Is Obama In Danger Of Losing His “Change” And Competence Images?
Could political toe-stubbing on the part of President Barack Obama’s team seriously undermine his image as an agent of “change” and as a cool, competent operator just two weeks after Obama took the oath off office?
Even asking the question seems to suggest mental hyperactivity — just TWO WEEKS? — but it is a valid one. Many hoped Obama would prove to be “another” FDR, or JFK, or Ronald Reagan of the center/center-left. Others feared or charged that he could turn out to be another Jimmy Carter (inept) or Bill Clinton (a good speaker who’d be politically under fire and stalemated so much of his rhetoric didn’t translate into reality).
And, yes, it is too soon to tell — but it’s not too soon to acknowledge that there are some troubling signs.
The issue isn’t just the claims that Obama is just another hack politician that are coming from conservative talk show hosts, Republican activists or GOP new or old media pundits. They have been essentially claiming that before he even rested his fanny on his seat in the Oval Office and their whole mantra is to pick something, rage about it, and broaden it to go after anyone with a “D” on their party affiliation. These are the 24/7 partisans.
Obama’s bigger problem will be with other voters and pundits. It is indeed too early to tell — TWO WEEKS — but the question is whether Americans are now is seeing the inklings of what could be a competency issue, the “same ‘ol same ‘ol” kind of political administration, and whether team Obama is now showing signs that they will be politically outfoxed and boxed in by their opponents for the next four years.
Just look at a few of these untidy strands now visible as they blow in the political breeze:
1. Obama’s problems with vetting of three proposed cabinet officials. Former Majority Leader Tom Daschle was one of Obama’s closest advisers as Obama entered the primaries and ran for President. His tax problem raised the issue of a) how tough (or untough) team Obama vetting was.
Do Obama’s advisers think “vetting” is taking your pet to the doctor?
Additionally, longtime political pro Daschle clearly knew about the Obama message of changing from the Old Washington. Did he take this message seriously? If he did, how could he let himself in for a fall and let his candidate down?
2. Obama’s electoral victory and polling numbers show no signs yet of translating into FDR-like clout. As of today, it seems as if the most accurate way to find out what might happen is to follow the rantings of Rush Limbaugh rather than the prediction of White House insiders. When Rush talks, the Republican party apparently now follows. And, apparently, what he says the party should do and the party does, Democrats cannot prevent. Republicans have clearly now rebounded in terms of political clout and defiance. If there was a new era with a new tone, it seemed to have lasted about a day.
Or less.
The Washington Post reports that Democrats in the Senate at this point don’t have the votes to pass the stimulus plan. Just weeks ago pundits offhandedly would write how the administration could get a plan through — no matter what.
And despite a seeming mutual admiration society that had conservative talkers all but calling him a traitor to the Republican party and to civilization as we know it, defeated 2008 GOP Presidential candidate Sen. John McCain has now made it clear that despite the highly public Obama-McCain political lovefests, he is not just planning to vote against the stimulus plan but is actively working to defeat the current one. He even sent out an email to his supporters.
3. Obama knows how to use the bully pulpit but is he using it yet and does he know how to bring it all together as President? Despite his eloquence, smart use of You Tube, and mastery of television if the TWO WEEKS (we need to capitalize it) is any indication, Obama does not yet seem to be proving to be a dominant political force who opponents need to fear.
4. Obama and his associates rightfully earned a reputation of knowing how to eschew drama and coolly focus on the mechanics of what was needed to win primaries and an election. But George Bush and Karl Rove knew how to win elections, too. The Bush team proved to be hideously lacking in several areas when it came to governance and competence. Do Obama and his associates have the skills to outsmart their opponents and create coalitions to get their agenda through Congress — and the skills to govern well and competently?
The key to Obama’s immediate clout will be his upcoming polling numbers.
