On Being President

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Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin has written that what Teddy Roosevelt called the "bully pulpit" of the presidency is "somewhat diminished in our age of fragmented attention and fragmented media." I am an admirer of Goodwin's work, but I think she is wrong in that assessment.

The bully pulpit is as influential as ever — if not potentially moreso with so many means of communication available. Its relevance depends upon who has access to it and how it is applied.

I have been wondering — since before Barack Obama took office more than seven years ago — what it was about him that I found unpresidential. You see, for a long time, I wasn't able to put my finger on it.

If I had the opportunity to give him some advice today, I think I have a pretty good idea now what it is that has bothered me and what I would advise him to do. With about nine months left in his presidency, my guess is it wouldn't help much now. But it couldn't hurt.

There can be little doubt that, for some (but certainly not all) of his critics, Obama's skin color is, as many in the Democratic Party have frequently suggested, the issue. That is impossible to deny. Racism is an unfortunate element in the human equation. It always has been, and I suspect it always will be — like greed and lust and other unattractive qualities that take control of some people. Some folks do a better job of overcoming those negative qualities than others.

For a long time, I wondered if I was being racist because I found myself objecting so frequently to Obama's policies. The idea troubled me greatly because I was raised by liberal parents, and I always believed their values were my values. My mother was involved in promoting positive race relations in the Arkansas town in which I grew up, and I have always believed that, as a result of my upbringing, I am a tolerant person.

I soon concluded that I wasn't a racist, even if there were some in the Democratic Party who insisted on labeling everyone who objected to Obama policies a hater. More than once, I have voted for black candidates — and other candidates who differed from me in other ways — for office. When I think back on my voting history, I know that my votes have been decided by issues and political philsophies — and my political philosophy has evolved over time, as I suppose everyone's does. "The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20," Muhammad Ali once said, "has wasted 30 years of his life."

To issue a blanket assertion that anyone who objects to Obama's policies and his approach to his job is racist is to ignore some important facts, and much of it, I believe, has to do with fear, plain and simple.

People are genuinely frightened these days — they were frightened before Obama took office — and there is certainly a lot for them to fear. It doesn't matter whether the president thinks the fears are justified. It isn't enough to remind people of the phrases that past presidents used (i.e., FDR's "We have nothing to fear but fear itself") to calm jittery generation of long ago.

People want the president of their own time to recognize the legitimacy of their fears, to speak to them in a reasonable, not belittling, fashion and to keep them informed. Time after time Obama has come up short in this respect.

We live in an unprecedented age of instant information, but it hasn't always been that way. Presidents of the past were limited by the technology that existed in their times. Presidents have only been using television for about half a century, radio for about a century. In the first 150 years of America's existence, news traveled much more slowly; it took weeks, sometimes months for a president's remarks on a topic to reach citizens on the country's outskirts.

But people of the 21st century are plugged in to things in a way that their forebears never were. They can get up–to–the–minute information on just about any topic on their smart phones or laptops. But information is really all they get. They do get what passes for context — what journalism students are told is the elusive "why" of a news story — but it is usually political agenda disguised as context.

A president has to function above that.

Naturally, a president who is seeking re–election can be forgiven for allowing politics to permeate his remarks — but outside of the electoral battlefield, a president is expected to be respectful of people's fears, even if he doesn't share them.

A president is expected to act like the president of all the people, and far too many people have felt that this president only sees himself as president of a certain segment of the population — that, as far as this president is concerned, those who disagree with him can, in the memorable words of John Ehrlichman, "twist slowly in the wind."

Take the subject of terrorism, for example. Its purpose is to frighten people, and the videotaped beheadings and equally horrific executions have done the trick. So have the attacks that have been carried out in places like Brussels and Paris and San Bernardino.

When the president pays little attention and chooses to go golfing or dancing or to a baseball game instead of trying to engage the people, instead of explaining why he believes terrorism is not as great a threat as people perceive it to be, he may honestly believe that he is doing the right thing by not contributing to a chorus of hysterical voices.

But he is really fanning the flames. Fears go unchecked, and that leads to things like surges in gun purchases — which is the opposite of the outcome Obama has sought as president. So Obama's behavior in the face of terrorist attacks has been counterproductive.

Same with the economy and unemployment.

Few modern Americans, as a portion of the population, had experienced anything comparable to the Great Recession, and they were understandably alarmed to see their jobs disappearing, their life savings slipping away, their very homes being taken from them. Even those who lived through the economy of the late '70s and early '80s had not seen anything like it.

In such times, the American people expect reassurance from their leader, and today America's leader likes to brag of the unemployment rate being at 5%, but words from him were few and far between when unemployment was over 10%. Even if he had no news to report, he needed to do a 21st–century version of Franklin D. Roosevelt's fireside chats, telling people what he was doing to turn things around and what he planned to do in the future.

Instead they have been left in the dark by this president.

The president, whoever he or she may be, has enormous influence on people — even those who did not vote for him or her.

But the bully pulpit must be used in a way that unites a diverse population instead of dividing it. The presidents who have understood this are the ones who have earned a revered role in American history.

Savoring a Short-Lived Triumph

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"I would rather lose a campaign about decency than win a campaign about self–interest."

Walter Mondale
Oct. 7, 1984

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On this night 30 years ago, Walter Mondale's presidential campaign seriously began to entertain thoughts of winning the election.

In hindsight, of course, such thoughts were ludicrous. On Election Day, Ronald Reagan won a 49–state landslide. No one has won the presidency with such a sweeping landslide since.

Mondale had struggled since the summer convention to be regarded as a plausible alternative to Reagan, but he hadn't gotten much traction. After their first debate on this night in 1984, though, it was said that Mondale's campaign staff had been "tap dancing down the aisle" of Mondale's campaign plane.

Why were they so enthused? Because Reagan, at the time the oldest man to be nominated by a major party for the presidency, had appeared confused and disoriented on that stage in Louisville with Mondale.

He had not been the sharp Reagan everyone had expected; instead, he more closely resembled the tired, disengaged old man his critics had said he was. But many people had dismissed that as political gamesmanship.

The first debate focused on domestic issues, an area where the Reagan campaign believed it had a clear advantage — as could be seen in the famous "Morning in America" advertisement that boasted of the economic progress that had been made in Reagan's first term.

When they saw with their own eyes, disbelief gave way to dismay for many, and, in the two weeks between debates, the Mondale campaign began to think and act like a campaign that might not lose after all. Mondale himself began to sound and act like a candidate whose fortunes were turning — who just might be able to achieve what had previously been thought to be impossible.

Nearly everyone who saw the debate 30 years ago tonight had to agree that Mondale was the winner. And that made news because Reagan was so far ahead in the national polls. Like Barack Obama in his first debate with Mitt Romney, Reagan didn't need to be perceived as the winner; his opponent did. And it gave his campaign a much–needed boost. The next day, when Mondale participated in New York's Columbus Day parade, thick crowds lined the street. When he had been there to kick off his campaign a month earlier, attendance was sparse.

At a rally, Mondale's running mate, Geraldine Ferraro, introduced Mondale as "the new heavyweight debater of the world, Fighting Fritz Mondale!" For his part, Mondale was eager to tell the voters, "Today we have a brand new race."

It was preferable to acknowledging the facts — it was the same old race with a new twist.

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Well, not exactly.

Reagan still had a big lead in the polls. All the debate did was give the shaky elements of Reagan's coalition reason to give Mondale a second look. The twist was temporary at best. All that was needed on the incumbent's end was a little tweaking, a little fine tuning.

