The New Republic

- roi, if the GOP couldn't rely upon the sixty being shifty, AHC would have been a lock as soon as Al was sworn in (and on good day when Byrd and Kennedy could attend). Not that Nelson and Bayh were easy to please and there was the wobbly Lieberman... Yes, Obama and a future Republican POTUS will need to go begging for a few votes because an effective majority in the Senate is probably closer to 65., maybe more. Medicare, Civil Rights and Voting rights were only possible because Northern Republicans voted with LBJ when Southern Democrats would not. Yeah, at the end of that era Red State versus Blue State was more efficient because policy and policies were different and differed within each party. I know Johnson was smart and brutal but you will see the roll call votes on the landmark legislation stocked with Republicans and he had less clout with them than the Southerners in his own party. Maybe Obama's dreamy idea is impossible with people in panic but breaking Grover's grip is necessary and more doable than securing a filibuster proof majority. No, we couldn't re-legislate Clinton's Budget Reform of 1993 today and it passed on the party line with a breed of Republican that are extinct. There are few eras where dynamics of the current math and rigid ideology could succeed in opposition to the good of the country let alone the limit of executive influence. The threat that Obama won't lose because we have his back and they realize they can't beat him by doing nothing? That's a more powerful message than any theatrics of leadership.

- michaelg

August 11, 2011 at 5:10pm

I'm beginning to wonder when Jonathan is going to stop writing these posts that consist so much in whacking lustily at custom-manufactured straw men. People such as myself who supported President Obama initially -- Obama was the first Democratic presidential candidate I ever voted for in a general election -- are not unhappy with him because he's not using magical powers he doesn't have. We're unhappy because he's either not using or misusing the ordinary powers he does have. Scarecrow over on Firedoglake has a short list of offenses: "The consistent message from the national Democratic party and President Obama is that “this is the era of austerity.” The President repeatedly told the nation that government had to tighten its belt, that government debt was a serious problem standing in the way of economic growth and jobs. He said we needed a “grand bargain” that reduced government spending on important programs by trillions of dollars with only limited contributions from the wealthy and corporations. Although he claimed to favor worker rights, he unilaterally froze federal worker salaries. And then he told the elderly that they needed to accept “adjustments” in their pensions and health care after extending tax breaks for the wealthy." And this list could be extended. -- The Administration has been almost totally brain-dead in dealing with the home foreclosure crisis. Their HAMP program has been hamp-ered from the beginning by failure to understand the incentives motivating loan servicers, which encourage them to string out borrowers as long as possible to rake in extra fees. As a result, it's helped very few people and spent very little of the funding allocated to it. -- On civil rights, Obama's differences with George Bush have been far less apparent than the similarities. He has so completely mishandled the torture issue that the only thing standing in the way of resuming torture under a Republican administration is an easily-revoked executive order. In fact, he's made things worse. By an expanded use of the "state secrets" doctrine to ensure that torture victims never have a day in court, he has also ensured that there are no judicial barriers either to resuming torture. -- In his feckless pursuit of a "Grand Bargain" that would fit him for Mt. Rushmore, Obama -- not the Republicans -- proposed raising the Medicare eligibility age to 67. Krugman correctly denounced this idea as "cruel" when Lieberman proposed it, especially for the many workers in physically strenuous jobs. Krugman also pointed out that doing so would make Medicare's finances worse (by removing from the pool of Medicare payers its youngest and least sick members) and would result in higher medical costs overall. The idea simply amounted to cost-shifting from the government to the private sector --which is exactly the inspiration behind Ryancare. One does not have to believe in some absurd "cult of the Presidency" to find this catalog of unforced Obama errors revolting. That, Jonathan, is why an increasing number of thoughtful and experienced Democrats such as Roid and others such as myself are disappointed to disgusted with Obama's performance.

- AFdiplomat

August 11, 2011 at 5:57pm

"And that's the flaw with your, or any other alternate strategy argument - "the argument that an alternate strategy would necessarily have produced a better outcome. These arguments take the form of: if Mr. Obama had done X rather than Y, he could have accomplished P rather than Q, or maybe even both P and Q! (The possibility that the strategy might have failed and that neither P nor Q would have been achieved is usually not considered.) Both types of arguments are hard to prove — or to disprove. That doesn’t mean I begrudge people for making them. But they ought to be stated as speculative, rather than as self-evident truths." wkwami, do you have anything else to offer? You read one blog post by Nate Silver and treat it as the key to neutralizing any and all criticism of the president. Shouldn't you be embarrassed to rely on such secondhand throwaway tripe? But since you seem so interested in analytical philosophy, see if you can follow the following logic train: A. A person should not reject that which is good. B. It is good not to repeat past mistakes. C. Avoidance of the repetition of past mistakes relies upon the critical analysis of past decsions. D. Critical analysis of any decsion requires close examination of all related alternatives. E. Past decisions being past, all related alternatives bar one--the one chosen--are necessarily hypothetical, not actual and are in some sense "speculative." Ergo: A person should not reject a critical analysis of past decisions because it relies upon an examination of hypothetical, "speculative" alternatives. Just to spell it out for you, wkwami, your standard rejetion of any criticism of Obama only works if you're willing to reject criticism of, well, any past decision whatsoever.