If his job approval starts to seriously tumble this early in his term – TWO WEEKS into it — there will be no reason for his political foes within his party (the Democratic party’s progressives who aren’t happy about his verbal overtures to Republicans or picks of GOPers for key roles in his administration) or outside of it (not just hard-core conservative Republicans but the hybrid Republicans such as McCain and the few moderate Republicans left) to fear him or go along with him. Talks at the White House, in the halls of Congress or at cocktail parties won’t be enough.
The Christian Science Monitor frames it this way:
Two weeks ago, President Obama took office pledging a “new era of responsibility” in Washington.On Tuesday, two choices for top administration posts withdrew their names from consideration because of personal tax violations, saying they did not want to distract from the president’s agenda.
Tom Daschle, nominated to serve as secretary of Health and Human Services and as White House health reform “czar,” succumbed to a growing firestorm over his admission that he owed more than $128,000 in delinquent taxes for the use of a private car and driver provided by a wealthy businessman and political activist.
Just hours earlier, Nancy Killefer, Mr. Obama’s appointee for a new position – chief White House performance officer – announced she was stepping down, acknowledging a failure to pay employment taxes on household help for 1-1/2 years.
The one-two punch brought to a head the growing embarrassment to the Obama administration over ethics challenges faced by a number of nominees, including New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D), who withdrew his name previously as Commerce secretary nominee over pay-to-play allegations, and Timothy Geithner, who survived his own tax flap – more than $30,000 in back taxes owed – to become Treasury secretary.
The series of tainted nominees raises questions about the Obama administration’s vetting process, and leaves the new president reeling as he tries to get Congress to pass the biggest economic stimulus package in history.
All of this impacts clout: if the President is seen as reeling and painfully clutching his stubbed toe, then he may find himself being bucked by not just GOPers but some within his own party who see no reason to fear him because they won’t believe there are any political consequences. The Monitor again:
“Obama has work to do to restore his image as an agent of change,” says Julian Zelizer, a congressional historian at Princeton University in New Jersey. “A more proactive approach will be needed by Obama if he wants to keep transparency and change as a centerpiece of his administration. If these are the kinds of connections Obama was willing to tolerate, he needs to do some work to overcome the damage.”
Yet another sign that TWO WEEKS into his term the first impression Obama made to voters about him as a candidate isn’t the same as the first impression Obama is giving as President comes from this column by the New York Time’s Maureen Dowd, who rakes the new President over the coals for several things such as:
It took Daschle’s resignation to shake the president out of his arrogant attitude that his charmed circle doesn’t have to abide by the lofty standards he lectured the rest of us about for two years.
Before he recanted, his hand forced by a cascade of appointees who “forgot” to pay taxes, his reasoning was creeping perilously close to that of the outgoing leaders he denounced in his Inaugural Address: that elitist mentality of “we know best,” we know we’re doing the “right” thing for the country, so we can twist the rules.
Dowd also seems dumbfounded by Obama’s now-clear mistake to let the stimulus package go to Congress in its initial forms, with some items in it that have played right into the hands of GOPers who have argued that the Democrats could not be trusted and would spend like drunken CEOS – CEOS spend more than sailors, so let’s change the metaphor in the 21st century.
Mr. Obama should have taken a red pencil to the $819 billion stimulus bill and slashed all the provisions that looked like caricatures of Democratic drunken-sailor spending.
As Senator Kit Bond, a Republican, put it, there were so many good targets that he felt “like a mosquito in a nudist colony.” He was especially worried about the provision requiring the steel and iron for infrastructure construction to be American-made, and by the time the chastened president talked to Chris Wallace on Fox Tuesday, he agreed that “we can’t send a protectionist message.”
Mr. Obama protested to Brian Williams that the programs denounced as “wasteful” by Republicans “amount to less than 1 percent of the entire package.” All the more reason to cut them and create a lean, clean bill tailored to creating job.
And, indeed, the question is there: if he is the kind of leader many voters assumed he would be, why was the bill allowed to go up to the Hill in its initial form – all but handing over to talk show hosts, all-Democrats-are-evil Republican polemicists, and other critics political ammunition…wrapped in a nice box…with a bow on it…and a gift card?