A big part of Reagan's problem had been a rambling, incoherent closing statement. At a point in the debate when a candidate needs to be as warm and appealing and visionary as possible, Reagan didn't use his folksy approach that had served him so well in the past.

Mondale took advantage of his opportunity. "The question is our future," he said. "President Kennedy once said in response to similar arguments, 'We are great, but we can be greater.' We can be better if we face our future, rejoice in our strengths, face our problems and, by solving them, build a better society for our children."

And Reagan's campaign staffers were pointing fingers at each other. Reagan had been overprepared, some argued. He had been mismanaged. His head had been crammed with facts and figures — when he was at his best communicating with the viewers in his folksy way. Let Reagan be Reagan, many said.

Reagan and Mondale would meet again in their second and final debate two weeks later. Ferraro and Vice President George H.W. Bush would meet in the second–ever vice presidential debate in a few days, and the momentum Mondale had gained in his first debate with Reagan would begin to fade.

Looking Out for Number One

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"Honesty is the best policy — when there is money in it."

Mark Twain

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I'll be the first one to tell you that I was never very strong in certain subjects in school.

I knew a few people who got terrific grades in just about everything — there was one in particular who made it look stupefyingly easy, but she was such a sweet person that no one held it against her when she messed up the curve for the rest of us — but I'm sure they would tell you there were subjects at which they had to really work to keep that grade–point average up.

There may be some people in this world who do have a natural aptitude for just about every scholastic subject, but I have yet to meet one — just people who have successfully cultivated the appearance of brilliance.

And that is probably almost as good as if they really are brilliant. What people believe to be true tends to trump whatever is true.

That's what makes the art of spin so important in the world of politics. Even if they don't know much else, politicians do know a lot about the image–reality dynamic. When it is working in their favor, they ride the wave. But when the tide goes against them, they need the professional spinmeisters to turn things around.

In my experience, most politicians weren't the brightest bulbs in the box when they were in school. In fact, many might have been the polar opposite of that girl I mentioned earlier.

But the successful ones always seem to have known when it was time to trust their futures to the professional spinmeisters — who could, as I used to hear the adults in my world say from time to time, make chicken salad out of chicken s**t. In some circles — and depending upon what was being said — I guess that was/is called bluffing.

Sometimes, though, even spin won't work. That's when the strategy seems to be simply to change the subject.

And this year, with the party primaries in the midterm election campaigns now in full swing, a news event seems to have been made to order for changing the subject — the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. It is a story that has been going on for nearly a month, much of it spent watching search parties fly over the Indian Ocean.

As I write this, the searchers apparently are no closer to learning the flight's fate than they have been in the last four weeks — but they continue to chase every lead, no matter how unlikely it may be. And news networks are lampooned for labeling a 4–week–old story breaking news.

But for politicians, particularly Democrats and most especially those in federal office, it means attention is taken away from the facts about Obamacare and the economy. For them, that is almost certainly a good thing.

Now, economics was one of those subjects I took in college because I was required to do so, not because I had any special understanding of the material. It was like a foreign language to me, and I never had much success learning a second language, either.

I have friends who were and still are fluent in economics. I have always freely admitted that I am not. I sure did try to be when I was in that class. I spent hours reading and re–reading the chapters of my ECON textbooks, hoping some of it would stick, but I regret to report that little, if any, of it did.

(Well, as Will Rogers used to say, we're all ignorant. We're just ignorant about different things.)

And today, most of my understanding of economics is based on my understanding of logic. That normally helps me in unfamiliar territory — but economics really is another matter. It has a logic all its own.

I don't understand the whimsical nature of the stock market or the prices of gold and silver — or, to be honest, monetary policy in general.

But I do have a basic understanding of natural law. See, I took physics in high school. I didn't do very well at it, but I understood enough about motion and similar principles from my own observations of the world that I wasn't completely lost in that class.

I knew that every action has an equal and opposite reaction — from something as simple as playing baseball. To hit a ball a great distance, it was necessary to swing with as much force as possible. You don't hit the ball out of the park by squaring up to bunt.

And I knew from basic math that if you have a certain quantity of something and you give up a portion of it — through commerce or consumption or whatever — you are left with less to consume or trade for other things.

It isn't rocket science. And, for me, that is definitely a good thing.

Back when Barack Obama ran for president the first time, I freely acknowledge seeing logic in some of his objectives, but the recession and the economic implosion left what I thought was an unavoidable conclusion. The jobs crisis had to be met first — before any of the other objectives could be met.

Yes, I said, the health care system needs to be reformed. But not trashed — and certainly not while this nation is on its economic knees. Put America back to work so there is a solid economic foundation upon which to rebuild health care.

If we didn't do that, I warned, we would see premiums and deductibles go up, policies canceled, existing full–time jobs downgraded to part–time ones, and existing part–time jobs eliminated.

Yes, I said, the minimum wage should be higher. But we shouldn't forget that it was really only intended as a minimum entry–level wage. Over time, as the individual gains experience and knowledge, that individual will receive raises, bonuses, all sorts of additional incentives.

And I was also uncomfortable with the idea of raising the minimum wage by nearly 40%. It was unrealistic to think that businesses could give their current workers that kind of raise and be able to increase their workers' hours, much less create new jobs.

The economy is not one big faceless entity in spite of what we hear about a handful of massive corporations that monopolize everything. Yes, there are huge corporations that do control an ever–growing segment of the U.S. economy, but much of America's economic activity is still in the hands of small business owners. There may not be as many mom–and–pop shops as there once were, but they still drive the American economy.

Except for the newcomers, I guess nearly all small business owners have been in business for awhile. They're bound to have a pretty good idea what kind of annual profits they can expect from their businesses, and they budget accordingly. When their incomes don't meet their needs because of added financial demands, they have to make adjustments. Maybe minor adjustments in the prices being charged or the products/services being offered will bring things back into balance. Sometimes they have to cut employee hours. They may have to cut some jobs.

If you own your business and the math isn't balancing, you look for ways to make it balance. If you are required to meet new guidelines that take money from your budget, you have to compensate for that. If you are required to pay your employees more, you have to compensate for that as well.

You do what you have to do. Same in your personal life. If you are spending more than you're taking in, you have to find ways to economize. You have to function within your means.

It's physics. It's the law of survival — looking out for number one. And you can't blame anyone for that, can you?

If someone tries to sell me on the idea, the image that America can do things that I know in my heart are at odds with natural law, I resist. Because reality tells me otherwise, and I have to ask:

Why should the United States be immune to natural law?

That is the great unasked question in America today. But I get the feeling that more and more Americans are asking it in their hearts and minds.

The latest Associated Press-GfK poll indicates more movement away from the Democrats. That is bad news in the midterm election year.

I believe it is due, in part, to the fact that more people are realizing that, without a sound foundation, no lasting achievements are possible.

Has the War on Poverty Failed?

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"We do this, first of all, because it is right that we should. We do it also because helping some will increase the prosperity of all. Our fight against poverty will be an investment in the most valuable of our resources — the skills and strength of our people. It strikes at the causes, not just the consequences of poverty."

Lyndon B. Johnson
Jan. 8, 1964

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It was in Lyndon Johnson's first State of the Union address 50 years ago today that he proposed the "War on Poverty."

The War on Poverty was, as NPR observes, a personal thing for Johnson. He had been vice president under one of the wealthiest men ever to serve as president, but he had been brought up in poverty. He had known — firsthand — the "constant moments of humiliation ... and insecurity" of penury.

As Susan Page writes in USA Today, what followed was an "historic rush of legislation" — Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, food stamps.