- AaronW

August 11, 2011 at 7:20pm

I don't share all of wkwami's arguments but I find his voice valuable here. For me, I ask again, where were the mass rallies and the impassioned town hall meetings IN FAVOR of health care reform in 2009, just to take one example? Where was the equivalent of the teabagger marches, where was the massive constituency pressure on conservative Dems like Baucus (or even on moderate Repubs), where was the sense that e.g. the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was a key reform tool that needed to be supported and advocated by a large segment of the public so that opposing it was a bad idea? The president is the president, he can't organize a march on Washington too. If Obama doesn't feel that a Democratic/progressive majority is behind him and also working to build a national base for reform then he will logically conclude, as I believe he has, that the so-called progressive left is all hat and no cattle. Who was hung out to dry during those town hall meetings? Democratic representatives, who were facing crowds of bussed-in hecklers. Why wasn't there a coordinated campaign to fight the intimidation on the ground? The only major political event I can think of that embodied a left-of-center surge that made national news is Wisconsin, and that was essentially a state-level political response borne out of local conditions, and indeed reactive rather than proactive at the beginning (although none the less admirable for all that). Not to underestimate the medium-to-longer term activization that Wisconsin opened the door to, but I don't believe it's Obama's lack of passion that's the real problem. I suggest it's also (I don't say 'only') the lack of passion among the so-called liberal base, who basically don't really believe/want many of the things they claim to believe. For example, I find that educated middle-class liberals are far more ambivalent about organized labor than one might expect.

- ironyroad

August 11, 2011 at 8:15pm

- Good points iroad, I ended my windy note agreeing (I think): There are few eras where dynamics of the current math and rigid ideology could succeed in opposition to the good of the country let alone the limit of executive influence. The threat that Obama won't lose because we have his back and they realize they can't beat him by doing nothing? That's a more powerful message than any theatrics of leadership.

- michaelg

August 11, 2011 at 8:25pm

AaronW: "You read one blog post by Nate Silver and treat it as the key to neutralizing any and all criticism of the president." I find it interesting that you're exasperated with my relentless messaging - the very thing you accuse Obama of not doing enough of, and which you have speculated were Obama to do so, would have resulted in better outcomes. Staying on message no good? :) "Just to spell it out for you, wkwami, your standard rejection of any criticism of Obama only works if you're willing to reject criticism of, well, any past decision whatsoever." I do not reject criticism of Obama out of hand. All I ask is that Obama's critics who suggest alternate strategies will deliver better outcomes ought to explain how their proposed strategies would deliver those better outcomes, taking into consideration the constantly changing realities. Imagine we're in a boat on an alligator-infested river, and the boat develops a leak. I happen to be a world class swimmer. What do we do? I suggest since we're not fully equipped to plug the hole, we bail out the water even as we paddle our way slowly back to shore where we can then fix the boat. This option would be slow and tasking, however, the variables are pretty well known with this scenario (as Don Rumsfeld would say, our "known knowns" and "known unknowns" are finite). We consequently make significant progress, but still a long way to shore. The alligators, sensing they were about to lose their meal, get nastier, trashing around the boat and attempting to capsize it. You begin to complain about how tiring it is to keep bailing out the water, and how long it's taking to get to shore. Every time the hungry alligators bump the boat you get more irate and question the soundness of my strategy. You propose an alternate strategy: a) let's give the alligators a taste of their own medicine. Each time they bump the boat, we hit them back with our paddles (I say while it may make us feel better for a moment, it distracts from the task at hand, as well as the ultimate goal of getting to shore alive. The only time we hit them with the paddle is when they attempt to breach the boat, otherwise we keep bailing out the water and paddling to shore, and feeding them with our food supply). b) you question the wisdom of feeding the alligators from our meager food supply, saying it only emboldens them to want more (I say giving them part of our food supply every now and then has some value - it distracts them from their main objective, which is eating us for dinner. The fact that some of them are fighting each other over what we've given them reveals their own vulnerability - compromise can be strategic). c) being that I'm a world class swimmer, you believe I could out-swim the alligators, and my refusal to do so only underscores my weakness and fecklessness. (I say, consider the possibility that the alligators may be goading us into swimming ashore, that is precisely the reation they expect, and have prepared for). You may be right that I am overestimating the alligators, and that with my strategy, it is only a matter of time before they wore us out and breach the boat anyway, so why not just go for it and swim ashore? While your ctiticisms may be valid, my problem with your alternative is that it introduces too many new variables or "unknowns unknowns", essentially a Hail Mary, without accounting for how we'd respond to new variables, should they turn out to be counterproductive (you may assume that with your alternative everything goes as planned, I can't). Also, timing is everything - we may well have to employ your alternative strategy a some point, but it has to be at the right place at the right time. That place and time might be when we're a bit closer to shore and/or when the alligators have weakened the boat to the point where staying put poses equal, or even more of a threat than going for the swim. I'm not saying don't criticize Obama, just that your criticism should be backed up by reasoned argument and facts on the ground. For example, we are told that Obama did not advocate enough for the ACA, hence its lack of public support. Yet the polls repeatedly indicated that a percentage of those against the ACA were against it because it did not go far enough! Conservatives didn't bother to make the distinction that the percentage of opposition to the ACA has been far less that the overall numbers were suggesting. As they say, "statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital". In this instance, liberals essentially helped conceal the popularity of the ACA, not because they were against it, but because they didn't get public option. In doing so, they ensured the conservative meme that ACA was unpopular took hold with voters. As michealg said, the threat that Obama won't lose, or that his policy accomplishments such as the ACA being popular in spite of Tea Party demagoguery a la death panels, would have been a much more powerful message than any theatrics of leadership. Well said, michaelg. Ditto to Ironyroad on, "where were the mass rallies and the impassioned town hall meetings IN FAVOR of health care reform in 2009". These are equivalent to bailing out the water and paddling the boat in the face of angry alligators. Eventually they get outworked and out foxed. The "shock and awe" alternative of beating them up with paddles and out-swimming them may be seductively appealing, when in fact it may well bring about much worse outcomes.

