For a while now, I've been watching the Obama administration with hope, but also with a growing sense of unease. That unease has centered primarily on the Administration's and Congress' failure (so far) to accomplish many of the things Democrats campaigned on, which many of us worked our butts off to see happen, and which we were given a mandate to carry out with our huge victories in the 2006 and 2008 elections. I'm talking about everything from enacting policies that favor the working and middle classes, to shutting down Gitmo, to reforming our broken health care system, to dealing aggressively with climate change, to jump-starting a clean energy revolution in America, to tackling our structural budget and trade deficits, to breaking the stranglehold of special interests on our politics, etc. So far, we've seen some progress in these areas, but not nearly enough. True, it hasn't even been a year since Barack Obama was sworn in as president, but believe it or not, we may already be running out of time as we approach a mid-term election year, following which will come the start of the 2012 presidential campaign...and the potential for political paralysis once again.What crystallized all this in my mind were three things. First, I've been increasingly frustrated at the drawn-out health care "debate," which has neither succeeded in producing health care reform nor allowed us to move on to other, pressing issues like climate change, foreign policy, the economy, etc. Second, I had a long conversation yesterday with a friend who I affectionately call an "Obamabot," because of his intense (and early) support for Barack Obama and also for his tendency not to see any flaws in the man. Yesterday, however, even my "Obamabot" friend admitted that he was getting frustrated with the Obama administration on a number of fronts. Third, this morning's Maureen Dowd's NY Times column (as well as excellent editorials by Tom Friedman and Frank Rich) on Barack Obama, Sarah Palin, populist anger, etc. got me thinking about where Obama's presidency is at right now, and what he needs to do to fix it. With that, here are 10 pieces of unsolicited advice for Barack Obama.
1. Be more like Teddy Roosevelt; "carry a big stick." Sure, it's great to be all about bringing people together, hope, change, carrots, lollipops and puppy dogs. But sometimes, frankly, the president has got to show people he can kick some serious ass and is prepared to do so if need be. That means, when someone crosses you on something that matters, they need to feel pain - loss of committee chairmanships, no more White House support for pet projects in their home states, etc. Basically, this goes back to Machiavelli, who said "It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both." Right now, does anyone in Congress (or in other nations' capitals) fear Barack Obama? As in, do they factor into their calculations serious repercussions for going against Obama's wishes? Right now, maybe I'm missing something, but I'm not seeing it. A perfect example is Joe Lieberman, who has continuously dissed Barack Obama (e.g., campaigning for John McCain and Sarah Palin, threatening to join a Republican filibuster of a top Obama priority - health care reform) yet has suffered no adverse consequences. To the contrary, he should have been stripped of his committee chairmanship and told that he would get nothing for his state until he got back on the reservation. That would have sent a message to everyone else: cross Barack Obama at your severe peril. Instead, Lieberman got away with it, sending the exact opposite message - cross Barack Obama and nothing bad will happen to you. Not good.
2. Be more like Teddy Roosevelt; "speak softly." Most importantly, that means not over-promising. Thus, Obama said he wanted an economic stimulus package on his desk by Inauguration Day, and that didn't happen. He set an end-of-summer deadline for health care reform legislation to be completed, and that didn't happen either (now the White House is saying "end of the year"...we'll see). He said that unemployment wouldn't surpass 10%, and it has. He was very strong rhetorically about Israeli settlement expansion on the West Bank being unacceptable, but faced with resistance from Israel and its allies, Obama has now all but thrown in the towel on that one. He said he would accept nothing less than fundamental change in Washington, and so far, it looks amazingly like the "same ol' same ol'" up on Capitol Hill. I could go on and on, but I'll spare you. The point is, these were all worthy goals, but the problem is that when the the President of the United States says something's going to happen and then it doesn't happen, and when this occurs repeatedly, a lot of people start thinking he's "weak," or "indecisive," or "all rhetoric," or "dithering," etc. The point is, the president should be very careful what he promises to do, and when he makes a promise, he needs to make damn sure that promise is met. End of story.
3. Be more like LBJ, or get someone who can be. For all his flaws as a human being, LBJ was masterful at cajoling, arm twisting, flattering, doing whatever it took to get Congress to do his bidding. Right now, it sure doesn't look like we're seeing that in the relationship between Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress. It's long past time for that to change. Oh, by the way, wasn't Rahm Emanuel supposed to be taking care of this? Hmmmmm.
4. Go populist. People on "Main Street" are hurting right now while "Wall Street" is actually doing pretty well (having been bailed out by the taxpayers), which means the country is rife for populist unrest of various sorts. Unfortunately, right now, the only sustained, semi-organized populist unrest we're seeing is coming from the (far) right wing of the political spectrum. Where's the equivalent populist movement on the left? Where's the sustained critique of corporate power, profits, and unhealthy influence on our politics? Where are the fiery/passionate speeches about "two Americas" (or, to paraphrase Jim Webb from 2006, "America is breaking into three pieces: the rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer, and the middle class getting squeezed")? Where are the policy initiatives that specifically favor the working and middle classes over the wealthy? If you've seen any of this, please let me know, because I've missed it.
