Obama Shrugged

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"Prosperity is just around the corner."

Herbert Hoover
31st president of the United States

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Sunny dispositions go a long way for a president, but they can't mask reality.

It probably says a lot more than most Americans would care to know (or admit) about just how shallow many of them really are, but whoever said it first probably was on to something when he observed that George W. Bush was the kind of guy with whom more folks would like to share a beer than Al Gore.

Dubya always had a partyin' frat boy approach to life, even after he stopped drinking and (allegedly) using coke. Given the choice, it came as no surprise to me to think that more people would rather sit down and drink a beer with Dubya and talk about — I don't know — baseball than would choose to sit down with Gore over a beer and talk about — I don't know — Social Security lockboxes.

It was pretty easy to make a voting decision on such superficial issues in 2000. There was a budget surplus, not a deficit that was already historic when Barack Obama took office. Wall Street was thriving, and Main Street was, too.

Remember the atmosphere when the year began? People weren't worried about their jobs. They were worried about how the four–digit year change on their computers might shut everything down in some kind of apocalyptic wave while people were sleeping off their New Year's Eve revelry.

There were no wars being waged by America, and domestic discussion centered largely on what was to be done with the surplus.

By comparison, it was a naive time.

Bush didn't win the popular vote, but he did seem, even to many of Gore's supporters, to project more of a sunny disposition than the often sour Gore — and that could have made the difference with many voters.

Ever since surveys in 1960 indicated that Kennedy had been perceived to be the winner of the debates by those who watched them on television — and Nixon was perceived to be the winner of the debates by the ones who only heard them on radio — presidential elections have been more and more about theatrics and less about reality.

I have often said: Perception is reality.

What the voters think is what matters.

And, when you acknowledge that, you really do have to start wondering if the truth has any value.

Actually, it does — especially when times are hard.

When times are good, people can muse about trivial things — such as with whom they would like to share a beer. When times are hard, they are obsessed with just putting bread on the table — and keeping a roof over that table.

Anyway, it strikes me as kind of ironic that Jonah Goldberg of the New York Post writes about how Obama seems to hate his job. Obama, after all, just announced his intention to run for a second term. That's bipolar behavior if the man hates his job.

OK, Goldberg is a conservative columnist, not exactly one of Obama's friends. And, if you are one of Obama's defenders, you may be inclined to say that Goldberg is putting the spin on the situation that benefits his side.

But he makes a good point. OK, occasionally, he lapses into the partisan language that surely is familiar to most of us by now. At times, though, he is better at it than most.

(i.e., "The president has always had a gift for self–pity. And blame–shifting. 'It's Bush's fault' could be the subtitle of his presidency.")

But Goldberg also has his moments that even Obama's most ardent supporter would be challenged to refute.

(i.e., "He demonized George W. Bush as an evil fool, but Obama has been forced to adopt many of the very policies he derided as evil and foolish. The 'change' candidate is now the 'more of the same' guy.")

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And now, even though he has acknowledged that there really isn't anything a president can do about gas prices, Obama nevertheless took the opportunity to announce on what amounted to a campaign swing through hard–hit–by–the–recession Nevada that he will instruct the attorney general to appoint a task force to see if anyone is taking advantage of consumers.

That isn't a bad pledge for a Democratic president to make — particularly if he doesn't want to lose states like Nevada that voted for him in 2008 but have suffered disproportionately during his presidency — and have a history of supporting Republicans (between 1952 and 2004, Nevada voted for one Democratic nominee).

And it conveniently obscures other facts that a Democratic president wouldn't want observers to dwell upon too long — like the fact that unemployment in Nevada has been far higher — and for far longer — than any time in recent memory. But that kind of tactic can backfire on a president — and for the most unexpected reasons.

Actually, probably the less said in future speeches about that task force the better. I've lost track of the number of task forces Obama has appointed in 2¼ years in office, but I haven't seen any improvements because of them. Obama doesn't need to emphasize that fact, however indirectly.

It's Tough to be President

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"It's good to be king and have your own world
It helps to make friends, it's good to meet girls
A sweet little queen who can't run away
It's good to be king, whatever it pays."

Tom Petty

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Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think the fantasy of the presidency that fueled the Barack Obama campaign in 2008 has matched the reality.

I think Obama and the millions who believed in the simplicity of the "Yes, we can" slogan really and truly believed that a president is a kinglike figure whose word is law.

If something is not so, their reasoning went, it is because the king has not willed it to be so. Not for any other reason.