It was a noble idea — still is, really, this idea of eliminating poverty. It was filled with good intentions, but, after half a century (or, since the Economic Opportunity Act wasn't really enacted until August 1964, nearly half a century), it is appropriate to ask a few questions about this war.

Like, what is (or was) the definition of victory?

We ask that of any conventional war that is proposed because we know a lot of money will be spent on it, but I cannot recall hearing such a definition expressed by any of the politicians who supported the legislation. Trillions of dollars have been spent in this war, but the poverty rate appears to be virtually unchanged since the legislation's passage.

At the time that Johnson proposed the War on Poverty, the poverty rate was in decline, falling from more than 22% in 1959 to around 19% in 1964. In its first year of existence, the Economic Opportunity Act may have contributed to the further decline of the poverty rate to around 15%, but it has leveled off and remained in that range ever since. At times, it has been a little lower, at other times it has been a little higher, but it has been consistent.

If the objective of the War on Poverty was to eliminate poverty, it has failed.

Victory (of a sort) probably could have been declared in 1965, but, after all these years, with the poverty rate remaining roughly the same, it would be hard to say the War on Poverty has been a success. In fact, it would be difficult to argue with Ronald Reagan's assertion that poverty won.

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Bill Clinton famously declared 18 years ago that the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996 "end[ed] welfare as we know it."

From the perspective of 2014, it is clear that welfare "as we [knew] it" did end at that time, but the beast wasn't slain. Not really. A much larger beast emerged to take its place.

Which brings me to another question:

Did the War on Poverty succeed?

I'm inclined to say "no" because poverty has not been eliminated. Even if one was willing to accept the idea that poverty will always be with us, that the idea of eliminating it entirely was unrealistic and that partial elimination of poverty was an acceptable outcome, the War on Poverty still came up short because it created new, unexpected problems.

But, of course, victory was never defined.

It would be wise for us as a nation to ask ourselves some hard questions. I assume that most of us would like to see the ills of the world eliminated — but we need to act responsibly, honestly evaluate what has been done so we can have an idea what works and what doesn't and then focus on those areas where further progress can be made.

We can't continue to act as if there is an unending supply of money to throw at our problems, not with the economy still as shaky as it was when the current administration took over five years ago.

If any attention had been paid to encouraging job creation and putting Americans back to work, there might be more of a revenue reserve in the federal coffers, but unemployment has been permitted to languish unattended so the prudent thing to do is to recognize the economic limitations we face and make realistic, if modest, goals if we are going to entertain the idea of pursuing LBJ's dream in the 21st century.

As contradictory as it sounds, we have to remember that there was more prosperity in America when the War on Poverty was enacted than there is now. When the War on Poverty was signed into law, one income was usually enough to support a family; within a decade, most families needed two incomes just to get by, and the absence of parental supervision when the children got home from school caused new social problems.

Today, two incomes are seldom sufficient to support a family, and the pattern is perpetuated.

The experience with the War on Poverty — indeed, the entire welfare concept — showed us that, as much as we might wish it were otherwise, most things in life are not simple. Most things in life are, in fact, complex, and they deserve to be studied carefully — even exhaustively — before the government intervenes on a large scale.

The nature of unintended consequences being what it is, it simply isn't possible to avoid them entirely, but, when such a significant objective is undertaken, it is important to try to anticipate as many as possible and minimize them.

One need look no further than Obamacare's implementation to find ample cause for caution.

Stephanie Coontz writes at CNN.com that the work isn't done. Coontz says the War on Poverty was "abandoned" by the politicians in the 1980s and that more could have been done.

Perhaps she is right. But, like it or not, there are limits to what can be done in the absence of an economic boom.

Job One

When I was growing up, I remember my father telling me he believed the best thing about America was that the right person always came along to provide the leadership the nation needed at the time it needed it.

Dad isn't a classic historian. He taught religion and philosophy at one of the local colleges (there were three) in my rather small hometown so, certainly, biblical history was part of his courses. And he did study history in general to a certain extent — and on certain sub–topics that were of interest to him — but he has never been the go–to guy to put things into historical perspective.

Nevertheless, I had to admit that he was right. America's had its share of incompetent leaders in the last two centuries, but, when the chips have really been down, usually someone steps forward — Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, the Roosevelts — to keep the country from veering too far off the path.

Kind of smacks of predestination or manifest destiny, doesn't it? Well, maybe it is a variation on the theme of American exceptionalism, but I think that, given our history, Americans have earned the right to see themselves as exceptional.

You can always find scabs to pick at in American history. This nation isn't perfect. It is a work in progress. We acknowledged that from the beginning, yet we asserted our exceptionalism, in the preamble to the Constitution, when we spoke of seeking to be a more perfect Union.

(Barack Obama used this phrase himself in a speech during the 2008 campaign. You may remember it. It was given amid the controversy brought on by Rev. Jeremiah Wright's infamous "God damn America" remarks.)

It is a nation that was founded on faith. Even if a person has no real religious faith, most Americans do have faith in their country and the concept of limitless opportunity here. We have tried — not always successfully but we have tried — to change those things about ourselves that are contrary to our lofty self–image.

That faith has been severely challenged in the last four or five years by an economic crisis unlike any since the Great Depression. For a president who was elected on the strength of voters' belief in hope and change, it can be staggering when you talk to those who have completely given up hope during his tenure.

Their ranks are likely to swell, I am afraid, with today's jobs report. The economy did add 163,000 jobs in July, and the average monthly jobs gain in 2012 has been 151,000, which is adequate to keep up with population growth, observes Christopher Rugaber of the Associated Press, but it isn't enough to bring unemployment down.

And that was really Obama's mission when he was elected. He made a lot of other promises to a lot of other groups, but the economy and joblessness were the two dark clouds that hung over the Republican–held White House and truly made it possible for a black man with limited political experience to be elected president by an electoral vote landslide.

Until that implosion, the race was neck and neck. Many Democrats openly wondered if Obama had made a mistake in picking Joe Biden as his running mate. Hillary Clinton would have united the party, many said.

The economy's implosion was a very recent development when voters went to the polls in November 2008. It certainly wasn't the reason that either Obama or John McCain got into the race to begin with, but righting the economic ship had become the #1 concern that September.

That hasn't happened, and a recent Gallup poll shows voters want the next president to make the economy and job creation his top — if not sole — priority.

Indeed,through most of Obama's presidency, poll after poll has indicated that it is still voters' top concern. But good news from the Labor Department has been rare. In fact, the unemployment rate went up — to 8.3% — in today's report.

Which puts the president in a position — historically — that makes his re–election prospects seem weaker each day.

With about three months left before the election, Barack Obama faces some pretty steep historical mountains to climb — and not much time to conquer them.

The most ominous is the fact that, when the unemployment rate has been 7% or higher on Election Day, practically no incumbent presidents have won. Ronald Reagan, in 1984, was an exception, but Reagan had a steadily improving economy working in his favor. Obama doesn't have that.

Conventional wisdom also holds that, if a president's approval ratings are below 50% on Election Day, that president is toast. This president, who entered office with three of every five Americans approving (when, technically, there was nothing to approve), hasn't received the consistent approval of a majority of respondents in more than a year.

Recent polls show Obama's approval in the 40s, and today's jobs report isn't likely to help.

Another rule of thumb is that right track/wrong track question that pollsters ask. Essentially, voters are asked if they think the country is on the right track or the wrong track. When the majority say the wrong track, that isn't a good sign for the incumbent.

The latest poll results I have seen on that question were reported by Rasmussen Reports. Only 29% of respondents said the country was heading in the right direction.

(The good news in that for Obama is that the number is up from this time last year, when only 14% believed the country was going in the right direction.)