- wkwami

August 11, 2011 at 11:08pm

Maybe so, irony. And yet let one us who is critical of the Democrats' feckless drift talk about organizing an electoral challenge to the status quo--presumably the kind of real-world action whose absence you note--and wkwami, michaelg, Chait and the like will call us idealistic fools. You can either agree with Obama's policies on their merits or you can argue that his policies are the best that could have been achieved under the circumstances. But if you argue the latter, it's only fair if someone asks you why you don't engage yourself to change/improve the circumstances? I'd say the progressive movement is no hat, no cattle. For at least a generation liberals have deferred to the Democratic Party leadership. Liberals looked to Obama as the leader of their cause. There were no pro-ACA picketers because Obama and others in the party did not suggest that there should be. Do you think that if the president and the Democratic leaders in Congress had not put the word out through the unions, through MoveOn and OFA that they wanted people to show up to those town hall meetings that it couldn't/wouldn't have been organized? I don't. It isn't that progressives aren't out there in numbers, it's they they're not well organized, mainly because for too long they have subsumed their interests to those of the DP. This may be changing. And if it does change and hurts the Democratic Party in the process, the party will have Obama to thank in large part.

- AaronW

August 11, 2011 at 11:31pm

It ain't your relentlessness that annoys, wikety, it's your wrongness.

- AaronW

August 11, 2011 at 11:39pm

"There were no pro-ACA picketers because Obama and others in the party did not suggest that there should be." This is a major cop out! The ACA debate was front and center for over a year. In fact one criticism of the President by Roi was that he spent too much political capital on ACA. So now we needed the President to suggest to liberals that there should be pro-ACA picketing to counter the Tea Party? Are you suggesting liberals did not understand the significance of the ACA? I guess it's all Obama's fault. Very well, let's assume the Prez and congressmen failed to call liberals to action on the ACA. Are you telling me that liberals never thought to do so on their own? And, liberals could easily have told pollsters they LOVED the ACA even though they would have preferred it went even further. Yet they chose to say they were against it because it didn't go far enough. This is the kind of attitude that resulted in the so called enthusiasm gap - liberals were gonna payback Obama for lack of public option. Well, they paid him back alright, Alan Grayson lost to a teabagger who is now making sure we can't get anything done. Blame Obama, he should have suggested you get yourself some enthusiasm and go vote in the 2010 elections.