Well, it has taken more than half of Obama's term, but it seems to be dawning on some people that it's a lot more complicated than that. Many of those who supported him in 2008 are not so eager to support him today, at least not on the premise that he is going to be some kind of transformational leader.

They have seen that there are clear limits to what a president can do. It has nothing to do with race or gender or religion.

Rather, it seems to have a lot to do with the fact that man simply cannot control things to the extent that he likes to believe he can.

That's a lesson we never seem to learn. We thought we had conquered nature a century ago with the unsinkable Titanic, and few things seemed to have changed by the age of the space shuttle.

Obama's campaign began with an emphasis on ending the military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has taken baby steps in that direction. Mostly they have been responsible steps and seem likely to keep things relatively stable, but things are boiling over in other Middle East countries now, and that is affecting gas prices here in the United States ...

... which, in turn, affects the nascent economic recovery upon which the very lives of millions of Americans depend.

Obama isn't an economist. I'm sure he imagined addressing all sorts of things as president — injustice, racial and gender inequality, educational deficiencies, health care, energy self–sufficiency, etc. Fiscal policy, belt tightening, that sort of thing wasn't high on his agenda.

I'm sure the last thing he wanted to do as president was promote job creation. But that is what destiny demands of the individual who is president at this time.

All the things Obama wanted to achieve depended on things remaining about where they were when he entered the presidential campaign in 2007. But the economy officially began its decline later that year, and job losses began to mount after Obama had claimed the nomination.

That changed things dramatically.

Obama used to be a community organizer. Like anyone else whose work requires them to promote a special interest, his only concern was getting his share (or more) of the pie. And it was from this perspective that he ran for president.

But now he is president, and, although he occasionally reverts to form, he slowly seems to be realizing that being president isn't what he — or his supporters — imagined it to be.

And, with fewer people working — and with many of those who are still working taking home a paycheck with less buying power — there is considerably less flexibility in either the presidential agenda or the federal budget.

Obama tried to have it his way. He devoted his energy to everything but job creation through the first half of his presidency — and tried to let nature take its course. But he has seen that nature doesn't always cooperate.

There was the three–month distraction of that oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, but that was in our hemisphere. Now there is the triple threat of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster on the other side of the planet in Japan.

As well as the spreading unrest in the Middle East.

Even with all that is happening in the world today — and whatever may happen in the world in the months to come — now Obama has no choice but to devote all of his efforts to seeking dramatic — and less likely with each passing day — improvements.

Dubya once joked (well, I assumed he was joking) that everything would be easier if the U.S. was a dictatorship.

I was reminded of that when I read in the New York Times — in a piece that was published the day before the earthquake in Japan — that Obama "has told people that it would be so much easier to be the president of China."

You have to put it into the correct context, I think, because of the proximity of China to Japan. It was mentioned in connection with the instability in the Middle East.

I really doubt that, upon reflection, Obama would say that being president of a country with a population roughly four times that of the United States would be any kind of bargain — especially with all that is going on in that part of the world now.

Yet Michael Goodwin of the rival New York Post seized on that and wrote that there were two ways to interpret: "One is that Obama resents the burden of global leadership that comes with the American presidency. The other is that he longs for an authoritarian system, where he need tolerate no dissent.

"Under either or both interpretations, his confession ... means Obama has hit a wall."

Perhaps.

I'm inclined to think that things look a lot different from the inside than they did from the outside — where, on the night of his election, Obama reminded his fellow Americans that "we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers."

It's tough to be president.

Leaving Afghanistan

There's something kind of refreshing about a president who throws caution to the wind the way Barack Obama does — in spite of indications that he's digging a deep hole for his party in next year's midterm elections.

Is "refreshing" the right word? Or should it be "foolhardy?"

The latest such indication is his apparent intention to discuss, in a televised address tonight, why he believes the best course in Afghanistan is to deploy more troops in the next six months — with the ultimate goal of ending involvement in three years.

I have never been enamored of war. But, in the interest of full disclosure, I was in favor of a war in Afghanistan back in 2001 — because that is where the September 11 attacks were hatched.

Public opinion and I were on the same page in those days. And we seem to be on the same page today. In 2009, that page favors ending our involvement in Afghanistan.

And lots of Americans think the troops should be withdrawn immediately. Even with the terrible economy that was the primary backdrop to last year's election, there were many voters for whom the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and running a smart, cost–efficient foreign policy were the #1 issues.

Afghanistan's been an afterthought for years. In the public's mind, it was moved to the back burner after the Taliban were routed and Iraq was invaded. The troops have staggered gamely along, with no mission, no objective and no exit strategy. It is high time we stopped pouring lives and resources into that black hole.