Rasmussen's figure is a little lower than the others I have seen, which are typically in the 30–36% range, but even the most positive of them has no good news for the administration.

The other truism of American politics has to do with personal income. People vote their wallets. I have always believed it is the reason why Reagan's question at the end of his debate with Jimmy Carter — "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" — resonated the way it did.

Personal income is a little harder to boil down into easily digestible numbers, like the unemployment rate, presidential job approval and right track/wrong track, but the Commerce Department reported recently that personal income was up modestly in June. A troubling side note was the decline in personal spending; in a consumer–based economy, that is definitely not a good sign.

Those four historical factors — frequently cited by historians, pollsters and political scientists as the most reliable predictors of an election's outcome — are all working against the incumbent.

And it doesn't seem likely to me that he can reverse those trends in three months.

Of Islands and Villages

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"No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee."

John Donne
(1572–1631)

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That quote by John Donne is one of my favorites, and it was in the spirit of that quote that, I believe, Barack Obama was speaking — at least, at first — when he told small business owners that "you didn't build that."

Just to keep that statement in context, here is the rest of what Obama said last Friday in Virginia:

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If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business — you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen.

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In the context of the workplace, Obama is correct. Unless he/she is self–employed, no business owner is solely responsible for what is done by his or her business. He/she has employees who build the products or provide the services. Everyone does his or her part.

It's a team effort.

And, yes, other people built the roads on which cars and school buses travel. And other people built the schools and churches that shaped us as we grew up — and continue to shape succeeding generations. These things were accomplished collectively through taxes and labor.

Some people don't like taxes of any kind, but taxes are not inherently bad. They pay for essential things from which we all benefit. As Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. reminded us, "taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society." And taxes have certainly made many things possible for all of us that few, if any, of us could have provided for ourselves.

And, in a larger sense, again, Obama is correct. Most of us had a "great teacher" or a great pastor or a great coach "along the line" who encouraged us and shared with us the knowledge they had acquired in their lives.

That part, I guess, echoes the vision that was articulated by Hillary Clinton, Obama's chief rival for the 2008 Democratic nomination and his secretary of State, in 1996, the year her husband was re–elected president.

The title of her book, "It Takes a Village," was based on an African proverb — "It takes a village to raise a child" — and, while it aroused considerable ire from her husband's political foes (who ridiculed both Clinton and the book's title by saying things like "it takes a village idiot"), it would be difficult to refute the basic premise — that all the people in a community contribute to the upbringing of each child, for good or ill.

(If that had been all that Obama had said, I doubt that anyone would have raised as much as an eyebrow. I have no children of my own, but most of my friends do, and I think nearly all of them would agree that their children are influenced by many people and things outside the home.)

But then Obama said, "If you've got a business — you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."

And that was when he revealed himself to be what his most vocal critics have long said he was — a socialist. A lot of people equate socialism with communism or fascism — but that, I suppose, depends upon the extent to which the person (or regime) in question advocates socialism's implementation.

(Great Britain, for example, implemented certain elements of socialism into its national system, but it could hardly be regarded as a communist or fascist society.)

I have no evidence of Obama's ultimate intentions — other than his own words and actions — but his advocacy of collectivism is clear.

The last part of that quote is where millions of business people came to a parting of the ways with Obama. He praised the collective effort but ignored the individual risk in any business, large or small.

Every business has someone who takes the vast majority of the risks. The risk for the employees is relatively minimal, I suppose. If the business goes under, they can file for unemployment and look for something else.

(Not an easy task in this economy, but, after all, millions are out of work in this country at any given time, whether the economy is good or not. The circumstances make it much more difficult, but, as the Greek historian Herodotus wrote, "Circumstances rule men. Men do not rule circumstances.")

But the business owner may have invested virtually everything he/she has.

A business owner may have been inspired by something his high school history teacher said to him when he was 17, but that teacher more than likely risked nothing in the business. (In fact, unless the teacher promoted something akin to anarchy, he/she probably did not put his/her own job at risk — much less create any.)

And paved roads are wonderful for going back and forth to school — much easier on the body and less distracting (and I know whereof I speak because the roads where I grew up were unpaved for many years) — but we all use the roads, not just those affiliated with a particular business.

Paved roads aren't some kind of special benefit for a privileged group.

I have a friend who, along with his wife, bought and runs a birthing center in north Texas.

In an e–mail yesterday, he said to me, "Small business owners make up a huge part of job creation. We only employ 10 people, but we bust our butts to keep them employed and ourselves afloat."

He told me he was "very disillusioned" by Obama's words. And, I suspect, so are many other business owners.

Not everyone was cut out to be an entrepreneur, but if there has ever been a place on this planet where people were encouraged to dream their dreams and take the risks that were necessary to make their dreams come true, it has been America.

Not all of those dreams have come true. But folks with an entrepreneurial spirit have always been encouraged to dream here. It's what freedom and capitalism are all about.

Such dreams took a real beating four years ago when the economy collapsed. At the time, voters were so anxious to be rid of George W. Bush that they paid little attention to — or totally disregarded — Obama's talk of "spreading the wealth around."

My guess is they're paying considerably more attention now.

The LBJ Factor

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I've watched the rapid descent of the popular image of Barack Obama since he took the oath of office.

And I've been intrigued by his apparent public evolution — from the early days of his presidency, when he was widely seen as the reincarnation of Lincoln, Washington and/or FDR, to the recent comparisons between the president and (at best) Bill Clinton following his party's disastrous losses in the 1994 midterms or (at worst) Jimmy Carter's one–term administration.

No one knows with absolute certainty what will happen between now and next November; consequently, no one knows if the voters will deny a second term to Obama or if they will re–elect him with a rousing vote of confidence.

Thus, all these comparisons — while each has certain valid points — are based largely on self–serving speculation.

Republicans would like everyone to believe we are witnessing Carter Redux — because that would mean we are on the brink of the ascendance of another Reagan.

Democrats would like everyone to believe that, in spite of criticism of Obama, we are witnessing a reprise of the Clinton years — and, in 2012, will see a reinvigorated president win a second term by approximately the same margin in the Electoral College that elected him the first time.

Time will tell if either scenario is correct — or if an entirely new paradigm is being written.

My money is on the latter — because, while history truly does repeat itself, it never seems to do things exactly the way it did before. Times change.

In other words, we might be witnessing a Republican resurgence similar to the one that overwhelmed Carter and the Democrats in 1980 — but it might not necessarily produce another Ronald Reagan.

And, even if it did, the times are different. This isn't like a TV rerun (outside of syndication, do they still do that anymore?) — or even a remake. The people would be different. The circumstances — and, hence, the decisions they must make — would be different.

Perhaps the differences would be subtle. Perhaps they wouldn't be so subtle.

Likewise, we could be witnessing another rebound of an embattled Democratic president whose party suffered massive midterm losses (or perhaps, as some Democrats have been suggesting with fondness, another "Dewey Defeats Truman" election in which the incumbent scores a completely unexpected victory), but it doesn't necessarily mean that Obama's second term would be more successful than his first.

(Actually, second terms often seem to be worse than the first. It's worth remembering that Truman's popularity really began to sink irreversibly after his inauguration in 1949, and, while Clinton was re–elected two years after the GOP seized both chambers of Congress, his second term was largely mired in his impeachment defense.)

At the moment, if I am inclined to compare Obama to anyone, it is Lyndon Johnson. I see several similarities/parallels between the two presidents.

At what may be the most basic level, Johnson was the last Democrat to carry states like Virginia and Indiana — until Obama in 2008 (Carter was the only other Democrat to win North Carolina; Carter and Clinton were the only other Democrats to carry Florida).