- wkwami

August 11, 2011 at 11:55pm

I never said that Obama spent too much political capital on ACA. I said he didn't bother to build public support for it in the face of determined opposition and hence spent much of the political capital he had without "replenishing," so to speak. The purpose of political capital is to accomplish things, but if you do not do the hard work to build and sustain "public sentiment," as Lincoln put it (thank you, AFdiplomat), then you quickly hit your limit. Obama doesn't do his work as politician-in-chief. Yes, it is the fault of the Democratic party leadership that there was no organized support for ACA. For one thing, the process was so tormented by Obama's post-partisanship that no one could figure out what the hell it was at any given time. Does anyone now recall the endless negotiations with Republicans for which Obama never asked for or got a single vote? No one paid Obama back for the lack of a public option. No one can figure out what he was actually advocating and what, if anything, he wanted the public to support. I still have barely any idea. No matter how detailed the argument, wkwami, you are always going to say that it is speculative or not well-reasoned. You always do. You make these statements as conclusory claims, without benefit of any argument yourself. You don't demonstrate that any particular alternative is more speculative than any alternative to history must be. You don't actually demonstrate that any argument in support of an alternative is not well-reasoned. You simply say it. It is both tiresome and meaningless. For a very fine explication, see AFdiplomat above, as well as his earlier posting about Lincoln's view of the importance of cultivating public sentiment. If you don't see that these are well-reasoned, then no one can help you. Michaelg, regardless of the asymmetries in the strategic postures of the two parties, there is simply no excuse for not crafting a message that you believe can move public sentiment and selling it relentlessly. That's what politics consists of. Organized communication. If not that, then what? Prayer? The Republican frame is that excessive government spending is the root cause of all our economic woes, including the recession and the deficit. Objectively, this is utter nonsense. So what? It is a pitch that is persuading large numbers of people not least because it is not contested by the Democrats in any serious way. To the contrary, Obama affirms it. If Obama's message is nothing more than a weak affirmation of the Republicans' frame, then the obvious conclusion for the voters is that the Republicans are correct and that it would be better to have Republicans implementing the Republican agenda than Democrats. If I bought the Republican frame, then that is exactly what I would think too. What is the Democratic frame? If there is one, I have no idea what it is. Hence, the Democrats are fighting without weapons.

- roidubouloi

August 12, 2011 at 12:23am

Cop out? Ironyroad cited the absence of any protests in favor of the ACA as evidence for the absence of any sizeable liberal base. I don't think think the absence of such pro-ACA protests means any such thing. All it means is that progressives within the Democratic Party have been less willing than their Tea Party counterparts to organize as a seperate sub-party within their major party organization and have been more willing, to date, to take direction (or lack thereof) from the Democratic Party leadership. I'll acknowlege that it's a bit of a chicken-&-egg question--which comes first, lack of progressive Democratic leadership or lack of a sizeable, organized progressive Democratic constituency?--but the absence of sign-wielding crowds pushing a liberal demostic agenda doesn't mean that there aren't lots of people out there who believe in such things. And if I may permit myself to speak for roidubouloi, I think you seriously misread him if you think that he's saying that Obama overspent his political capital on ACA. That isn't what roi has said at all. He has said that Obama seriously mismanaged his handling of the ACA, that he spent political capital in a desultory fashion and got little of value for the concessions he made and in the process alienated the very people--progressives--to whom he should have turned in order to drive the policy forward. Roidubouloi has said not that Obama oversold the ACA but rather that he didn't sell it hard enough. Roidubouloi, I believe, would have applauded the president's efforts had he pushed hard for a public option and had he encouraged progressive groups to demonstrate in favor of robust health reform, and contra irony road, I believe that had Obama provided such leadership the looked-for demonstrations would have been there.

- AaronW

August 12, 2011 at 1:07am

Hehe. I see that roi can speak for himself.

- AaronW

August 12, 2011 at 1:07am

You can speak for me any time, Aaron. I often like the way you put better than the way I do.

- roidubouloi

August 12, 2011 at 1:30am

Or, to condense one of Roid's thoughtful points above, and as Harry Truman is rumored to have said, "If you give the people a choice between a Republican and a Republican, they'll choose the Republican every time." That's the great danger when the Democrats fail to establish their own frame: they will find themselves, as Obama has been doing on government spending, on civil rights, on Medicare, and so many other things, operating within the Republican frame and offering what amounts to thin-blooded Republicanism. That's not why Obama's voters chose him, that's not what they want now, and that is why they feel demotivated. There's no magical thinking involved -- just a failure on the part of the Democratic leadership in general and Obama in particular to do their job. On all these issues, Democrats and progressives could learn a lot from the rise of the modern conservative movement. That movement hardly existed in the early 1960s, after eight years of moderate Republicanism under Eisenhower. Then Bill Buckley gathered together traditional conservatives and libertarians at his estate in Sharon, Connecticut, to establish a common front. The resulting doctrinal position, called the "Sharon Statement," is still extraordinarily relevant more than half a century later. Nearly all the threads of current conservative Republicanism can be found in that document. And that's not surprising. The meeting in Sharon not only issued a statement; it founded an organization, the Young Americans for Freedom, that was highly influential in the conservative takeover of the Republican Party through the Goldwater nomination in 1964, and its alumni have been involved in founding many of the conservative organizations that broadened the conservative base. Their goal was always "the long march through the institutions," and specific setbacks -- such as Goldwater's crushing general-election defeat, or Reagan's failure to unseat Gerald Ford in 1976 -- never caused them to lose heart. That their net result was so terribly malign does not detract from their practical effectiveness. As defective as the efforts of the Democratic leadership and Obama have been, those defects also point to a larger gap: the absence of anything remotely like the "Sharon Statement" defining modern progressive thought, and any strong effort to advance that position politically. Too many in this tradition are living off stored intellectual and political capital without renewing it That, as much as the failures of Obama and others, is at the root of the problem.