Even so, I understand something that many Americans, impatient to save money and lives, do not appear to understand. Our long–term interests require that a war must be ended gradually. It cannot be concluded abruptly, especially in a place like Afghanistan, which needs far less instability than would be created by complete and immediate withdrawal for an environment that would welcome the return of the Taliban to thrive.

Three more years, though, is quite a bit more gradual than I favored. And I wonder how Americans will feel about increasing the nation's human and financial commitments to an unproductive conflict that is more than 8 years old.

Ed Hornick of CNN writes that "comparisons to the war in Vietnam are often invoked," although he is quick to add that "experts say while there are similarities between the two conflicts, there are more differences."

That's true, but it also reminds me of Lyndon Johnson and the Democrats during the Vietnam era and their pious proclamations that they were spending more money and risking more lives so the money that had already been spent and the men who had already died would not have been sacrificed in vain.

And that is at the heart of the comparison.

I'm sure office–holding Democrats who must seek re–election next year appreciate the distinction. "Vietnam" has become a euphemism for "military misadventure" the same way that any scandal is now referred to as "[choose a clever and appropriate substitute word]–gate" and a mass killing has become a "Columbine" (it used to be called "going postal").

In fact, recently, I heard someone use "9/11" as a euphemism for a sneak attack.

Under the previous administration, Afghanistan quickly got the short end of the stick when attention shifted to invading Iraq. Whatever opportunity may have existed initially to capture Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and bring him to justice evaporated, but American troops have remained to this day.

To a great extent, it has become the forgotten war, but not completely — the latest Gallup Poll says 55% of Americans disapprove of Obama's handling of Afghanistan. That's quite a reversal. In July, Gallup was reporting that nearly the same number approved.

"The decline in Obama's approval rating on Afghanistan is evident among all party groups," writes Gallup's Jeffrey Jones, "with double–digit decreases since September among Republicans (17 points), independents (16 points), and Democrats (10 points)."

Will Obama's approach in Afghanistan benefit the members of his party next year? It's hard to see how. Gallup has been reporting that Republicans are leading Democrats on a generic 2010 ballot among registered voters. They have been making incremental gains all year.

How can they be hurt on this issue? Obama may be motivated by a desire to end the war, but isn't increasing the troop strength likely to be perceived as almost an endorsement of the previous administration's policy, even if it is short term? It might even be interpreted as political pandering.

It seems to me that a complete withdrawal, however messy it might leave things in Afghanistan, would be a more powerful repudiation of the previous administration in the eyes of the voting public.

It is worth remembering that politicians don't get to decide what voters use to evaluate candidates and parties. Historically, Americans are more influenced by pocketbook concerns than foreign affairs, even wars, unless the war in question is extremely popular or unpopular. And polls, while neither infallible nor written in stone, are suggesting that the domestic issue that has the voters' attention is unemployment. On that issue, the administration's "record" is largely an unverifiable number of jobs that have been "saved," not jobs that have been created.

John Crudele observes, in the New York Post, that "the employment situation just doesn't improve that much from one month to the next" — which means that, unless something truly dramatic happens, there simply isn't enough time for the kind of clear economic turnaround on which Democrats need to be able to capitalize.

Well, things may look different as we get closer to the midterm elections. Maybe the jobs summit will be wildly successful.

A lot of things could happen.

Will the president find the words to persuade a dubious public that further extending an already overextended military is the right strategy?

Kennedy Controversial in Death

This morning — the day after Ted Kennedy was buried near the graves of his brothers, John and Robert — his praises are being sung in most places.

There are exceptions, of course. There always are. Sometimes such voices are in a distinct minority, and they don't always agree on the reasons for dissenting.

Yet, dissent they do.

Which, I guess, explains, in part, my fascination with Maureen Callahan's column in the New York Post, which carries the headline "Kennedy's Free Pass With Women."

Now, I don't suppose it should come as any surprise to most people that the Post's columnists are critical of Kennedy, even in death. In a little over a week, it will be one year since the Post went against the grain in New York and endorsed John McCain over Barack Obama. It also endorsed the re–election of George W. Bush in 2004.

Its political leanings should be obvious.

And I have to give Callahan credit — to a certain extent. I agree that, given Kennedy's youthful behavior, his treatment from women has been somewhat bewildering.

But she is wrong when she opens her column by saying, "In all the obits published and specials aired this week, Chappaquiddick gets a few paragraphs, a few minutes, a tidy recapping of the events of July 19, 1969."