Both Johnson and Obama won landslide victories in the Electoral College — but so did Clinton (twice). He just didn't receive a majority of the popular vote.

Voting patterns, like poll results, are not infallible indicators of what to expect — but they do provide a certain amount of guidance in the right direction.

It is not in the voting patterns, though, that I see the most striking similarities between Obama and LBJ. It's in their priorities as president — and the public's response, via its approval ratings.

One could say many things about LBJ — and, without a doubt, most, if not all, the good and the bad, were true — but one that is absolutely undeniably true is that he was a great admirer of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

And LBJ wanted to leave his mark on domestic policy — as he believed FDR had. He wanted to exceed what his idol had accomplished.

Oh, sure, there were contemporaries of Roosevelt who would tell you that his skill in foreign affairs was evident in his handling of American participation in World War II — both before and after America officially entered the conflict.

But you can still see his hand behind many of the programs and policies that were created to battle the Great Depression of the 1930s — and still exist today.

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LBJ was raised in poverty. Such conditions strongly (and, often, adversely) affect how a man approaches the issues and relationships in his later life, and LBJ earnestly wanted to eliminate poverty. He appreciated FDR's courage in the face of a savage economy, which he witnessed as a young man in Texas and then as a member of the House. "[Roosevelt] was the one person I ever knew, anywhere, who was never afraid," he said after FDR's death in 1945.

When LBJ became president, his #1 goal was to expand on FDR's New Deal with his "Great Society."

And when he won a full term on his own — with a share of the popular vote that surpassed anything that Roosevelt ever received — it was seen by many as an endorsement of his domestic agenda, whether it really was or not.

That part probably was irrelevant because the times forced the American people — as the times so often do — to re–focus their attention.

In the 1960s, that meant Vietnam.

It may have been Johnson's misfortune to become president right when fate made foreign affairs the topic that was increasingly of the most concern to Americans, but presidents don't get to choose what kind of world exists when they are in office.

When LBJ won by a landslide in 1964, Vietnam was still a faraway land that most Americans knew nothing about. The campaign did not focus on foreign policy, but, before long, Americans were dying at a terrifying pace in the jungles of Southeast Asia, and the Johnson administration seemed powerless to do anything about it.

Much may stem from the fact that Johnson's military experience was so limited. Born in 1908, he was too young to serve in World War I, and his early life was influenced by poverty, not the battlefield.

When America entered World War II, Johnson was in Congress. He became a commissioned officer in the Naval Reserve and asked for a combat assignment but was sent to inspect stateside shipyards instead. The closest he came to actual combat was his short–term assignment to a three–man observation team that was sent to look into conditions in the Southwest Pacific.

Two years after Johnson won more than 60% of the popular vote and about 90% of the electoral vote, his Democrats suffered a severe setback in the midterm election, losing 47 House seats. The war had been escalating and, in spite of his efforts to combat poverty, Johnson's domestic agenda didn't seem to be all that successful, either — with race riots occurring from coast to coast.

(Interestingly, one of the freshman Republicans elected to the House in 1966 was George H.W. Bush, the future president and father of another.)

LBJ's popularity dropped sharply, so sharply that, even though he could have run for another term in 1968, he decided not to.

It must have been a disappointing — not to mention dizzying — decline for LBJ. I really believe he wanted to be remembered as a great domestic president — and instead he was consumed by an ugly little war in Vietnam.

LBJ probably benefited enormously from the sympathy and good will of Americans following the assassination of President Kennedy. His popularity never dropped below 60 — and often was much higher — in his first two years as president — but then began its perilous decline in 1966 after Johnson said U.S. troops should remain in Vietnam until Communist aggression had been stopped there.

And when a president's approval numbers go in the tank and stay there for awhile, my experience is that it is really hard to pull them out.

We'll never know if Johnson could have overcome those numbers. By the end of April 1966, a quarter of a million American troops were in Vietnam, and Johnson's approval rating dropped below 50 for the first — but far from the last — time. Less than two years later, he dropped out of the race for the 1968 Democratic nomination.

Fast forward 40 years.

Obama is kind of Lyndon Johnson in reverse — at least when it comes to his policy preference. He wasn't interested in domestic policy. He certainly wasn't interested — or experienced — in economics. He wanted to be a foreign affairs president.

I'm not really sure what drove him to focus on foreign policy. Critics would say it was the political angle, that it was the topic everyone wanted to talk about in 2008. But I think it goes deeper than that.

He never served in the armed forces — but that isn't unusual for people in his age range or younger. Selective service was stopped at the conclusion of the Vietnam War, then registration resumed in 1980, but it's been an all–volunteer service ever since. The most Obama was obliged to do by law was register for a nonexistent draft after he turned 18.

Maybe it has something to do with the multicultural environments in which he grew up. Perhaps it is rooted in his biracial parentage. Whatever the influence was, he specialized in international relations when he studied political science at Columbia University in the early 1980s.

Clearly, that interest was there long before it may have been expedient for a presidential campaign. And it was reflected in his Senate committee assignments when he announced his intention to seek the presidency — Foreign Relations, Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs, Veterans Affairs.

And recent polls suggest that it is one of the few areas in which Americans tend to give him positive marks.

But the times don't call for a foreign affairs president.

That doesn't mean foreign affairs isn't important. It is always important, and, most of the time, the need for an international leader is sudden and unexpected — after all, even with Osama bin Laden gone, who knows when or if another 9–11 will occur?

But poll after poll after poll reports that the voters are overwhelmingly concerned about pocketbook issues, and Obama brought no practical experience in that to the White House. When Obama entered the 2008 race, the unemployment rate was about half what it is today. There were — as there always are — economic naysayers who claimed that this policy or that one would lead the country to ruin.

No one really took that kind of talk seriously when Obama launched his seemingly quixotic campaign in February 2007. In fact, the other Democrats who were lining up to run for the 2008 nomination — including Obama — were intent upon foreign policy, too — specifically, ending American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But once again, fate intervened. In the month before the first primaries and caucuses of the 2008 election season, a recession began. It wasn't clear to most Americans how severe things would get, how many jobs would be lost in the months ahead, but a recession had begun that would gather momentum and plunge America into an abyss.

The frustration has grown.

Obama isn't going to bow out of the race the way LBJ did. I don't think he is that pragmatic. He probably still thinks he can win — and maybe he can. But I strongly doubt it.

In the early days of his presidency, polls showed Obama's approval in the 60s, but, with the exception of a brief uptick following the death of Osama bin Laden, his ratings have been below 50 in most surveys for a couple of years now.

The numbers aren't quite as bad as LBJ's — and they are comparable to Clinton's — but I can't help but think that, even if Obama fights it out to the end, he faces essentially the same fate as LBJ.

Perhaps their mutual legacy is that they and the times in which they served were mismatched.

The Tipping Point?

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"All I know is what I read in the papers."

Will Rogers

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Sometimes I feel like Will Rogers — although these days, with the newspaper industry on life support in many markets, I guess the more appropriate reference would be what I read on news web sites — or something similar.

The president says the economy is getting better and that another recession is not going to happen.

But Morgan Stanley says that prospect is more, not less, likely.

Wall Street clearly puts more — ahem — stock in Morgan Stanley than Barack Obama. Stocks closed down again yesterday, and there is considerable anxiety about the week ahead.

There is a lot of bad news about the economy these days, a lot of uncertainty.

Jobless claims are up.

Gallup reports that confidence in Obama to handle the economy is at its lowest point in his presidency — with only 26% approving.