- AFdiplomat

August 12, 2011 at 2:35am

Good post, AFdiplomat. And I wholeheartedly agree that the failure of liberalism/progressivism to make any dent in the current political discourse is not Obama's fault or the fault of any one person. For far too long progressives have subsumed their goals to those of the Democratic Party, either out of a belief that Democratic candidates shared those goals or from a belief that the Republican alternative was unacceptable even if preventing Republican electoral victory required supporting Democratic candidates who were only marginally more "liberal" than their Republican opponents. In 2000 the Green Party captured more than 2% of the vote, a small but hardly insignificant proportion, but then after the Bush II debacle progressive voters returned to the Democratic Party en masse, not because Kerry seemed to stand for the same things as them in any forceful way but simply because he wasn't Bush. I agree that there are many lessons to be learned from the conservative movement, lessons that liberals need to take to heart. Some of them are: 1. Define a set of principles that characterize the "liberal movement" upon which "movement liberals" are willing to compromise only a little if at all. 2. Develop a political and intellectual infrastructure. 3. Operate within existing Democratic Party structures but do not be afraid to sacrific short-term Democratic Party expediencies--such as winning particular elections--in service to longer term liberal goals.

- AaronW

August 12, 2011 at 3:33am

4. The liberal cause is not the cause of one year or two but the cause of a lifetime. There will be many setbacks, but those are not reasons to abandon the fight or compromise one's principles, but instead are reasons to forge ahead with even greater determination.

- AaronW

August 12, 2011 at 3:39am

AF, I shall add that Truman quote, apocryphal or not, to my archive, along with the Lincoln. Both AF and AW, I cannot think of a word to add to that. Someone will be along soon to tell you that you are speculating, that your arguments are not well-reasoned, requiring a warning label as such. You are free to say such things, but you ought to accompany them with an admission that you are not speaking truth that comes direct from the Deity, don't even know where to find a suitable Burning Bush, and that past performance is not a guarantee of future success.

- roidubouloi

August 12, 2011 at 8:59am

- Wrote roi, "Michaelg, regardless of the asymmetries in the strategic postures of the two parties, there is simply no excuse for not crafting a message that you believe can move public sentiment and selling it relentlessly." Nice, and I agree but... To bad this thread is probably dying, the asymmetrical relationship is universally recognized but I believe it hasn't received due regard. I will stipulate it is a primary source of the dysfunction or deadlock in general. However, Democratic critics and supporters of President Obama will be divided by that dynamic and suffer for it. I'll agree to not use the asymmetry as an excuse but critics can't ignore its importance in crafting a strategy.

- michaelg

August 12, 2011 at 10:35am

"Ironyroad cited the absence of any protests in favor of the ACA as evidence for the absence of any sizeable liberal base." Aaron, that isn't what I said. What I said was that the lack of an equivalent push to face down the rightwing heckler element in the town halls in particular gave the impression that the surge of public opinion was against the ACA or was at the least neutral. This was nothing short of surreal: after all, health care as a right not a privilege for all Americans had been a major Democratic theme for two generations, and we stood at a historic moment, yet the overriding impression was that the Dems were being easily intimidated all across the country, and that the Party wasn't really united in this struggle. I don't say Obama made no mistakes, but quite frankly he seems at times to have been (along with Joe Biden) the only one who had any passion about it. I certainly believe that there are more ambivalences in the so-called liberal base than we care to admit at times. But that's perhaps a slightly different story.

- ironyroad

August 12, 2011 at 10:53am

Absolutely, michael. Any successful strategy must take account of what is. But the asymmetries don't all favor the Republicans. For example, Democratic policies are consistently more popular when people consider them outside of their political context. Democratic policies are not nuts, in contrast to Republican policies; they can actually work. Democrats don't have to lie incessantly about what they are doing as Republicans do because the public would be horrified by the truth of what the Republicans are trying to do. The truth properly told can work just fine for Democrats. And, most important, the Republicans represent that actual economic interests of a small minority of the population. The Democrats represent the actual economic interests of the vast majority, including many died-in-the-wool Republicans who have no idea what would hit them if the Republican party actually implemented its agenda without any obstacle. With all of those advantages, you might wonder why the Democrats are not much more successful and actually have a fight on their hands. I wonder too. Mostly it seems to me to be the failure to take up the political battle with zest and skill. My analysis is that the Democratic party used to have a lot of talented pols. I don't care whether they were smoking cigars in some back room. They understood how to connect with people. There used to be Democratic "machines." Remember that? In 1972, the party was taken over by reformist policy wonks, and wonks have been running the show since They loooooove policy. They hate politics. Bill Clinton was a rare throwback who actually took joy in the political battle itself. He won, he lost, but he was always game. But for his marital and sexual problems that undermined his presidency in many ways, not least his impeachment but, even worse in my opinion, turning healthcare over to Hillary to placate her, he might have been a great, great president. Obama is the more gifted orator of the two. But he lacks Bill's charm and clearly lacks Bill's joy in the political battle itself. He is from the wonkish side. He would rather hang out at home and discuss policy papers. Bill needed the public attention. Oh well. PS Here is an interesting tidbit. A friend of mine who worked for someone very rich and very famous who hosted both Bill Clinton and Al Gore at different times around 2000 said that, in private, Al Gore was incredibly charming, funny and engaging while Clinton was rather aloof and no fun at all, the opposite in each case of their public personae.

