The Real Obama

What does the Massachusetts special election tell us about President Obama? Nothing good. Scott Brown’s victory over Martha Coakley not only ended the Democrats’ filibuster-proof Senate majority. It also exposed as false the White House’s preferred storyline about the president’s ideology, capacities, and temperament—what you might call the Obama Myth.

The Obama Myth rests on three assumptions: (a) Obama is a nonideological pragmatist; (b) Obama is an uncommonly powerful communicator; and (c) Obama has a gut connection with the people. All three are wrong. Only the Democrats’ fantasy that opposition to their agenda is limited to a lunatic fringe has blinded them from seeing the president’s liabilities. Let’s open their eyes.

The False Pragmatist

Obama campaigned on a bipartisan platform of post-ideological problem-solving. The label has stuck: Joe Biden has referred to Obama as a “clear-eyed pragmatist”; David Brooks says the president suffers from a “voracious pragmatism.”

All of which might be true—if by “pragmatist” they mean a committed liberal who is willing to sign legislation passed by razor-thin, partisan margins. The stimulus became law with only three Republican votes—and one of those Republicans is now a Democrat. The House passed cap and trade with the support of only eight Republicans; the legislation is dead in the Senate. Health care got a single Republican vote.

Besides some aspects of education reform and the surge in Afghanistan, it is difficult to name a single conservative idea the president has co-opted. You sometimes get the impression that Obama truly believes in the strawmen he parades before the public: those wraith-like Republicans who want to “do nothing” when it comes to health care, the financial system, and the budget. Is he unaware that conservative think tanks and journals regularly propose reforms in these and other areas?

No, Obama’s problem is with the content of conservative proposals—for they tend to rely on decentralized markets and give economic growth priority over equity. Obama hasn’t dismissed conservatives because they lack ideas. He’s dismissed them because conservative ideas do not meet his ideological commitments.

The Not-so-Great Communicator 

“Obama is the Democrats’ Great Communicator, our Ronald Reagan,” the editor of Salon wrote in February 2009. A year later, that no longer seems to be the case (if it ever was). Again and again, the president has tried to persuade or cajole audiences to follow his lead. No such luck.

Forget about persuading Republicans—Obama doesn’t try, and most of them aren’t interested anyway. What about independents? Ask Creigh Deeds, Jon Corzine, and Martha Coakley. These three share at least two things: The president campaigned for all of them, and they all lost. Independents abandoned them in droves.

Democrats would like to pretend that Obama has not been a factor in the three statewide elections since he assumed office. And, granted, there were other issues in play. None of the candidates was particularly strong. Unemployment is at 10 percent. Nevertheless, “our Ronald Reagan” told Democrats and independents in all three states that his agenda would be imperiled if Republicans won. And in all three, those voters greeted his dulcet tones with a collective shrug.

Persuasive? In 2009 the president gave dozens of televised townhall meetings, speeches, and press conferences to muster support for the Democratic health care reform. Yet none of this frenetic activity did anything to improve the public’s opinion of his approach to health care. Quite the reverse: Opposition to the plan has increased.

The “international community” was also supposed to fall under Obama’s spell. Maybe that’s true, in some places. Not in Copenhagen. The president went there twice, to campaign for the 2016 Olympic games to come to Chicago and for a global treaty on climate change. He was denied both times. And don’t forget the deafness of Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran to Obama’s words, as well.

The Lecturer in Chief

In endorsing Obama for president, the Washington Post editorialized that he is “a man of supple intelligence, with a nuanced grasp of complex issues” whose “temperament is unlike anything we’ve seen on the national stage in many years.” True enough: Obama is cool, unflappable, intellectual. And yet the personality traits that made him attractive to so many as a candidate have not worn well as president.