Prioritize, Prioritize

I think I was in college when I first heard a little jingle about plagiarism — "Plagiarize! Plagiarize! Let no one's work evade your eyes!"

As a journalism major, I was constantly being warned by my instructors not to plagiarize anyone. It became an article of faith with me. So I guess that accounts for my appreciation for that little snippet, which bubbles to the surface in my brain from time to time — sometimes because I really am confronted with a clear case of plagiarism, other times for reasons that aren't altogether certain at the time.

Today, it popped up, not because I have seen evidence of plagiarism but (I presume) because I've been seeing (and hearing) frequent pleas to Barack Obama to do a better job of prioritizing — and the two words sound so similar.

Newsweek's Eleanor Clift, for example, was writing the other day about how the midterms — "like it or not," she writes — are going to be a "referendum" (her word) on the Obama presidency.

You might have to look long and hard to find anyone who was a more devoted supporter of Obama in the 2008 presidential campaign than Clift, and she has some trouble shedding that enabler role. She insists, for example, that "there's nothing wrong with Obama that a better economy wouldn't fix," and she's probably right about that.

But the economy isn't better. That's the reality.

And Clift, while still giving credit where she feels it is due, has plenty of blame for others for why that is so.

She still seems to think that Obama has time to right the ship of state ("The only saving grace for Democrats is the roster of fringe candidates the GOP has served up, and the hope that voters will reject the change these Tea Party insurgents represent," "it's not too late for Obama to raise the level of his game," etc.) but I don't.

Clift suggests things that might qualify as cosmetic changes, like revamping the economic team in which Obama places so much faith. And that wouldn't have been a bad idea — last year. But Obama was busy obsessing over health care, a Supreme Court nomination that was never in jeopardy and a "teachable moment" over race relations.

(Speaking of race relations, isn't it interesting that Obama and the Democrats never miss an opportunity to lecture the rest of us about race relations and are quick to dismiss any criticism as the product of racism when escalating unemployment has hurt minorities even more than whites?)

Even Clift can't escape the conclusion that Obama simply isn't doing the things that presidents usually do to reassure voters when times are difficult. She points out — and rightly so — that Bill Clinton survived impeachment by "going before the cameras every day to insist he was doing the work of the people."

Obama, on the other hand, will be addressing the nation tonight about Iraq.

"The time for that was earlier in August when the last of the combat troops rolled into Kuwait," writes Clift. "Voters want to know what Obama is doing to create jobs" — as I observed the other day, a great time for that would have been last Labor Day — "and if he doesn't get the message soon, he will in November."

Maybe, in Obama's inexplicable sense of logic, what he is doing is groundbreaking and will work in ways that the rest of us cannot see yet. Perhaps, in the years to come, political science professors will be telling their students how Obama rewrote the rules for being a successful president and leader of his party during bad times.

If so, then perhaps on November 3, the day after the midterms, it will be incumbent upon me to acknowledge that Obama really did know what he was doing all along.

And if that's the case, I'm a big enough man to admit I was wrong and give credit where credit is due.

But today, about nine weeks before the voters go to the polls, I'm inclined to think that the Democrats are going to lose at least one chamber of Congress — and perhaps both.

If that happens, the Democrats will be all too eager to point fingers. Some are avoiding the rush and getting started on it ahead of time.

And, to be sure, there will be many scapegoats — some legitimate, some not.

But you will need look no further than the White House and its failure to prioritize to find the biggest reason for the setbacks.

The Truth Hurts

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"Theoretical physics can prove an elephant can hang from a cliff with his tail tied to a daisy. But use your eyes, your common sense."

Kevin Costner
JFK (1991)

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I know there are Democrats — many of them, in fact — who believe, all evidence to the contrary, that "The One" can do no wrong. Anyone who has the audacity to suggest otherwise must be racist.

Please.

Perhaps they will pay attention to the words of Newsweek's Eleanor Clift.

Regular readers of my blog may remember that I referred to Clift in a post last summer. At the time, I pointed out that she is one of those folks in the media who are on Obama's side — "She leans so far to the left," I wrote last July, "that, during the Clinton administration, she was nicknamed 'Eleanor Rodham Clifton.' "

So the usual manipulation that Democrats use to distract and deflect isn't effective when it is used against Clift — even though she has advice for Republicans based on the Obama experience.

She labels it a cautionary tale.

"The election that swept Barack Obama into the White House wasn't about health care," she writes, "even though it seemed that way to a lot of Democrats still smarting over President Clinton's failed effort 16 years earlier. Obama was elected because of the collapsing economy and his opposition to the war in Iraq. And his focus on health–care reform after the election was interpreted by voters as inattention to their paramount concerns: jobs and the economy."

Some people will argue that Obama has not been inattentive, that there have been too many issues to deal with. But most voters, as Clift understands, are not policy wonks. Most voters don't really pay any attention to most of the details of governing. Most voters are interested only in the big picture, the bottom line.

And here's the bottom line on the Obama presidency, in Clift's words: "The White House didn't do enough to connect the dots between health–care reform and economic security, and the Republicans filled in the blanks by frightening voters about the real and imagined impact of a changed system engineered by one–party control in Washington."

Wouldn't you like to think somebody learned the right lesson in the last year? Obama, as Clift observes, didn't learn the right lesson from the election in 2008 — and, apparently, the Republicans didn't learn the right lesson from the experience of 2009.

"[T]he GOP is on track to make big gains in November," she writes, "and they are likely to interpret those gains as affirmation for a strategy that is narrowing the party's appeal and offering no new ideas."

The reality may not be what the voters think it is, but, for many of them, perception is reality. And therein lies the key, I think, to a riddle that, inexplicably, bewilders Democrats whose stock answer to questions about the economy and unemployment is ... "It was Bush's fault."