Wasn’t White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel supposed to be a strategically smart political operative who’d guide Obama and run rings around those who tried to thwart the administration’s agenda?
She also writes:
The Democratic president has been spending so much time trying — and failing — to win over Republicans that he may not have noticed the disillusionment in his own ranks.
The bottom line?
On several fronts, Obama needs to make it clear — and perceptibly evident — that when he talks about “change” he isn’t talking about something people throw into a jar at the end of the day at home and cash in at the local grocery store.
TWO WEEKS into his term, the question remains: is Obama the political powerhouse many Americans saw (and some feared) he would be?
Can he govern as well as he campaigned?
We may have a better idea…TWO WEEKS from now…
Copyrighted cartoon by Adam Zyglis, The Buffalo News. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.
UPDATE: Read Andrew Malcolm’s MUST READ on Obama’s toe-stubs and change. REQUIRED READING…
25 Responses to “Is Obama In Danger Of Losing His “Change” And Competence Images?”
The problem is, as far as we know, the change thing and being cool is all image. No one really knows how Obama will govern, as he had virtually no experience as an executive, little legislation, and the media barely investigated him. We don't need a rock star for president, and, even if we did, I'd take Jimmy Buffett. That would be a fun government, eh?
Obama is learning that actually doing is not that easy, especially after all those promises.
Two Weeks, yes. Why did you even write this story? Do you believe that one year from now this will be relevant?
Is their not something more important to use space ; or is it the normal “through some red meat to the people who want this President to fail. Two Weeks, yikes.
Is that another way of saying “this is a distraction,” 1556? Not speaking for Joe at all, but, news is a continuing and ongoing event. People like Mo Dowd are still whining about Bush and My Pet Goat. What Obama has done during his slightly more then two weeks, and the mess ups, has relevance. Will it continue? Will he get it together?
Hey, what's so wrong about measuring 14 days? The last God needed only 7.
[...] doing, to those who missed the “post partisan” real meaning. Which only makes the musings from the Moderate Voice funnier: Could political toe-stubbing on the part of President Barack Obama’s team seriously [...]
Joe's analysis is fine, as per usual.
1556… the media and the blogosphere can't be Pravda to the Obama Administration.
The media helped Obama to the White House…but now that the Democrats now have majorities in the House and Senate and control the White House…they are the only game in town.
How many more fawning articles can the media print about Obama's Blackberry, or Michelle's style sense? Even Bigfoot liberal columnists like Modo recognize this reality.
Obama saw the parallels with Clinton and the repeated nanny fiascos with Zoe B. That created a narrative of incompetence at the start of the Clinton Admin…especially as Clinton wasted political capital on it.
With 3 Obama Admin figures not paying their taxes . . . it was just a bridge too far. The repeated occurence risked creating a narrative….and everyone relates to tax issues.
Obama nipped it in the bud (unlike Clinton) and did quick mea culpas (unlike Bush).
Clearly, he has learned from history.
As everyone now recognizes, the Stimulus Package is target rich. The re-tooling cannot help but make it better. (Typing that…I paused…reflecting that this is Washington…and I am being optimistic.)
I think the takeaway from Joe's analysis is his focus on supposedly disciplined Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel. Things have gone sideways pretty early, with sloppy vetting.
(yes, Daschle didn't fess up…but a quick check could have highlighted his problems).
Where was the supposedly fiercely disciplined Rahm in all this?
There's also the point about first impressions. Teach is right, we don't know what to really expect from Obama. He's the most inexperienced chief executive we've elected in modern times. and there's bound to be a learning curve- yet he is quite intelligent and politically shrewd so he may come out of this just fine.
But the story of these initial missteps as his first impression on the American public and punditocracy is relevant because first impressions matter and those perceptions will affect what Obama does next. He knows that he has to quickly change the potential perceptions of him being too naive or too compromising on his promises to clean up DC. I think he's handling it as well as can be expected- he's got to act as though he's a bit shell shocked to have stepped in the dog doo doo and make us feel sorry for him that it's spread so widely around DC that he can't even avoid it even though he's doing his best.
