservatism actually being exhibited by Pres. Obama’s proposals and interactions with Congress.

Pres. Obama is clearly as cogent and purposeful a president as he was a campaigner, a senator, a scholar. But the work of governing takes huge amounts of energy, and the work of explaining policy and involving the public takes time that cannot be spent pitching a long list of early accomplishments. He cannot be the consummate salesman of policy, and the explainer in chief and the president, all at once, and the job’s difficulty is vastly compounded by the media’s clumsy way of trying to retrofit all of his communications into the brutish, hamstrung lingo of televisual bombast.

Today’s elections are not a measure of Obama’s job-performance. The voters say as much. Fully 60% of voters in New Jersey told pollsters the president was not an issue in deciding their vote. What’s more, historical trends suggest the Republicans should win all three of the most watched races:

Not since 1977 has Virginia elected a governor from the president’s party, and New Jersey not since 1985. New York’s 23rd Congressional district has NEVER been won by a Democrat, going back to the late 19th century. Pres. Obama is still hugely popular in all three states, and the electorate in off-year elections tends to be significantly older, a trend that would favor Obama’s critics, not his allies or his policy goals.

The race in New York’s 23rd district is much more a commentary on the state of the national Republican party, which is increasingly split between principled conservatives and hard right-wing ideologues. There are virtually no moderates left in nationally visible positions in the Republican party, and the less radical conservatives are increasingly concerned that ideological “purification” is allowing the extreme right to hijack the party and undermine its mainstream appeal.

In that race, the rancor and contempt hurled at the Republican candidate Ded Scozzafava by self-appointed conservative spokespeople has been so radical, the Conservative party candidate they favor over their own laughed at and was not critical of a joke in which Rush Limbaugh accused her of “bestiality”. The race may go to the Democrats as a result of the Republican party’s vitriolic division, and there is talk of a Republican “protest vote” either for Democrat Bill Owens, whom Scozzafava endorses, or for Scozzafava herself. The Republicans’ split undermines the party nationally as well, because it suggests deep disloyalty, and disdain for local voters and local issues.

Pres. Barack Obama faces challenges perhaps more daunting than his historic presidential election win last year, but those challenges are not yet his to own. The responsibility for responding is his, but polls during the transition and after his inauguration showed voters felt he should have at least two years to cajole the nation into sustained economic recovery and achieve key reforms before being judged as lagging on his pledged changes. Today’s races are local politics, measuring the concerns of voters for the condition of their local situations, not the president’s worth or the media’s obsession with soundbite debate.