- roidubouloi

August 12, 2011 at 11:06am

- roi, I only meant asymmetries in numbers didn't favor Republicans if they wished to govern but as insurgents they could easily stifle Obama's agenda. A minority can say no to taxes and no money is the #3 killer after no food and no water. But the beast they want starve will turn on them. They don't get it: Government is the people, keep your hands of their stuff or else. And Obama doesn't lose, he just wins slowly and eventually. There was little evidence he was making timely progress in his life but we see all these milestones? Go figure. Four years ago the odds favored him dropping out and six months later he won Iowa? No, it may not work in this job but the great one's didn't follow a manual. Between now and next Fall he'll prove why he's tough to hold down and well, he's never stayed down. People are freaked out, the traditional stats won't favor him and it will be an ugly fight. Not only is he a few moves ahead of the opposition, by next Summer the dead-enders and his opponent will look down and see they're in quicksand. You are correct "the asymmetries don't all favor the Republicans." and they won't realize it until it's too late.

- michaelg

August 12, 2011 at 12:04pm

Chait's post is listed on the website homepage and in the "Most Viewed" box as "Obama vs. Magical Thinking Liberals" (although "Liberals" are dropped from the headline on this page). But Chait references Rothkopf and Friedman -- 2 guys who are NOT taking the liberal position on macroeconomic policy in this debate. If you're going to beat up on liberals, find a liberal.

- jzuraw

August 12, 2011 at 8:33pm

So glad the author choked, like me, at Steve Rothkopf 's blithe statements. Reminds me of the time George F. Will tried to use bluster and bluff to state on one of the Sunday morning shows something to the effect of, "First, we all of course agree that FDR'S New Deal was in fact and failure and really prolonged the Depression, OK?" (Preposterous chutpah, but his was right after Amity Shlaes' play-pretend "history" of the Depression had just come out and enthralled the Right, just as this moment in history is also breathlessly enthralling the right to think it's "ALL about the deficit" and "big govenrnment." Unfortunately Obama has close to zero pedagogical/advocacy skills, and feels he is only nominally a Democrat, preferring to majestically bridge Republicans and Democrats, as he is bridging the black and white worlds in his mind, perhaps?