That misrepresents the facts.

Callahan's colleague at the Post, Jonah Goldberg, wrote that Kennedy's death was "marked by cynicism, opportunism and irony," with Democrats seeking to enhance their position on health care reform by naming the bill after Kennedy months after they denounced Rush Limbaugh for suggesting that was precisely what they would do. Goldberg also complained that Mary Jo Kopechne's death had been "minimized" in an effort "to protect the Kennedy brand."

Likewise, in his article in Forbes, Victor Davis Hanson complained that "a clear case of involuntary manslaughter for the 'average citizen' was reduced to a traffic violation for the 'high and mighty.' "

In Hanson's eyes, it was one of many examples of a double standard that was applied to Kennedy during his life.

Recently, I observed that Chappaquiddick has been mentioned frequently in the days since Kennedy's death.

True, sometimes it was a passing reference. But other voices were so angry that they made Chappaquiddick seem like a recent event, not something that happened 40 years ago.

It reminded me of a time when I was about 12. My family was visiting my grandparents in Dallas during the Christmas holidays, and I had been out shopping with the son of my parents' friends. I found (and purchased with my Christmas money) a three–record boxed set of audio recordings from the 1960s. As I remember, it was produced by CBS, it was narrated by Walter Cronkite and it was called "I Can Hear It Now: The Sixties."

I was interested in the presidency from an early age, and I was interested in American history as well so a collection of sound clips from that turbulent decade was right up my alley. At the time, I think I assumed it was intended to be one volume of a more extensive audio library, but if it was, I never saw any other volumes that were dedicated to other decades.

Anyway, when we returned from our shopping trip and I was waiting for my mother to pick me up, I showed my prize to my friend's mother and began pointing out what was included in the collection. I mentioned that a portion of Ted Kennedy's eulogy to his brother Bobby was on the recording, and my friend's mother said simply, "He killed that girl."

I don't recall any sound clips from Chappaquiddick that were included in the collection. And I don't recall bringing up Chappaquiddick in the conversation. But the mere mention of Kennedy's name prompted that observation.

Granted, only a few years had passed and the wound was still raw. But, for some people, the wound is still raw, four decades later.

That shouldn't mitigate Kennedy's actions. And it's possible Chappaquiddick did work against him when he unsuccessfully sought the presidential nomination in 1980. I was a college student in Arkansas at the time, and I voted for President Carter in the state primary. I wasn't the only one. Kennedy lost that primary by more than a 3–to–1 margin. In fact, I don't remember the Kennedy campaign making much of an effort to win the Arkansas primary.

Unless a younger Kennedy seeks the presidency, that was the only opportunity I will have to vote for a Kennedy. When Kennedy challenged President Carter, I remember some commentators bringing up Chappaquiddick, but I don't remember it being a major issue. Maybe it would have been if Kennedy had appeared to be a more serious contender for the nomination.

Anyway, Chappaquiddick was never a factor for me when I voted in the Arkansas primary. I was then, as I am now, an admirer of President Carter. There was never any question in my mind how I would vote in that primary.

And, rightly or wrongly, I remember blaming Kennedy's challenge in the primaries for Carter's eventual loss to Ronald Reagan. I felt that Kennedy forced Carter to squander time and resources to win his nomination instead of focusing on the general election campaign.

If that is true, then it also may be true, as I have heard recently, that Kennedy's quixotic presidential campaign led to the implementation of the many Reagan policies that he spent the last decades of his career fighting against.

Kennedy's ultimate influence on the 1980 election may have been an incorrect interpretation. But that is how I saw it.

Similarly, I guess, those who have written about Chappaquiddick in recent days may have misinterpreted its influence on the last four decades, but that is how they see it.

That's the tricky thing about history. It is open to all sorts of alternative interpretations.

Would Carter have been defeated by Reagan anyway? Maybe. That is something we will never know.

And we will never know the truth about Chappaquiddick.

It's a Bird ... No, It's a Plane Outrage

I guess this sort of ties in with what I wrote earlier today in this blog.

Although, actually, I guess it really ties in better with what I wrote on Saturday.

I heard about this a little while ago. And I'm so angry about it that I'm literally shaking.

The New York Post — and probably others, although that's the only report I've read so far — is reporting that Citigroup — which, I regret to say, is a company for whom I worked for several years (through one of its subsidiary companies) — is using $50 million of its bailout money to buy a new jet.

The Post's Jennifer Gould Keil and Chuck Bennett summarize it this way in their lead paragraph: "Beleaguered Citigroup is upgrading its mile-high club with a brand-new $50 million corporate jet — only this time, it's the taxpayers who are getting screwed."