Obama says he has a strategy to put America back to work — and he will unveil it right after Labor Day, which I suppose is better than what he did for the jobless on his first Labor Day in office.

But why the delay? So he and his family can ride their bikes on Martha's Vineyard for a couple of weeks? If he's got a plan — at long last — shouldn't it be treated with the urgency that this administration has promised but never delivered to the unemployed — and call Congress into special session?

His protests sound a lot to me like when Richard Nixon said he had a "secret plan" to end the war in Vietnam — and the American public, weary of the war and Lyndon Johnson, bought it. No details were required.

Nixon was the challenger at the time, not the incumbent, and that is a difference this president simply cannot comprehend. Challengers can speak like outsiders because they are outsiders — even if there was a time when they were insiders.

Presidents are the flip side of the coin. They may well have been seen as outsiders when they were elected, but the very act of being elected transformed them from outsiders to insiders. They were elected to use the power of the office for the common good. Their re–election campaigns tend to be about how well they have done that.

Presidencies, regardless of how novel they may seem at first, have relatively short shelf lives. The American public tends to be quite generous with its presidents — and it has been generous with this one, believe it or not. It is hard to imagine any of his most recent predecessors enjoying popularity ratings in the 40s, as Obama has, in spite of an unemployment rate that is officially around 9.0% but unofficially may be twice as high.

As I listened to Obama complaining about the "bad luck" that has plagued him in recent months, it sounded a lot to me like the kind of thing I have heard from other one–term presidents in my life — Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush — but also from some twice–elected presidents.

I think a majority of voters have stopped listening to Obama. And, in my experience, when they have stopped listening, the president needs to start packing.

James Pethokoukis of Reuters puts Obama's prospects into historical context: "In fact, if a) the economic forecasts of Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs are accurate, and b) voters behave as they usually do during bad economic times, then c) Barack Obama will be a one–term president."

Mixed Signals

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"Campaigning in last year's midterm elections, Obama argued over and over again that Republicans had driven the economy into a ditch; from now going forward, the question will be why he hasn't towed it out."

Karen Tumulty
Washington Post
Aug. 5, 2011

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It was almost predictable — except that things are so darn unpredictable these days.

About the only thing that seemed to be predictable last week was the weather — here in north Texas, we're in a potentially record–setting stretch of consecutive 100–degree days.

First the debt ceiling went down to the wire — which a lot of people were predicting. Then the overseas markets began some scary gyrations that spooked the American markets on the eve of the July jobs report. Fewer people were predicting that.

The signals just prior to the jobs report were not promising, and people were understandably nervous about what would happen on Friday, when the report came out and the markets began reacting to it.

Well, the jobs report was better than expected, and stocks got an early bounce from the news — but then things settled into a rocky pattern that capped a volatile week on Wall Street. I guess some people understood that, while it was better than expected, the jobs gains were still far short of what is needed to get the economy on a sound footing.

(Of course, it depends on who is doing the spinning. Democrats are likely to point out that jobs have been added to the economy in each of the last 10 months, which is true. But in most of those months, including the most recent one, the gains weren't even close to what the economy needs to average for several years.

(And Republicans are likely to overlook their prominent role in the making of this economic crisis — and act as if the president is solely to blame.

(Politicians like to blame their rivals for things. It reminds me of a comedy album in the 1970s in which a comedian mimicked an embattled Richard Nixon telling the nation that he was taking full responsibility for the Watergate scandal — but not the blame.

("Let me explain the difference," the comedian/Nixon said. "People who are to blame lose their jobs. People who are responsible do not.")

And then S&P lowered the U.S. credit rating from AAA to AA+. It's a kind of economic probation, I have heard economic experts say — potentially reversible but only if the U.S. government cleans up its act.

As polarized as the federal government is today, I don't have a lot of hope for that one. It seems to me that what is really needed is presidential leadership. It has been sorely lacking.

Some people disagree with me, and that is fine, but the fact remains that unemployment is higher now than it was when the president took office — and that is what many voters see when they look at this administration's economic record.

I have heard some Obama defenders speak with satisfaction of the recent jobs gains — but the raw numbers say that the unemployment rate went down by the same amount — 0.1% — that it went up the previous month. No real ground has been gained by the economy this summer.

In fact, the decline in the credit rating suggests the opposite. But who knows?

Not much is clear to anyone, least of all the ordinary citizens — especially the ones who have been out of work and just want to be self sufficient, to have at least part of their lives back. They don't care about global politics and foreign economies, but their lives are being affected by them, anyway.

They are the ones for whom leadership is most important right now.

David Gergen knows something about presidential leadership. He worked with four presidents, and he shares, at CNN.com, his thoughts following a recent visit to London, where he saw the Churchill War Rooms.

"On both sides of the Atlantic," he writes, "the turmoil of this past week has sparked cries for those in political power to step up and for God's sake, lead."

His visit to the Churchill War Rooms convinced him that a Churchill is what is needed here.

Churchill's times were uncertain as well, Gergen points out, but he set clear goals and led the march, even if he was marching into a murky future.

"On several walls hang posters from those days: 'Keep Calm & Carry On.' That is very much the spirit that leaders of today need to instill in peoples across the Atlantic," Gergen writes. "They must replace fear with faith in the future."

If that happens, maybe the signals won't seem as mixed.

A 'Rendezvous With Destiny'

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In the weeks before Barack Obama took the oath of office 2½ years ago, lots of folks were already comparing him to Lincoln and FDR.

Lincoln, as the Great Emancipator, was an obvious one, I guess, considering that Obama was the first black president. Obama's elevation to the presidency could be seen — and, in fact, was seen by some — as the fruition of Lincoln's vision of a post–racial America.

But I always felt the comparison to Roosevelt was more appropriate because of the circumstances and the expectations — OK, maybe I was influenced by the fact that I once wrote a research paper in graduate school on the 1932 presidential election, in which FDR first won the presidency (denying Herbert Hoover a second term by a substantial margin).

I still say the circumstances — which most people readily acknowledged were the worst since Roosevelt's time — had a lot to do with that. It's been nearly 80 years since Roosevelt was elected president, and the economic disaster that contributed much to Obama's election clearly wasn't as severe as the one facing FDR — but it was the worst this country has faced in three–quarters of a century, and that is important to remember.

In 2008, America already was, for all intents and purposes, a post–racial society. Racism still existed, but not on an officially sanctioned level, as it did when schools and public restrooms and businesses of all kinds were segregated.

And organized racism (i.e., the Ku Klux Klan) was not practiced at the level it once was, thanks to laws that were not only enacted but actively enforced.

Discrimination was outlawed, which, it seems to me, is the kind of thing that can only be taken so far as long as it is pursued as vigorously as other crimes.

If, for example, an employer is predisposed not to hire people who belong to a certain race — or, for that matter, happen to be female or over a certain age — it probably would be the kind of thing that would be hard to prove in court without some sort of paper trail. If one exists, it is government's responsibility to prosecute.

I'm sure discrimination still happens, but it's more covert. Folks who discriminate make more of an effort to cover their tracks. Most don't say or do incriminating things indiscriminately.

The election of Obama had no discernible impact on unsanctioned discrimination, but that wasn't really what the campaign was about. Sure, many folks were motivated by a desire to show the world that America had transcended racism, but I think a lot of it had to do with the economy.

It was what Americans have always done.

The bad economy affected everyone — and, as a student of history, I can tell you that, when times are bad, voters need very little encouragement to turn to the party that is out of power.

In 2008, the Republicans held the presidency. There was no incumbent to punish, as there had been in 1932, but the public could hold his party accountable — and it did. The voters gave the Democrats the White House and padded their majorities in the House and Senate.