- Atlas-Q

August 12, 2011 at 8:34pm

I was checking the blog and came across Roi's and AFdiplomat's stinging critique of Obama (I wish TNR technical folks would come up with a way, or an option to email or send a text message to any commenter in a thread they happen to be engaged in, whenever there's a response to their comments. I think this could help some of us keep better track of multiple debates we may have going on at the same time). Anyway, here is my response to AF and Roi... http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/93453/the-two-crises-and-the-triu... Roi and AF, great points all around, but it is interesting that you had to go all the way back to Lincoln to come up with a cogent critique of Obama. I agree with the storytelling aspect because it is always such a powerful tool. However, different situations call for different approaches. It is easy to be seduced by the leadership templates from the past, especially after the passing of time has smoothed out the rough edges of those Presidents. The problem with your critique and alternative strategies is that it doesn't fit with the demands of the time and the personality of Barack Obama. Consider the possibility that you are viewing Barack Obama's leadership style and strategic awareness purely through a Western leadership prism, oblivious to the possibility that an American president could be drawing from a completely different, or amalgamated leadership template. To understand Barack Obama, look to South Africa's Nelson Mandela rather than Lincoln or FDR, - specifically the complete story of the fall of Apartheid and Nelson Mandela's rise from prison to the Presidency of South Africa. As with Obama and liberals, the soundness of Mandela's strategic and tactical agility were constantly questioned by Blacks, yet proved to be right in the long run. When people ask why I'm such a staunch supporter of President Obama, I tell them once you understand Mandela's approach you can begin to understand Obama better (read Mandela's aptly titled book "Long Walk to Freedom" - not "Short Walk...", but "Long Walk..."), and movies such as "Invictus"), to get a sense of Mandela's approach to leadership that some of us see in Obama (as an African immigrant having bounced around in different cultures, I concede my worldview may not necessarily be that compatible with that of mainstream American thinking, but indulge me nevertheless). Anyway, a 2008 article published in TIME magazine summarized Mandela's leadership into eight short lessons, a leadership style that is not so dissimilar from Obama's approach: Mandela: His 8 Lessons of Leadership http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1821659,00.html Mandela repeatedly compromised with his opponents while never compromisng away his core principles of overthrowing Apartheid and ensuring a one-person, one-vote democratic system. Obama, for all his faults, never once negotiated away any of his core principles either. In the debt ceiling debate, he wanted a clean raise, and later a balanced approach. When neither possible he compromised to get his raise through cuts only - all of only $20 billion in 2012. The so called trillion dollar cuts are back-ended, and even then do not touch entitlement benefits. Likewise Mandela "on his own launched negotiations with the apartheid government. This was anathema to the African National Congress (ANC). After decades of saying "prisoners cannot negotiate" and after advocating an armed struggle that would bring the government to its knees, he decided that the time was right to begin to talk to his oppressors. When he initiated his negotiations with the government in 1985, there were many who thought he had lost it. "We thought he was selling out," says Cyril Ramaphosa, then the powerful and fiery leader of the National Union of Mineworkers. "I went to see him to tell him, What are you doing? It was an unbelievable initiative. He took a massive risk." Another of your critique of Obama is that he does not use the bully pulpit of the Presidency to get his message across. Neither did Mandela. Mandela believed that sometimes the people do not know what is best, and no amount of rhetoric can convince them. Other times, it is more effective to act out your principles than talk about them. When Blacks were calling for the blood of the Boers after Mandela became President, Mandela did not give a speech to win their hearts and minds. He acted out his principles in small and large ways, one was retaining the old Presidential guard of the Apartheid regime, a move that could have cost him his life (in those heady early days, he could have been assassinated). Obama likewise did not cave in to the left's demand to prosecute Bush, Cheney, and others. He instead kept Gates as his SecDef. Within the Democratic party, he brought in Hillary. In retrospect, it was a master stroke of genius - imagine a Hillary on the outside TODAY with everything that's going on. I could go on and on, but that is another debate. Anyway, my point is, Roi's assessment of Obama as a failed leader is derived by applying the wrong leadership template, hence my belief that Roi's alternative strategic prescriptions will not result in better outcomes, but rather will fall far short of what Barack Obama 's current strategic and tactical agility has been able to accomplish, given the political realities. To quote Charles Barkley, I could be wrong, but I doubt it.

- wkwami

August 13, 2011 at 3:52pm

I'm sticking with Lincoln who was a political genius (pace Mandela) and had deep insight into the American psyche. As well, I don't see much in the way of analogy between the situation in South Africa and the political contest here. There were enormous asymmetries in South Africa. The apartheid government had dominance in arms and organization, but the will was slipping and anyone with clear sight could see that the numbers would ultimately prevail. The asymmetry had if anything a greater resemblance to our own revolution where all that was necessary was that the Continental army not suffer defeat in detail in the field. The numbers and available resources meant that the British could not sustain their effort indefinitely, despite their brutality, if the Americans would not surrender. So too the Afrikaners. Someone high up, de Klerk I suppose, realized the hopelessness of their situation, the inevitability of defeat, and the possibility that defeat would result in massacre if the brutal war continued long enough. Do we expect the Republicans to realize the hopelessness of their situation if Obama makes enough concessions? Obama was not in the position of leader of a loosely organized and relatively weak insurrection. He is the president of the United States for god's sake. He had majorities in both houses of Congress, including for a time 60 Democrats in the Senate, and squandered it. This is not a war, it is a democratic political contest. In order to achieve a legislative majority, or maintain one, you have to do the hard work of sustaining "public sentiment," as Lincoln clearly understood. All the excuses for Obama, including pretending he is running an insurrection instead of the United States, "aren't worth a bucket of warm spit," to quote another successful American politician who knew how to take a stand.

- roidubouloi

August 13, 2011 at 7:56pm

Roi, I don't expect you to see, in the way of analogy between the situation in South Africa and the political contests here because it wasn't intended that way. We're talking leadership styles and templates. In the South Africa situation (some inaccuracies in your analysis not withstanding), did you think any other Black leader could have handled the aftermath of Apartheid as Mandela did? It could easily have gone wrong as we see in Zimbabwe where Mugabe is pitting black against white, with devastating results. Applying Drew Western's critique, Mandela would have given an inaugural speech indicting the Boers among other things, as Drew Westen advocates Obama should have done here... "Instead of indicting the people whose recklessness wrecked the economy, he put them in charge of it. He never explained that decision to the public — a failure in storytelling as extraordinary as the failure in judgment behind it. Had the president chosen to bend the arc of history, he would have told the public the story of the destruction wrought by the dismantling of the New Deal regulations that had protected them for more than half a century. He would have offered them a counternarrative of how to fix the problem other than the politics of appeasement, one that emphasized creating economic demand and consumer confidence by putting consumers back to work. He would have had to stare down those who had wrecked the economy, and he would have had to tolerate their hatred if not welcome it." Mandela similarly chose not to indict and incite. He resisted the urge to let the Boer blood flow in the streets. He put some of the same Boers in his government. He did not stoke their hatred, nor sought to tolerate or welcome that hatred. You can disagree with that strategy, but it was successful in averting what would have possibly made Rwanda pale in comparison. Not to suggest America is South Africa, but leadership lessons can be taken from anywhere and applied elsewhere. I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree as, we clearly view Obama through very different, unbridgeable, prisms. Time may well be the ultimate arbiter of which view is accurate.

