Our political Quote of the Day capsulizes the ongoing political deflating of President Barack Obama who is steadily deflating like a balloon. Our Quote correctly notes that it isn’t all due to a a clear attempt by Republicans to thwart anything he tries to accomplish but also doe to some of his own political flaws and personal weakenesses. The quote comes from the New York Time’s Maureen Dowd:
Just as Obama miscalculated in 2009 when Democrats had total control of Congress, holding out hope that G.O.P. lawmakers would come around on health care after all but three senators had refused to vote for the stimulus bill; just as he misread John Boehner this summer, clinging like a scorned lover to a dream that the speaker would drop his demanding new inamorata, the Tea Party, to strike a “grand” budget bargain, so the president once more set a trap for himself and gave Boehner the opportunity to dis him on the timing of his jobs speech this week.
That’s why blaming Obama’s increasing streams of political and policy setbacks on others doesn’t totally explain it.
He is proving to be either politically naive or inept. Not just outFoxed.
Obama’s re-election chances depend on painting the Republicans as disrespectful. So why would the White House act disrespectful by scheduling a speech to a joint session of Congress at the exact time when the Republicans already had a debate planned?
And why is the White House so cocky about Obama as a TV draw against quick-draw Rick Perry? As James Carville acerbically noted, given a choice between watching an Obama speech and a G.O.P. debate, “I’d watch the debate, and I’m not even a Republican.”
Obama’s problem is that the law of diminishing returns has set in on his speeches. It’s similar to why radio talk show hosts become increasingly more shocking and keep lowering the bar. There’s a been there/done that/heard that. Soaring rhetoric is fine if there is follow up. And then there’s this: Obama has now raised a legitimate issue about whether he compromises (a fine American political tradition) or simply talks tough and inevitably caves (not good when key parts of the New Deal and Great Society are under attack).
Dowd at her most devastating:
The White House caved, of course, and moved to Thursday, because there’s nothing the Republicans say that he won’t eagerly meet halfway.
And WORSE: Here’s David Letterman. Remember that late night comedians often reflect what becomes an accepted, widespread conventional wisdom in our culture:
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No. 2 on David Letterman’s Top Ten List of the president’s plans for Labor Day: “Pretty much whatever the Republicans tell him he can do.”
And more Dowd:
You know you’re in trouble when Harry Reid says you should be more aggressive.
Indeed: watching Obama, I bet the late Mahatma Gandhi is looking down on this and yelling: “For God’s sake Obama, start kicking some ass!!!”
And there are the I told you sos: Hillary Clinton supporters who increasingly seem in a big mind meld saying the exact same thing. Obama simply is not tough enough and willing to fight. Didn’t we warn you?
Dowd makes this point:
If the languid Obama had not done his usual irritating fourth-quarter play, if he had presented a jobs plan a year ago and fought for it, he wouldn’t have needed to elevate the setting. How will he up the ante next time? A speech from the space station?
Republicans who are worried about being political props have a point. The president is using the power of the incumbency and a sacred occasion for a political speech.
Obama is still suffering from the Speech Illusion, the idea that he can come down from the mountain, read from a Teleprompter, cast a magic spell with his words and climb back up the mountain, while we scurry around and do what he proclaimed.
The days of spinning illusions in a Greek temple in a football stadium are done. The One is dancing on the edge of one term.
The White House team is flailing — reacting, regrouping, retrenching. It’s repugnant.
And her most devastating line:
The arc of justice is stuck at the top of a mountain. Maybe Obama was not even the person he was waiting for.
It is not out of the realm of imagination, watching Obama before our eyes as someone not just a victim of opposition power politics but of at times almost negligent political miscalculation to hear the phrase: “President Perry.”
Can Obama change that in coming months with a bad economy and clearly flawed political chops?
Stranger things have happened — like witnessing the huge promise of newly-elected candidate Barack Obama who some felt would be another FDR morph into the steadily deflating political figure we are watching today.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgL3hIeEzSY
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.