November 13, 2009
We Have A President
Sullivan regarding Obama’s political stance:
Obama’s position – almost a year into his presidency – is yet to be revealed. The president waits, prods, allows the parties to reveal their hands, and keeps his final detailed position to himself. By allowing the debate to continue in public, he also tries to get the public more, rather than less, involved. So we too get to show our hand as the debate continues. And the polls show Americans pretty evenly – and understandably – divided on the excruciating and ultimately prudential question of what to do next.
What strikes me about this is the enormous self-confidence this reveals. Here is a young president, prepared to allow himself to be portrayed as “weak” or “dithering” in the slow and meticulous arrival at public policy. He is trusting the reality to help expose what we need to do. He is allowing the debate – however messy and confusing and emotional – to take its time and reveal the real choices in front of us. This is politically risky, of course. Those who treat politics as a contact-sport, whose insistence is on the “game” of who wins which news cycle, or who can spin each moment in a political storm as a harbinger of whatever, will pounce and shriek and try to bounce the president into a decision. And those who believe that what matters in war is charging ahead regardless at all times will also grandstand against the president’s insistence on prudence.
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It seems to me that the President is criticized too often for being deliberate or slow. It’s as if allowing debate is weakness. Sure, at times I want him to slap the conservative (“moderate”) democrats into line but I don’t see his inaction as weak.
But how long can he do this? When does he become weak because people perceive him as weak?
Putting a time stamp on this is hard, I think. There will be a point, obviously, when indecision/caution (depending on how you want to couch it), becomes a vice not a virtue and Obama could be accused of being “politically savvy” in the worst sense.
What I am trying to say, I guess, is that it is difficult to gauge that because on man’s weakness is another man’s strong, much like magnitudes of spiciness.
I think the mitigating factor, Andrew, will be if he is able to make the right decision on the first few of the Herculean problems he has inherited; the financial crisis seems to have been handled (mostly) correctly; we’ll see how healthcare and the wars pan out; once the slow decisions begin to accumulate, we will be better able to know if he is a wizard genius or whatever it is he is now being accused of.
Good call, Deron. Some of his policies make me uncomfortable, but that doesn’t mean I don’t hope for wizard genius.
I think that’s what’s interesting about him, at least at this point. minus the pathologically insane analysis that passes for contemporary journalism in the 24/7 news cycle, his approach to problem solving leaves a lot of room for confusion and speculation — on the right and the left. it will only be, as I mentioned, once a few of these decisions have accumulated and have had time to be assessed that his abilities will, hopefully, begin to make any sense.
The interesting thing is that, to some extent, we still don’t know what kind of president we have. I think we know what kind of President the right (and the left) wants us to believe we have but, as Deron said, until we see the results of this big policy decisions.
Additionally, I can’t help but wonder if his pragmatism is magnified because of the inevitable comparison to his predecessor, ‘the decider’.
Finally, I think everybody should always hope our President is wizard genius, regardless of political affiliation.
I think we have only had one wizard genius in my lifetime. hopefully Obama will be the second.