5. "Let's get visceral!" Americans right now are hurting, worried, frustrated and angry. In part, of course, we need tangible results from Washington. But that's not enough. We also need the intangible, along the lines of FDR's "fireside chats" or Harry Truman's "Give 'me Hell!" or even - as Maureen Dowd puts it in her column (entitled "Visceral Has Its Value") this morning - Ronald Reagan's "acting skills to project concern about what’s happening to people." Unfortunately, I don't feel like we're getting any of that right now. Instead, I fear that Maureen Dowd is right when she says that, although Barack Obama is "highly intelligent" and "likable...he’s not connecting on the gut level that could help him succeed." As a result, Dowd writes, "[t]he animating spirit that electrified his political movement has sputtered out." That's not going to cut it. Right now, it's time for some passion - righteous anger, for starters - from Cool Hand Barack.
6. Ditch bipartisanship, at least for now. Sadly, the once-great Republican Party now has degenerated to the point where it has only one desire - to "break" Obama (or any other Democrat, on the national or state level) and to roll back progress wherever they see it starting to sprout up. Sure, it would be great if America could be - as Barack Obama said in his 2004 Democratic National Convention speech - not a country divided into "red" and "blue," but instead "one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America." Unfortunately, as Tom Friedman explains in the NY Times today, "at least six things have come together to fracture our public space and paralyze our ability to forge optimal solutions." I recommend that you read Friedman's column to see what those "six things" are, but the bottom line is this: right now, our politics is largely broken if not completely dysfunctional. Certainly, we're far FAR away from Obama's vision of reasonable people from right and left working together in good faith to get things done and move America forward. Instead, we've got members of the "Party of No" whose incentives - the way their districts are drawn, the way talk radio and TV pull people to the extremes, etc. - are all to move further to the right, not to the center (let alone the left). Given that, it's time for Barack Obama to demand that Congress pass the agenda he ran on, and which he was given a clear mandate to carry out. If Republicans want to work in good faith with Obama, that's great. But if they truly have no other interest than to obstruct, delay and damage, then they can go off and sulk in a corner while Democrats get things done for the American people.
7. Don't negotiate against yourself. This goes back to point #6, and is epitomized by the absurd spectacle of Democrats trying desperately for months on end to gain Republican support for health care reform, and ending up with basically nada. What did that accomplish, aside from delaying action on the entire Democratic agenda and watering down the legislation in order to try and appease the unappeasable? Nothing whatsoever, as far as I can tell. It certainly didn't win over any "moderates," and it certainly didn't show the country that Democrats get things done. So, the point of all this was...???
8. Push for real change in Washington. The centerpiece of Barack Obama's campaign for president was the appealing but amorphous word "change." If that word is to mean anything, we've got to start seeing the end of "business as usual in Washington." Right now, is there any evidence of any "change" in said "business as usual?" I certainly don't see it, whether on the health care debate or on climate change/clean energy legislation or on pork-laden spending bills or on "pay as you go" or on... Anyway, enough is enough. If this continues, it will be not only a huge missed opportunity to put our country back on the right course, it will also be a political disaster for Democrats in 2010 and 2012. Think about it this way: if there's nothing to get people excited for Democrats in 2010 and 2012, why would we expect the results be any better than they were in Virginia and New Jersey 2009?
9. To accomplish #8, replace anyone in the Obama administration who doesn't believe in real reform and real change. I'm not talking about lip service, either, I'm talking about true believers in fundamentally changing the way this (broken) system of ours operates. Bring people in from outside of politics, outside of Wall Street, wherever you can find the "best and the brightest" progressive, reformist minds. Then, get it done; there's no time to lose.
10. Place the blame for our problems right where it belongs - the Republicans. Actually, this should have started even before Day #1 of the Obama administration. The fact is, Barack Obama and the Democrats inherited a series of horrendous, intractable messes - expensive (and bloody) quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan, an economy in free fall thanks to Bush-o-nomics, huge deficits as far as the eye can see (thanks again to the Bush Administration and Republican Congress in 2001-2006), growing income inequality thanks to steeply regressive Republican taxation policies (and "free trade" agreements that aren't "free" or "fair"), the environmental catastrophe of global warming, our continuing and disastrous "oil addiction," unsustainable entitlement programs (this one's a bipartisan failure), etc. - from the Bush-Cheney rein of error. None of these were Barack Obama's fault, but the more time that elapses, the more people will forget how these terrible situations all came about and start making him "own" them. Which is why Obama needs to remind people, over and over again, of what really got us into this mess. Or, to put it another way, Obama needs to relentlessly push his political narrative, just like Republicans do when they pound home the same Frank Luntz talking points (mindless and false as they may be) like "death panels" and "death tax" and...why does everything Republican seem to have "death" in it?
So, there's my unsolicited advice for what it's worth (if anything). Not that I expect anyone to follow any of this, but at least I got it off my chest, which I often think is the main (only?) point of blogging anyhow.
