Has President Barack Obama suddenly found his mojo? Centrist writer and CNN contributor John Avlon, writing on The Daily Beast, thinks so. A few meaty excerpts:
Almost lost in the debate over the tax cut compromise this week was a striking moment of defiance and self-definition from President Obama.
It came in the final five minutes of Tuesday’s afternoon press conference. With the president under attack from congressional Democrats and the press corps, Obama recaptured some of the 2008 campaign magic when he started to push back and passionately defend his approach to the presidency.
The comments offered an uncensored look into his frustrations with armchair ideologues and his “North Star” philosophy of governing as a pragmatic progressive. It deserves a close reading and a place on the Obama administration highlight reel.
According to Avlon, this was the key moment — sparked by a question from Wall Street Journal reporter Jonathan Weisman
“Some on the left have looked at this deal and questioned what your core values are,” Weisman asked. “What specifically you will go to the mat on?”Obama started to rattle on about budgets and deficits and 2012 and then Wesimann interrupted him: “Where is your line in the sand?”
That’s when No Drama Obama got pissed and presidential.
“Not making the tax cuts for the wealthy permanent—that was a line in the sand. Making sure that the things that most impact middle-class families and low-income families, that those were preserved—that was a line in the sand.”
Obama drilled down the list of the unemployment extensions, the earned income tax credit, and the college tuition tax credit—all the benefits he got added to the temporary extension of the top rate of the Bush tax cuts. This is the backdoor middle class stimulus that conservatives like Charles Krauthammer have decried as liberals simultaneously have cried defeat.
AND:
“This notion that somehow we are willing to compromise too much reminds me of the debate that we had during health care. This is the public option debate all over again. So I pass a signature piece of legislation where we finally get health care for all Americans, something that Democrats had been fighting for a hundred years, but because there was a provision in there that they didn’t get that would have affected maybe a couple of million people, even though we got health insurance for 30 million people and the potential for lower premiums for 100 million people, that somehow that was a sign of weakness and compromise.”
This was not just raw frustration but a cold dose of perspective from the man in the Oval Office. It was a declaration of independence from the professional left and a statement of principle from a pragmatic progressive.
And a final chunk of Obama via Avlon:
“If that’s the standard by which we are measuring success or core principles, then let’s face it, we will never get anything done. People will have the satisfaction of having a purist position and no victories for the American people. And we will be able to feel good about ourselves and sanctimonious about how pure our intentions are and how tough we are, and in the meantime, the American people are still seeing themselves not able to get health insurance because of preexisting conditions or not being able to pay their bills because their unemployment insurance ran out.”
The ‘sanctimonious’ dig drew the most howls from the left because it cut the closest—the first African-American president acknowledging the self-righteousness of the professional left. Because these are the stakes – either you embrace the politics of problem-solving and get the best deal you can, or the people who are supposedly trying to help suffer from the functional neglect that comes from noble failure.
He was on a roll, and the unvarnished opinion must have been feeling good because then Obama took aim at the self-appointed opinion-makers of the media – those who have the luxury to engage in arm-chair ideological debates, offering contradictory advice with equal conviction, while he has the responsibility of actually making decisions.
“This is a big, diverse country. Not everybody agrees with us. I know that shocks people. The New York Times editorial page does not permeate across all of America. Neither does The Wall Street Journal editorial page. Most Americans, they’re just trying to figure out how to go about their lives…in order to get stuff done, we’re going to compromise.”
When you watch the video, the sarcasm of the “I know that shocks people” comes through clearly. He is mocking the Washington bubble, his own inner circle as well as the insulated commentariat debate. The President still has a sense of perspective, somehow. Perhaps because he’s comforted by the lessons of history:
At the end of his must-read-in-full-piece Avlon concludes:
We are living in a time of grossly distorted fun-house mirror political debates, where the far-right thinks that the president is a Marxist and the far-left thinks that he is a Wall Street sellout. In this over-heated environment, the responsibilities of governing get downgraded as the country gets divided. It is time to start turning the tide.
When we look back at the history of the Obama administration, those five minutes just might be remembered as the moment when Obama started to get his Mojo back and set the tone for the next two years. The North Star approach to the presidency will allow him to reclaim the allegiance of the center while steering toward re-election in 2012.
I agree with Avlon — with one qualifier.
The big question now isn’t just whether Obama could or should move to the center. It’s also whether Obama and his team are out of their league — not quite wannabes (since they are in the White House) but almost amateurish in the flat-footedness in Obama and his team’s style of politics.
All early talk about how Obama and Rahm Emanuel were going to absolutely dominate the political scene evaporated rather early in Obama’s first two years.
The question is not just whether Obama has got his Mojo back or if he’s moving the center.
The question is whether he’s capable of nimble politics. So far he seems more of a Velcro President than a Teflon President. Still, although liberals/progressives (pick the buzzword you prefer) will and are outraged by Obama’s press conference comments many in the middle or center right will either give Obama another look or start to give him another look. But even a look is hard if the economy does not appear to be on the mend.
(Let us know YOUR views in comments..)
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.