OK, let's (try to) be reasonable here. All Presidencies start with a few missteps. The number of appointments, the amount of new issues to get up to speed and learn to deal with, the learning curve for dealing with the 'gotcha' press at a whole new level, inevitably lead to these types of things early on.
It is NOT a failure to know how to vet – there is just too many candidates to vet to get it right. The two real missteps were the handling of the 'bi-partisanship' of the stimulus bill, and the continued support for a few of his candidates once problems surfaced.
The only real sign of a deeper problem I see at this moment is that the Democratic Congressional leaders, especially in the House, don't seem over-inclined to do anything at Obama's urging, and are following their own agenda.
Given the present day climate…..today….the way things are now……..
In 1977 Jimmy Carter told congress that if they didnt play his game he would go directly to the American People.
Well a couple days ago Barak Obama text messaged the people telling them to get on their congressmen and to tell them to DO WHAT OBAMA SAYS.
Move over Jimmy Carter. Here comes Barak Obama.
[...] pages of punditdom are full today of breathless questions about the Obama White House. Is Obama an incompetent empty suit as the right was charging all those months? What happened to the candidate who so confidently talked [...]
The Obama Administration's plan to cap executive salaries and his willingness to say “I screwed up”, is change we can believe in, don't let the GOP tell you otherwise, as they do not want change!
The GOP pretend to care so deeply about the stimulus, when it is patently obvious and a derelict of their duty to the public, that the GOP are working furiously for the next elections and not the peoples' economic crisis looming so large at this time. Some Republican Pundits charged with this task, call the Stimulus a stinking corpse, before it is even born, instead of what it is — a valuable work in progress for this country. Like any creation, in the early stages, it is chaos and not fully formed, such as a fetus, a painting, any work of art, and yet the artist ploughs on knowing the beauty to be eventually created. Why in the world, would some Pundits criticize the early form instead of giving support, is beyond the pale, especially when they know to publically criticize it is to get the ball rolling to derail it. May be they do not love this country more than their party affiliation! These pundits sit in their high-paying jobs, so lofty, and pick apart every little thing someone says or does, Wears…., with nothing good to say, like their word is God or gold — as they no longer report the news but give their Opinions about the news. There was a time when we were taught as Americans, if you have nothing good to say about anyone, say nothing at all. We have lost that. These Pundits are a part of the problem and not the solution.
At this critical stage in our rapidly-crumbling economy, it would seem that the Republican Senators would do everything they can to do something, to tell the American people, I am on your side, and not always to quickly say no to the middle class and the little people; no to schools, education, infra structure, green jobs, all of which have too long been denied and neglected and Yet, always yes to the Special Interest Groups, to wars, to big oil and their tax breaks.
It is a sad fact that for average American citizens, the GOP is becoming the party of NO! For Gosh Sake, they get from direction from Joe the Plumber!! We can not depend on the GOP to help us, they never have. In 2010, we will know what to do.
As usual Joe raises valid concerns and quesions, but I also think the 1556 comment is on target. What might be seen as politics as usual in any other environment is viewed by some as cause for alarm in the Obama environment simply because the expectations are higher. It's predictable to see these initial stumbles greeted with a certain amount of glee by the same people who were acquiescent and even defensive about standards that went directly into the toilet under the Bush administration. I think once these missteps get ironed out our new administration will manage to get up a decent head of steam – or at least I hope it does, since I'm not among that odd breed of American who is either secretly or openly hoping that he (and along with it most of the country) fails.
The more I hear about the so-called “stimulus,” the more I am opposed. Let this recession play itself out. We shouldn't mortgage our long-term future for a short-term fix. There's talking a trillion dollars…that's $ 1,000,000,000.00 — did I get enough zeroes on that? And who's buying up that debt, anyways? China? Pretty soon, we might as well engrave “Made in China” on the steps of the Capitol.
Two weeks?!? It took God 1 week to create the universe and that was without the Rush Limbo Republicans and the Conservative media undermining his every move.