Democrats, particularly those who feel they are well informed because they follow policy developments so closely, may think that Obama has been actively promoting job creation, but that contradicts what most voters see.

And many voters haven't liked what they've been seeing. Consequently, Obama's approval numbers have declined dramatically — from the stratospherically (and, by definition, unsustainable) high numbers of a year ago to the perilous mid–40s range in February 2010. Newsweek, for example, recently reported that Obama's approval rating has fallen to 43%.

I hate to state the obvious to Democrats who are so well informed, but somebody has to. If they don't want to listen to it, that is their option. But the truth, while painful, is good to know, especially at a time when there is so much pain in America.

And here's some truth for you. The price of health care insurance is way down the list of priorities for unemployed Americans, especially those whose unemployment benefits have run out. They're more concerned about keeping a roof over their heads and putting clothes on their bodies and food in their stomachs.

But back to that "cautionary tale" I mentioned earlier.

"Republicans fault Obama and the Democrats for legislating like they had a bigger mandate than they did," Clift writes, "and now Democrats are paying the price for overreaching."

But the Republicans have an "absence of ideas," Clift says. "You can't claim a mandate if you don't have a platform. If the GOP won control of Congress tomorrow, all they could claim they were elected to do is not pass health'care reform."

Seems to me both parties have things they need to learn between now and Election Day.

Does Obama Have What It Takes?

This morning, I have been reading an article by Eleanor Clift in Newsweek that wonders, candidly, if Barack Obama is up to the job of being president.

Clift, for those who don't know, is hardly a conservative critic. She leans so far to the left that, during the Clinton administration, she was nicknamed "Eleanor Rodham Clifton" because of her rigid defense of the former first lady and now secretary of state.

When she complains about "Obama's Zen–like avoidance of confrontation," he needs to pay attention.

I've written about the same thing, but I used different words. Back in the days when the economic stimulus package was being debated in Congress, I wrote about Obama's misguided efforts to achieve bipartisanship. Obama and the Democrats in Congress nevertheless permitted so many concessions and so many compromises that we were left with an expensive, pork–laden package that has been ineffective in dealing with the urgent problems that needed to be addressed.

Sure, it has provisions that are aimed at long–term goals, and we won't see the benefits of those efforts for years. But the package has done virtually nothing to address the immediate problems that are strangling Americans. It may have slowed the rate of job losses, but it hasn't shown any sign of reversing that ominous trend. We're still losing hundreds of thousands of jobs each month when (taking into account population growth) we need to add at least 100,000 jobs each month just to stay even, and the current 9.5% unemployment rate is well above the 8% rate Obama and the Democrats said would be the plateau when they passed the stimulus package.

Clift says Obama needs to "get in touch with his inner LBJ," who was known for bullying and cajoling and threatening lawmakers to get his way by using "the treatment," a tactic Lyndon Johnson honed in his years as majority leader in the Senate, "but so far the signs don't look good."

I don't know if Obama has an aversion to criticism or what, but more than one promising presidency has been shot down by an irrational desire to stay on everyone's good side. That simply isn't possible in politics.

In case you haven't noticed it, Obama is a polarizing figure. He remains personally popular — but voters make a distinction between liking the president and liking his policies. Presidents Reagan and Clinton served two full terms in the White House and, despite leaving the presidency with high personal popularity, were loathed and despised by their opponents, largely (but not exclusively) on the basis of their political philosophies.

It's also worth pointing out that, although both Reagan and Clinton went on to win second terms, they suffered setbacks in their first midterm elections — in Reagan's case because of mounting unemployment. Remember his pleas to a chastened public to "stay the course?"

And, of course, in Clinton's case, the backlash was so severe that the Democrats lost control of both houses of Congress for the first time in four decades.

Voters haven't been as charitable when asked about Obama's policies as they have been when asked about the president himself. Clift observes that Obama's objectives are in danger, and that there is a short window of opportunity for him.

"With unemployment climbing and 12,000 people a day losing health insurance, Obama cannot allow universal health care to slip away yet again," she writes. "If a Democratic president with commanding majorities in both the Senate and House can't make it happen this Congress, the Democrats will take a hit in the 2010 congressional election, and the losses will be deserved."

This is Obama's "LBJ moment," Clift writes. And the window is still open for him. But she observes that the "steadily increasing number of people without jobs and health insurance is scary and their cry for change will only grow louder. The true unemployment rate is probably twice what the government records as people get discouraged and fall from the statistics."

That is the reality. It is what Obama and the Democrats were elected to do something about.

Interesting, isn't it, that Clift uses the word "change?" Last year, a majority of Americans responded favorably to the slogan "change we can believe in," but many are finding it harder to believe in change now.

The sniping between the parties hasn't changed. What's changed is which party is in the majority. When Republicans were in the majority, they liked to ridicule the Clintons and Al Gore. Today, with the Democrats in the majority, they enjoy doing the same thing to George W. Bush and Sarah Palin.

When the stimulus package was passed in February, Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson said those who hammered out the congressional compromise should be called "the jobs squad" and Obama, when signing the legislation, said it "mark[s] the beginning of the end — the beginning of what we need to do to create jobs for Americans scrambling in the wake of layoffs; to provide relief for families worried they won't be able to pay next month's bills; and to set our economy on a firmer foundation."

There seems to be — to put it mildly — a disconnect between the rhetoric of February and the reality of summer.

As Clift urges, Obama must spend his political capital. She acknowledges that "Obama is on pace to exceed Clinton and even LBJ in getting Congress to vote his way, in part by carefully picking his fights."

And she observes that "[v]ictory born of caution falls short of expectations but beats defeat any day."

That's true. But there is a fine art in being an effective president. Can Obama learn it in time?

Or is this the best you can hope for when a community organizer is elected president?