[icopyright one button toolbar]
There seems to be a pattern in the United States’ crisis-coping. NBC’s First Read nails the multi-fronted problem. The question is which of the likely causes is t-h-e cause. Or as America moves further into a noisier, media and partisan saturated 21st century are we witnessing a series of factors converging that foster damaging constraints on how America responds to crises?
First Read looks at three factors. The Obama administration:
Another week, another crisis for the Obama White House — this time all the Central American children who have crossed into the country. Today, the White House is formally asking Congress for about $2 billion for immigration judges, attorneys, and asylum officials. But what we find striking is that this is yet another event controlling the White House rather than the other way around.
Here is the formula, which we also saw recently with the crisis in Ukraine, the crisis at the VA, and the new crisis in Iraq: A conflict or public-policy problem gets a tremendous amount of media attention. Congress and the political opposition begin pointing fingers at the White House. And then the White House — after hedging, hemming and hawing — finally reacts. This was especially true after DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson dodged the question Sunday on “Meet the Press” whether the children would be deported, and then a day later when White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest answered affirmatively that they would be deported.
In short, the White House is always reacting and rarely gets ahead of a problem. Their response is usually the same: We didn’t see this coming; it’s much worse than we anticipated, all leaving the impression that they just don’t have their arms around the government they run. The question is whether this is the new normal in this age of polarization and speedy news cycles, or if this is unique to Obama’s presidency?
I’m concluding this will be the new normal. The reason: many Republicans how communicate a seeming belief that when a Republicans wins the White House it’s a legitimate victory and the GOP will use every shred of power it can possibly muster to enact its politices or agenda.
And if a Democrat wins, the Democrat is seemingly illegitate and a kind of usurper, occupying space that a Republican is “supposed” to occupy (the Oval Office). The barrage against Obama has been so intense and personal I’m predicting it will so alienate some Democrats that the next Republican President could come into office with his or her clout reduced, or with a short honeymoon period expiration date.
On the other hand, here is truth we hold as self-evident: this administration does NOT seem to know how to effectively anticipate and prepare for worst case scenarios.
First Read also points to Congress:
But that is just one layer to this story. Another layer is Congress’ inability to legislate — and its preference instead to politicize any public policy issue for maximum partisan gain. Your 113th Congress spends more time pointing fingers than solving problems. A case in point is this immigration story. After all, the “Gang of 8” immigration legislation — which the Senate passed a year ago but which the House won’t act on — spends billions and billions on additional border enforcement. Yet that legislation (or any compromise to it) is dead for this year and perhaps the rest of Obama’s presidency. So this isn’t just the administration’s crisis; it’s Congress’, too.
As for the White House’s $2 billion request for the border, House GOP leaders are taking a wait-and-see approach. When First Read asked Speaker John Boehner’s spokesman if the House would pass the request before the August recess, he responded: “We won’t know until we see what’s actually in it.” When we followed up by asking if it could pass if it’s a reasonable request, he added, “We’ll see.” Hard to imagine that either party wants this legislation staring them in the face after Labor Day in an election year. One has got to assume it’s August or bust.
I’m betting it’s bust.
And then there’s the media:
And a third layer to all of this is us — the media. We easily move from crisis to crisis, sometimes stoking it along the way. “Look at what’s happening in Ukraine! Why can’t Obama stop Putin?” “Look at what’s happening at the VA! Why didn’t Obama and Congress do more to foresee the mismanagement and respond to the horror stories?” “Look at what’s happening in Iraq! Why didn’t the White House see ISIS coming?” And now: “Look at what’s happening on the border! Why didn’t the administration and Congress anticipate this happening?”
But here is the rub: Notice how quickly some of those older stories have disappeared from the front pages. Remember Ukraine? What about the VA? (Quick: Name the person Obama appointed to be the new VA secretary. Here is the answer.)
That explanation of what I call today’s attention deficit press is about the best — and most accurate — that I’ve seen. But there is also (I sadly admit) the same group frenzy in weblog coverage where one story becomes the rage of the day (pick a political spae…left…right…center and you’ll find rage).
In some ways, this justifies the administration’s reaction mode to crises — because a week later, it knows the media will be devouring another story. Of course, what matters most, politically, is what the public is digesting. And while none of these stories is likely penetrating at a crisis-like level for the average American, the collection of these stories clearly is. What else explains the poor marks the president and Congress and the entire Washington structure is receiving?
And that also nails it: many Americans see a failure of the political class.
One reason why it such a failure is that our politics increasingly seems to be about rhetoric and not about ideas matched by counter ideas. For instance, GOPers continue to try to sell the idea that Barack Obama is both an incompetent wuss and an imperial dictator wannabe. The Washington Post’s Dana Milibank makes short work of that:
As imperial rulers go, this president has about as much oppressive might and raw dictatorial clout as Prince Hans-Adam II of Liechtenstein. Republicans have never respected Obama’s authority. And now, as his popularity slips, he seems to be losing his ability to influence foreign allies, congressional Democrats and some of his previously loyal supporters.”
“Both the puny executive action and the criticism from erstwhile allies on Monday showed why the Obama presidency these days is falling a good bit short of imperial on the Alexander the Great scale. Education was the White House’s message du jour — lunch with teachers on the South Lawn was the only item on Obama’s publicly released schedule other than his intelligence briefing — but it didn’t have a chance of wresting the national narrative away from less pleasant affairs.
The bottom line?
The United States these days seems perfectly poised to offer extensive new and old social media and partisan polemics. But sound governance seems to be a skill eluding both the majority and the minority parties.
graphic via shutterstock.com
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.