I’ve been gone, and coming back I notice that everybody is still debating the meaning and merits of nationalizing the bad banks.
Obama’s speech to the Congress on February 24 was the last thing I posted here. By that point, having watched him closely since the election, I felt quite assured that he is the man we think he is. I especially liked this part:
Finally, I want to be very clear at the outset that while everyone has a right to take part in this discussion, no one has the right to take it over. The status quo is the one option that is not on the table. And those who seek to block any reform at any cost will not prevail this time around.
I took a break, concluding that his skill as a politician is consummate. I decided that all the grains of minuscule media speculation about how the political day is going every minute only reflect a neurotic impatience, which is mandated to these poor reporters and bloggers by an economy that ruthlessly demands constant production and consumption, even of view.
A commenter on Ezra’s blog, in a post dealing with the Republican response to Obama’s speech, nailed down how I feel about what’s happening:
Barack Obama uses that term to describe not simply an agent of “the People,” but rather our amplified voice, the collective extension of our individual efforts, the expression of our will, and the means to implement our values in concrete ways that benefit both the individual and the whole. In short – The People and The Government are inseparable. Government is not something alien or apart from the citizens of this country – rather it is the citizens of this country. I believe this is what our Founding Fathers intended when they designed a form of government under which they wanted to live, and for which they were willing to die.
For Bobby Jindal, that’s not true. Instead, Government is some faceless, irrational collection of bureaucrats operating under an insane system of rules and regulations, and standing in the way of our “individual freedoms.” It’s something foreign to be feared, limited, and resisted. And the most profound irony of all is that for me, and I suspect the majority of this country, that was exactly how we felt during the Bush administration. But now, for the first time in as long as I can remember, I believe that we’re finally in the process of beginning to feel that we own our Government. That’s a profound shift into a shared sense of individual and collective responsibility – and an accomplishment more than sufficient to make Barack Obama’s first 100 days in office an unqualified success.
I think that Obama will not lose ground in the ways that commentators speculate he will. He will hold the people, and separate himself from all the politicians, just as Charlie Cook has surmised from early in the game:
Here are two questions to ponder over the table in the Rayburn Cafeteria. The first is whether, over the next couple of months, President Obama’s job approval numbers are tethered to successes and failures, or are they more conceptual — such that two-thirds of Americans are either optimistic or hopeful about his presidency and are likely to give him the benefit of the doubt.
The second question is whether the strategies employed by congressional Republicans will help or further isolate them from swing voters.
[...]
A decent bet might be that we will begin to see Obama utilize his own variation on triangulation, setting himself and his administration as equidistant between Republicans on the far right and Democrats on the far left. This would allow him to score points at the expense of each side’s more extreme elements by inviting lawmakers to join him in the middle. With few congressional Republicans left from swing states and districts, that center ground will necessarily be made up of more Democrats than Republicans, but he will work hard to ensure that there are just enough from the GOP side to show compromise.
There is no doubt congressional leaders of both parties will mock this scenario, and the Obama White House will be scoring points at their expense.
- For Obama And GOP, Questions Of Perception
Cook points out in a subsequent report that Obama came through the stimulus legislative effort with high approval in the polls, much higher than Demeocrats, and vastly higher than Republicans, who were perceived with disapproval. See Obama’s Triangulation Squares With Public
This thought – which Charlie Cook has been propounding since the beginning of Febuary – was recently aired also by David Tomasky, as a pronouncement that “bipartisanship is a strategy. It’s a strategy aimed at isolating the right, and isolating the obstructionists in Congress.”
I think it’s more than just a ploy, however, and I think it aims at a far more significant end, namely the restoration (or the creation) of some real non-partisan discussion in the public arena. I made a pretty handsome comment, I like to think, to that effect on a blog that very night of the speech:
Of course he finessed the Republicans in the ways that all agree above. But this doesn’t have to be the end of his goals.
His long term desire may extend very far beyond simply allowing the Republicans to destroy themselves. He may in fact mean what he has said all along, and hope to restore some semblance of discussion across partisan lines, over time.
Consider that if he proves to be a greater President than both parties and all of their commentators COMBINED, then he can actually lead the nation, set the tone, and dictate the methods of political action.
If he actually creates a true climate of cross-partisan compromise and discussion, then there is no need for one of two parties to wither away. Instead, the strength of party ideology in general can diminish. This would be a vastly larger achievement, one worthy of the consummate politician that we have thought all along he is.
So, we shall see.