I guess, if there's anything good to say about this, it's that some talented wags are getting the chance to show off their linguistic skills with some clever wordplay.

To be fair, the order for the jet was probably submitted a couple of years ago — before the recession. But in the current environment, the best thing to do would be to back out of the contract and swallow any losses that result.

I don't know if there's much I can add to what the Post said about it.

There is, however, one thought that's been going through my mind. Next Tuesday will be the 50th anniversary of the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the "Big Bopper" in an event that was dubbed "the day the music died" by Don McLean (as I mentioned in this blog on Saturday).

Just to briefly recap a little known part of the story ... Waylon Jennings, who went on to a legendary career in country music before his death in 2002, was one of Holly's musicians. He gave his seat on the plane to the "Big Bopper" because the "Bopper" was developing a case of the flu and didn't want to ride in the bus that was carrying the rest of Holly's entourage.

When Holly found out that Jennings would not be riding on the plane, he said to him, in jest, "Well, I hope your ol' bus freezes up." Jennings replied, "Well, I hope your ol' plane crashes."

Jennings admitted that he was haunted by that exchange for many years after the tragedy.

But I'll say this. If there is any poetic justice in the world, the bigshots at Citigroup will be flying in their plane in the vicinity of Clear Lake, Iowa, on that anniversary.

At night.

In an ice storm.

With a pilot who has trouble flying at night.

Preferably while the bigshots are dining on filet mignon and lobster tail — on the taxpayers' tab.

If that happens, I might, like Jennings, feel a little guilty. But, if I have to endure a few sleepless nights because of it, that's a price I'll pay — if I have to.

And my advice to the air traffic control people is this: If the Citigroup plane is overdue, don't bother sending out a search and rescue party until daylight.

No sense in risking innocent lives.

Obama and a Free Press

When I was a journalism student, my professors talked about how important it was to have a free press.

The only way that freedom of the press can flourish, they said, is if it has access to power — even if the person who holds the power wasn't endorsed by the newspaper.

In my experience, the politicians and the newspapers have been mutually respectful, even if they didn't always agree on issues.

Of course, there's always been a certain amount of tension between politicians and members of the media. It was best summed up, I think, in something Thomas Mitchell said to James Stewart in the Frank Capra classic, "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington."

In the film, Stewart plays a naïve political novice, appointed to fill the unexpired term of a recently deceased senator. He feels his arrival in Washington was misrepresented by the newspapers, and he goes on a mission to hunt down the reporters and punch each one in the nose.

When he discovers a group of reporters assembled in a local watering hole, he quickly finds himself cornered by them and confronted with their cynical views of government. Mitchell tells him that reporters are the only ones who can afford to tell the truth. "We don't have to be re-elected!"

Relationships between the media and the politicians aren't always ideal. Richard Nixon, for example, used his position to compile a list of his political opponents, mostly members of the press. Legal counsel John Dean left little doubt what the purpose of the list was.

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"This memorandum addresses the matter of how we can maximize the fact of our incumbency in dealing with persons known to be active in their opposition to our Administration; stated a bit more bluntly — how we can use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies."

John Dean

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I have no evidence that either Nixon or any of his associates began compiling the enemies list before Nixon became president. (The original list included the managing editor of the Los Angeles Times, Daniel Schorr of CBS and columnist Mary McGrory. The list was constantly revised, but it later included journalists from the New York Times and the Washington Post.)

Nixon's successor, Gerald Ford, made an apt observation when the existence of the enemies list was made public. (I don't know the statement word for word, so I'm probably paraphrasing here.) Ford said that any man who has to keep a list of his enemies has too many enemies.

I hope we're not getting indications that such a list is being compiled by the Obama campaign.

Earlier this week, reporters from the New York Post, the Washington Times and the Dallas Morning News were ejected from the Obama campaign bus.

The Washington Times reports today that Obama's campaign insists it ran out of space, for various reasons — and that it wasn't punishing the three newspapers for endorsing John McCain.

You can read what each newspaper said in its endorsement of McCain here:

• Dallas Morning News


• New York Post


• Washington Times

Kirsten Powers, a columnist for the New York Post, calls the action by the Obama camp a "Nixonesque" move.

"This is bipartisanship?" she asks.

I hope that what the Obama campaign says is the truth.

Banning any member of the media from having access to power will bring change, all right.

But if the goal is to punish those who support someone else, it won't be the kind of positive change Obama and his acolytes have been preaching about.