I believed then — and I believe now — that the Democratic nominee was virtually assured of victory after the economy imploded under a Republican president. If Hillary Clinton had been the nominee, she would have won. If John Edwards had been the nominee, he would have won (and, considering the things that have emerged about him, we might well have faced other issues as a result).

As I say, this is how it has always been in America. When the economy is bad, the voters turn against the party in the White House. Doesn't matter who is in charge in Congress — which is never popular, anyway. Economic policy is believed to be set by the president.

Sure, we've had other economic downturns in the last three–quarters of a century — some modest and short lived, some not so modest and longer lived — but presidents who survived and were rewarded with additional time were the ones who demonstrated leadership and confidence.

They were the ones who met their "rendezvous with destiny," as FDR put it in his acceptance speech at the 1936 Democratic National Convention. Roosevelt was wrapping up his first term in the White House and was asking for four more years.

The unemployment rate in 1936 was much worse than it is today — but it was a clear improvement over the conditions that prevailed when Roosevelt was first elected. People responded to that fact — as well as the fact that Roosevelt had shown an eagerness to try new things when other approaches weren't getting the desired effect.

It's called leadership. It is the pioneering spirit that has always been celebrated in American history.

In the aftermath of the congressional resolution of the debt ceiling crisis, one got the sense from Obama that we had dodged a bullet, not that an important step had been taken toward the fulfillment of his vision of economic recovery and progress.

He hasn't shown the same kind of eagerness to try new things when the old ones did not succeed. Instead, he has been like George W. Bush, unable (or unwilling) to admit to any mistakes and, consequently, learn from them.

He must have made some mistakes. Under Obama's watch, unemployment has never been below where it was on the day he was sworn in. in 2½ years, voters expect to see some improvement.

Yet, on this Friday, roughly 15 months before Obama must face the voters again, forecasters believe the unemployment rate will remain at 9.2%.

In the context of the times, that would have been considered amazing when FDR sought a second term — and might have led to a 50–state landslide. As it was, Roosevelt carried all but two states and received more than 60% of the vote.

But, in 2011, to many voters, it represents a retreat if not outright surrender. Even the most generous voters seem hard pressed to defend these numbers, which directly threaten everything else.

It's why the stock markets have been jittery. It's why creditors have put the United States on a form of economic probation, even though an agreement was reached on the debt ceiling.

What has Obama — who likes to talk about "teachable moments" — learned from his mistakes? Is he meeting his rendezvous with destiny?

Free Man in Paris

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"The way I see it," he said,
"You just can't win it.
Everybody's in it for their own gain.
You can't please 'em all.
There's always somebody calling you down.
I do my best,
And I do good business.
There's a lot of people asking for my time.
They're trying to get ahead.
They're trying to be a good friend of mine.
I was a free man in Paris.
I felt unfettered and alive.
There was nobody calling me up for favors,
And no one's future to decide.
You know I'd go back there tomorrow
But for the work I've taken on
Stoking the star maker machinery
Behind the popular song."

Joni Mitchell

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Back on the night he was elected president — and in the months before — I'm sure Barack Obama did feel, in the words of the Joni Mitchell song, "unfettered and alive."

He was the proverbial free man in Paris, adored by all who saw him and heard his voice. When one watched the relationship between the candidate and the crowds on the campaign trail, it was like watching two young lovers in the throes of a brand–new passion for each other. If one breaks wind, the other thinks it sounds like Mozart and smells like a rose garden.

And he and his followers fell under a spell that convinced them that the election of this man would change things forever.

I guess the followers of every victorious presidential candidate believe he will be the one who changes things forever, but the symbolism of the Obama election was hard to ignore. I remember watching the 2008 election coverage and seeing an anonymous black woman saying that everything in the future would be right and just and fair, and she didn't have to worry about that anymore.

It wasn't just a racial thing. I heard similar things from whites on that night. And I also heard young voters of all races, many participating in an election for the first time, speaking of Obama and what they expected from him. And I heard progressives of all ages and all races speaking of the liberal causes that would be promoted in an Obama administration.

That was the fantasy.

Reality has been smacking Obama and his followers around. It hasn't matched the fantasy. Not even when he did something his predecessor could not do — rid the world of Osama bin Laden.

That would have been quite a coup a decade ago. But that's the problem. Presidents are judged almost entirely upon how they handle the situations of their times — not of someone else's. And 2001 was George W. Bush's time, not Obama's.

Whatever one may think of the circumstances surrounding Bush's election, he was the occupant of the White House on September 11, and if he had remained focused on bin Laden and promptly captured or killed him instead of turning his attention to Iraq, I believe he probably would have been re–elected in a landslide.

Bush's administration is remembered for other things today, but, before 2004, capturing or killing bin Laden would have been like winning the lottery. In 2011, it was more like winning the pot in a hand of poker.

The challenge of Obama's time has been to put America back to work. All the other things he has wanted to achieve as president depended on the accomplishment of that one objective first — because, in order to do the things he has said he wants to do, the tax base must be expanded.

The tax base has not been expanding in the first 2½ years of Obama's presidency, and there aren't sufficient resources within the existing tax base to do the things he wants to do. This is at the heart of much of the debate over the debt ceiling that currently has Congress in a stranglehold.

I have no doubt whatsoever that Barack Obama felt like a free man in Paris when he sought the presidency. The challenger is apt to feel "unfettered and alive" when the responsibility of governing is not yet his and when there is "no one's future to decide."

Alas, there are millions of futures to decide.

He probably would "go back there tomorrow" to the days when he could say what he pleased about where America should be and he didn't have to worry about things like whether there was enough money — but the work he has taken on will not allow it.

That's when some experience at bringing opposing sides together would come in handy for a president. This president's administration has spoken admiringly of two recent presidents who won re–election in spite of economic woes — and difficulties with Congress — Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.

The folks in the West Wing want to emulate those presidents.

They overlook, either deliberately or by accident, the facts that Reagan and Clinton both were governors before they were president. Successful governors know a lot about compromising, helping each side see the wisdom in giving up a little in order to achieve a lot.

In the current atmosphere, though, both sides have taken a take no prisoners posture. Neither side will settle for anything less than total victory — and that means total surrender from the other side. The left is repulsed by the right and vice versa.

This is a situation that calls for presidential leadership, for a president who rises above the congressional squabbles and brings the two sides together. This president has a little more than a week to do that.

Will he succeed?

Burning Down the House

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The seemingly irreconcilable conflict over the debt ceiling has the potential to burn down the nation's economic house — and, with it, the political house as well.

Let me backtrack a bit.

There just wasn't anything good about last week's jobs report. It was bad news across the board. For all incumbents. No matter on which side of the fence you may stand.

It's probably worse for Democrats right now since they hold the White House and the Senate. Republicans hold only the House, but there is no reason for them to feel smug, either. And that certainly doesn't mean that House Democrats or Senate Republicans are immune (although a case could be made for Senate Republicans).

No incumbent can assume that he/she is safe because the incumbents are responsible for making the system work — and it ain't working.

Unemployment went up for the third straight month. Many economists had been anticipating at least a modest rebound for the American economy, with fuel prices easing and all that.

But I guess I should have known something wicked this way came because gas prices around here have been going up lately. (I don't know what they've been like where you live, but I paid about $3.38/gallon a couple of weeks ago at the station down the street and today, the price at that very same station is $3.59/gallon.)

And then came what I have often heard described as a bucket of cold water on the recovery — the unemployment rate is the highest it has been since last September.

