The Man Who Wasn’t There 4

Maureen Dowd is a pretty good meter when it comes to testing what intelligent and genuinely independent minded liberals have in mind. In her recent column she joins the circular firing squad of Democrats that has gathered around the President's reelection campaign. The piece offers a good catalog of how many folks on the left are disappointed with Mr. Obama and how much. The whole thing is worth reading, but I would point out two paragraphs. The first seems to me to be right on target. The second is a howler. She is here referring to what Democrat Ed Rendell says in his new book: A Nation of Wusses.

The legendary speaker who drew campaign crowds in the tens of thousands and inspired a dispirited nation ended up nonchalantly delegating to a pork-happy Congress, disdaining the bully pulpit, neglecting to do any L.B.J.-style grunt work with Congress and the American public, and ceding control of his narrative.

As president, Obama has never felt the need to explain or sell his signature pieces of legislation — the stimulus and health care bills — or stanch the flow of false information from the other side.

I assume that this is Rendell's view and not necessarily Dowd's. The first paragraph nails what has been Obama's biggest failing as President: not doing the grunt work. As many Democrats in Congress have complained, Obama doesn't stick around after the photo shoot and did very little to cultivate personal relationships even with members of his own party. He delegated way too much of the work of shaping the health care bill to Congress.

Consider the second paragraph. Surely no President ever gave more speeches on behalf of a piece of legislation than Obama gave on behalf of ObamaCare. Somehow it didn't seem to help. The legislation sank in public opinion like a bag full of treasury notes. It hasn't resurfaced.

Therein is the problem. Obama is great with a microphone in his hand, but there is only so much that can be accomplished by speaking to crowds. Legislation, by contrast, is grueling, personal work. You have to get together with small groups of people and talk it out. That's why Congress divides itself into committees.

The President's job ordinarily starts around a table with his own staff. At some point it involves talking it out with the Congressional leaders of your own party and then, yes, with the opposition leaders. It is a big help at that point if they know you and have learned to trust you. To say that the President isn't good at that would be misleading. He is positively allergic to it.

I have posted about this here, here, and here. That I was right is indicated by this paragraph from Dowd's piece:

In his new biography, "Barack Obama: The Story," David Maraniss writes that a roommate of the young Obama compared him to Walker Percy's protagonist in "The Moviegoer": an observer of his life, one step removed.

Apparently, the President isn't even intimate with himself, let alone his own administration or the leaders of Congress. Here is how Dowd closes her piece:

Superheroes and mythic figures must boldly lead. Obama's caution — ingrained from a life of being deserted by his father and sometimes his mother, and of being, as he wrote to another girlfriend, "caught without a class, a structure, or tradition to support me" — has restrained him at times.

In some ways, he's still finding himself, too absorbed to see what's not working. But the White House is a very hard place to go on a vision quest, especially with a storm brewing.

That would be my view.

Comments

[unicorn4711]

I read it as a continuation of her last piece, which discussed Obama's hardline, closed door, drone strike loving foreign policy. That article showed he cuts against the liberal idea that a strong, free america that minds it own business abroad will have more impact on the world than one that invades and kills every potential threat. Barack's "kill lists" and rampant drone strikes aren't what we had in mind when he said "the tides of war are receding." We think Obama's policy of death from above puts American civilians in risk by cultivating and increasing anti-american sentiment and increasing radicalization. Rather than winning the hearts and minds of people in troubled countries by increasing freedom here and promoting it abroad, Barack sits in a room and decides who to send his brave drones after to kill. Could his policy be any more unilateral and arrogant? Now, Dowd is pointing out that liberals not only got an arrogant hawk in foreign policy but a president who can't figure out how to push for legislation to get what liberals want on the home front.

[A.I.]

Maureen Dowd is one snarky bitch--which is not meant as a criticism. To put her observations about Obama in perspective, here is a bit of what she has written about Mitt Romney:

"There's a certain pathos to Romney. His manner is so inauthentic, you can't find him anywhere. Is he the guy he was on Wednesday or the guy he was on Thursday?

He has the same problem that diminished the equally animatronic Al Gore. Gore kept mum on the one thing that made him come alive, the environment, fearing he'd be cast, as W. liked to say, as 'a green, green lima bean.'

Romney also feels he must hide an essential part of who he is: a pillar of the Mormon Church. He fears he would turn off voters by talking too much about a faith that many evangelicals dismiss as a cult and not a true Christian religion."

The rest is here: http://www.news-record.com/content/2012/03/19/article/maureen_dowd_is_elvis_a_mormon

[William]

Obama is simply the LAZIEST President in my lifetime. He appears to believe that his job consists of talking, yet he doesn't even bother to even talk to the members of his own party who have to actually work. To give credit (or blame) where it's due, we really should be calling his "signature legislation" PelosiCare.

[Bill Fleming]

Plenty of reasons to be critical of Obama. None of them translate into reasons to vote for Romney or Kristi Noem.

[Donald Pay]

And yet Obama has gotten the country running again after the Republican near depression without much Republican effort to help. In fact he's had to battle Republican treachery at every turn. That's pretty damn amazing for "the man who wasn't there."

Obama got us out of Iraq, and is getting us out of Afghanistan, again, against the Republican wishes. Further, he killed bin Laden and others who neither Bush nor Romney thought were worth the pursuing.

The chattering class continues to chatter. Obama gets things done in spite of the Republicans. And the Republicans continue to project onto Obama their own "not being there" in any constructive way.

[Stan Gibilisco]

Dowd: "There's a certain pathos to Romney. His manner is so inauthentic ..."

Gibilisco: "... that even some Republicans may vote for Obama in November."

[Ken Blanchard]

Stan and Bill: I prefer "inauthentic" to "unoccupied." Romney at least is able to talk to people and I suspect that he won't run the White House by checking boxes in the wee hours of the night.

A.I.: to be sure, Dowd is no admirer of Romney's. Does he have admirers? Anyway, I choose my sources from the opposite side whenever I can, precisely because that is the easiest way to eliminate bias. Dowd confirms the view of Obama that I have been presenting for some time.

I have been no admirer of Romney's, but I am not beyond winning over. Just right now his campaign is running a very tight ship. The Obama campaign was listing and taking on water well before the jobs report bored into her sides.

[Ken Blanchard]

William: I don't think it's laziness. I think Obama is probably a pretty bright guy and he certainly can spring into action when he feels comfortable. He just isn't much of a manager. He was told for so long by some many people so many times how wonderful he is, he thought that just being Barack was enough. It ain't.

[Bill Fleming]

"Stan and Bill: I prefer "inauthentic" to "unoccupied."

There's just no accounting for some people's taste. ;^)

[William]

Dr Blanchard,

I've yet to see any concrete evidence that Obama is the "pretty bright guy" that you (and others) seem to think he is. He's certainly not nearly as smart as he thinks he is.