- wkwami

August 14, 2011 at 12:32pm

We will certainly have to agree to disagree. The more I think about it, the sillier your analogy seems. Mandela was the victor who had not shrunk from the use of violence and had not compromised an inch with the apartheid government until it folded. The de Klerk government was in the process of surrendering and accepting the core demands of the ANC. Mandela wisely chose not to press for the complete humiliation of the enemy which would have renewed the violent conflict. Unnecessary as he was the victor. I might add that, when Mandela emerged from prison, the first thing he did was give a speech declaring that it was no time for appeasement. What on earth does this have to do with the situation of Obama? Winston Churchill, certainly no appeaser, said, “In war, resolution; in defeat, defiance; in victory, magnanimity”. When the Republicans are defeated and their choke-hold on the nation is relieved, we can discuss magnanimity. I think you have your historical analogies very badly jumbled up.

- roidubouloi

August 14, 2011 at 1:00pm

"The more I think about it, the sillier your analogy seems." You didn't think through my analogy before responding earlier? That's rather revealing in so many ways. "Mandela was the victor who had not shrunk from the use of violence and had not compromised an inch with the apartheid government until it folded. The de Klerk government was in the process of surrendering and accepting the core demands of the ANC." If you thought the de Klerk government was the thrust of the counter resistance that would have fought the ANC after Mandela became President, then you really never understood what took place in South Africa and what the potential was for total chaos once Apartheid fell. Mandela could have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, but he acted to avert such a scenario. Nevertheless, the issue here is not South African history, but about leadership styles and templates. Mandela could have pulled a Mugabe with great justification. And, yes, he compromised repeatedly with the Apartheid regime behind the scenes. "When the Republicans are defeated and their choke-hold on the nation is relieved, we can discuss magnanimity. I think you have your historical analogies very badly jumbled up Again, let's just agree to disagree." I don't think I have my historical analogies jumbled up at all. I just think you can't bring yourself to accept that even though we disagree, I might have a point. But this is the thing you don't get, Republicans will never be defeated, just as Mandela understood well before his peers did that it was never about defeating the Boers. Every so often, one side advances some pie in the sky "permanent majority, which never materializes simply because it misconceives the nature of the fight. You treat magnanimity as an end it itself. It can be, but it is also a means to an end. Again, let us agree to disagree.

- wkwami

August 14, 2011 at 1:50pm

Hardly. I clearly had quite a low opinion of your analogy the first time I thought about it. The more I thought about, the more it came to seem not merely wrong, but absurd. The whole notion of comparing Obama's position to that of Mandela is nonsense. And you get my point about defeat completely backwards. No surprise there. You don't really pay much attention to what people you disagree with are saying. Mandela was the victor. He had defeated his enemy who was surrendering and trying to salvage something from what was a final defeat, the end of the struggle. Hence, Mandela was in a position to be magnanimous in victory in the interest of not prolonging the conflict with the apartheid government by being so harsh that it made surrender impossible. (How you think that implies that I think the de Klerk government would go into resistance after negotiating a new government is quite beyond me. But Mandela could have been so harsh that the apartheid government would have felt compelled to fight to the death. Wisely, he was not, as there was very little if anything that he could gain by further violence. He had won.) My point, not yours, is precisely that there IS NO FINAL DEFEAT of the Republicans ever let alone today, they are not surrendering now and cannot ever be forced to surrender, and hence your analogies between Obama's conduct in the midst of a political battle without end and the behavior of Mandela when finally victorious are nonsense. Get it now? But if it should ever happen that the Republicans are defeated and surrender, surely the Democratic victor ought to look to the example of Mandela. I think Lincoln set the example by the way. No surprise there. Since the Republicans cannot be defeated and will give battle indefinitely, it is necessary for the Democrats, especially their leader, to summon themselves to the battle. There is no avoiding it by making appeasing concessions, and there is no means of fighting the battle other than rhetorically, and organizationally, in the court of public opinion. Hence, if Obama will not fight there, he is not fighting at all. He is conceding without admitting it. There is no secret battleground on which he can prevail if he does not prevail in winning and sustaining "public sentiment" behind him AND behind the Democratic party. If you don't agree, then we must indeed agree to disagree.

- roidubouloi

August 14, 2011 at 6:50pm