My friends who support Barack Obama don't like to hear this because it contradicts their cozy view of the world — but his Republican opponent in 2012 is going to be much less important than his record in office — and that record is not too great right now.

Oh, they like to remind me that George W. Bush was president when the economy went south, and they like to recite Obama's legislative achievements, but the bottom line is that fingerpointing and a list doesn't put food on the table or keep a roof over your head.

They like to tsk, tsk among themselves and shake their heads disapprovingly over the possibility of facing an extremist like Michele Bachmann or Newt Gingrich or Sarah Palin in the general election because they think the choice is obvious if that comes to pass. In fact, as far as they are concerned, it isn't a choice at all — so they keep talking about those rivals because they are certain that those candidates are not electable.

And they'd like to see one of them win the GOP nomination. Then, as they see it, the election will become a slam dunk for Obama.

But it isn't going to be that simple.

Oh, I expect the Republicans to nominate someone who is more conservative than Obama. That's a given. The Republicans are the conservatives in our political universe, the Democrats are the liberals. And, in today's Democrat Party, anyone to the right of Nancy Pelosi is considered suspect.

It's no better on the Republican side, where anyone to the left of John Boehner tends to be regarded as a RINO.

That leaves an incredibly large bloc of politically homeless Americans in the middle who are being stretched too thin by two polarized parties, and I think more Americans may well be receptive to the idea of a third party or an independent candidate than they have been for a couple of decades.

Unless an insurgent candidate pops up to challenge Obama for the nomination, we already know who will be nominated by the Democrats. I doubt that the Republicans will nominate an extremist, but, contrary to all the discussions I hear, I also doubt that it will matter.

The dynamics of a race that features an incumbent are entirely different from the dynamics of a race that has no incumbent on the ballot. Obama won a non–incumbent race in 2008. Now, he must win a different kind of race. Historically, the rules for such a race are crystal clear.

If the incumbent is meeting or exceeding expectations, like Ronald Reagan in 1984 or Bill Clinton in 1996, he will win, possibly in a landslide. If not (see the gentlemen who were replaced by Reagan and Clinton four years earlier — when many disaffected Americans opted for an independent candidate rather than either of the major–party nominees), he will be defeated, again possibly in a landslide.

What will matter is what conditions are like when the voters go to the polls — and we can't know, in July 2011, what those conditions will be in November 2012.

No, sir, voters are not fortune tellers, and they can be fickle. What they like today they may very well dislike tomorrow — and vice versa — but they do have an idea which way the wind is blowing right now — and it isn't at their backs.

Relentlessly high unemployment has dragged consumer confidence to its lowest level in three years, writes Vicki Needham in The Hill — and who knows where consumer confidence will be on Election Day?

I do know that the electorate has been impatient lately. How could the incumbents possibly have missed that fact? In House elections, where the volatility has been more pronounced, one party has taken at least 20 seats from the other in the last three elections.

Is that significant? You tell me. Prior to 2006, it was extremely rare for either party to take as many as 10 seats from the other in a single election. If a double–digit movement did occur, it was considered a shift of seismic proportions. In the last three elections, more than 100 House seats have flipped from one party to the other.

Here's something else: The first of July has come and gone with no one, to my knowledge, observing that it was the second anniversary of the date when the recession was said to have ended.

Two years of "recovery" have brought zero net movement in the unemployment rate — yet Obama's top political adviser is deep in denial, insisting that Americans won't care about the jobless rate when they go to the polls.

Nonsense. It's the only issue many voters do care about.

Wrong Way

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Gilligan's Island only lasted three TV seasons in the 1960s, but I recall seeing (in reruns) a couple of episodes in which Hans Conried played a character named Wrongway Feldman.

Feldman, if my memory serves me correctly, was a World War I era flying ace who got his nickname because he always flew in the wrong direction.

I mention that because, after hearing today's jobs report, it occurred to me that Barack Obama should be called "Wrongway Obama."

Now, optimistic Democrats have been pointing to the example of Ronald Reagan as evidence that presidents can win a second term in spite of midterm election setbacks and high unemployment rates.

It's one of those historically similar but ultimately illogical (in a modern context) kind of comparisons. The biggest and most obvious problem — and most threatening to this president — is simply that things are going in the wrong way.

Notice the trajectory of the unemployment rates in the chart. As you do, let's revisit the early 1980s for a minute.

There is no question that, in January 1983, the unemployment rate (10.4%), while not at its highest under Reagan, was on its way down from its peak in November 1982, the month that the Republicans lost more than two dozen seats in the House.

Those midterm losses, incidentally, did not cost the Republicans control of the chamber the way last November's losses cost the Democrats their majority. In 1982, the Republicans were in the minority, as they had been for nearly three decades. Through all of Reagan's first term, his party controlled the Senate while the Democrats controlled the House.

Reagan and his Republicans had to forge compromises with Democrats from the start. The like–minded Democrats who helped them accomplish their objectives became known as the "boll weevil Democrats." Without them, it is questionable whether Reagan could have accomplished much in the first two years of his presidency.

Sounds a lot like what Barack Obama must contend with in the last 18 months of his term, doesn't it? His party controls the Senate, the other party controls the House.

But therein lies one of the key differences between 1983 and 2011, you see.

Obama's Democrats enjoyed majority status — for awhile, super–majority status — in both chambers until they were resoundingly rejected in the 2010 midterms. In theory, prior to that, there was nothing to prevent them from enacting anything they wished for two years.

Being Democrats, though, they fought among themselves and drew lines in the dirt over mostly inconsequential matters. They squandered their opportunity.

And now, to accomplish anything in the last half of Obama's term, they will have to do something — repeatedly — that this president has never done before.

He can dig in his heels and resist — but then nothing will happen between now and November 2012. Or he can give in to Republican demands — and perhaps make things worse. Even if he doesn't make matters worse, he'll hand the other side the victories he is going to need to bolster his record in next year's campaign.

Anyway, the jobless rate continued to drop through 1983 until midway through 1984, when it settled into a modest up–and–down pattern — but it was more than three percentage points lower in November 1984 than it had been in November 1982.

Today's jobs report shows a different pattern. It suggests that, after a few slightly encouraging months earlier this year, when unemployment was registering 0.1% monthly declines, it is moving back up. One has to wonder if there is any way that Obama can reverse the trend — and, if he can, will he be able to take credit for it?

In 1983, there were enough Democrats in the House who sympathized with the Republicans that they could push through Reagan administration initiatives.

But, in 2011, politics in America is so polarized that it is really difficult to imagine Democrats enlisting enough Republican support in the House or Republicans enlisting enough Democrat support in the Senate to enact anything.

So, I think you can rule out any real compromises in the next 18 months.

I think it is also important to remember the circumstances under which each president was elected.

Ronald Reagan announced his candidacy in November 1979, when unemployment was around 6% — just about its lowest level during the Carter years, an improvement over what Carter had inherited but much lower than it wound up being when voters went to the polls a year later.

And it was higher than Americans were accustomed to. Reagan's 1980 campaign was built on economic issues. When unemployment surged past 7% in the spring of 1980, peaking at nearly 8% in the summer, he had already laid the foundation for an economic–oriented campaign.

Unemployment was even lower when Obama announced his candidacy in February 2007 — about 4.5%. As hard as it may be to remember now, in 2007, the 2008 campaign figured to be about foreign policy — but that changed when the economy imploded in 2008. When voters went to the polls in November 2008, unemployment was higher than it had been in 15 years.

Well, today, it's more than two percentage points higher than it was when Obama was elected.

There is a lot of work to be done to persuade America that the Obama administration is on the right track — and not much time to do it.