Perfect. I continue to hear that everything the democrats try to do is undermined by Rush Limbaugh. How perfect is that. The entire government is brought to a standstill because of one self proclaimed pundit who is the purported leader of a party that is insignificant.
See the entire process is nothing more then the democrats wanting to run one trillion dollar deficits and use smoking mirrors to hide the fact.
Stimulus will not work. Its proven to not work and it will not work in this case.
That is precisely why congress passed a pork laden bill that was about 3 percent stimulus and 97 percent Democratic wish list pork projects and then try to pass this while screaming the GOP is obstructionist. The GOP hates Americans. The GOP is playing politics when in fact the Stimulus bill in its entirety is NOTHING BUT politics.
“I screwed up”, is change we can believe in……………………I give you Exhibit A in the lowering of expectations game.
We thought you were voting to change HOW WASHINGTON WORKS……..now we realize you were voting to change WHO WORKS WASHINGTON.
Pres. Obama is doing many things in his first 2 weeks and has made a few mistakes (and has an opposition party eager to exploit them). Pres. Bush did very little in his first days , hence no mistakes. So, doing nothing appears successful by this measure
OH GOD OH GOD!!! The MESSIAH isn't PERFECT!?
*prepares to end it all*…lol…
There is no more competant action than a man just doing his job and doing it to the best of his abilities. Considering that he was up against John McCain and Sarah Palin, for criminey's sake, I can assure you that although he can't heal the sick, cure the blind or walk on water, he most definitely was the best pick of the two tickets to head this government in this day and time.
Back off. Let him make mistakes, let him do good work…like we all do right? Which one of us would want his job right now eh? Yeah, that's right. Put up or shut up. And take him off your pedastal. We just had eight years of a demi-god on a pedestal. You'd think people would be tired of it by now?
Back off. Let him make mistakes, let him do good work…like we all do right?
But that was the gist of our opposition to Barak Obama. He was simply to inexperienced to run the USA. And now the sharks are circling and when he failed in his first attempt what was his response?
To text message his minions and tell them to tell congress to shut up and vote the way he demands. What kind of policy is that. Why not just cancel congress and have a king.
King Obama.
You mean like King George? How many kings you know come out publicly, own their shite and accountability like Obama just did…
George Dubya Bush was too inexperienced and narcissistic (mentally ill) to run the country..yet you guys had no problem with that. Look at the MESS his administration left us with? Obama would have to TRY…to actively work HARD every single day of his administration to bring on as many new problems to our country as Bushco did. As it is, he's going to have to clean up the GOP mess and attempt to do a few new good things along the way.
So yeah, back the F__ off.. ; )
Hes your guy. You voted him in. You deal with him.
Keep your cell phone handy. He will be texting you a lot the next 4 years as he is incapable of dealing with Nanny Pelosi and Harry Reid who have their own agenda and it sure as hell does not include bipartisan kumbyeahh sessions with their GOP enemies.
By the same token the GOP has their own agenda and it sure as hell does not include Barak Obama and his liberal policies painted with lipstick so that the GOP doesnt gag as they become policy.
In other words……two weeks in and already Obama looks just like Jimmy Carter………..Him against the rest of government.
Yeah, but Sil, what do you really think?
I tend to agree with you though; the hypocrisy ain't pretty.
[...] Is Obama In Danger Of Losing His "Change" And Competence Images? [...]
Is Obama In Danger Of Losing His “Change” And Comp
Asks The Moderate Voice, a moderate-liberal blog, who sees some troubling signs: “Just look at a few of these untidy strands now visible as they blow in the political breeze:
1. Obama?s problems with vetting of three proposed cabinet officials. Fo…
Heh…lol…well this is a site for blogging during a helacious threat to our country. I sip tea and quietly crochet too, but there's a time and place for everything..
“Nanny Pelosi”…. Now THAT is funny. I'll have to give you that one greenschemes. “Greenschemes” does that have to do with why our economy is in the toilet? ; )
Nancy Pelosi needs to understand that pet projects are for later. She can weild her power later on. Today is the day to compromise.