Obama, Fitting In, and Afghanistan

Several posts ago I made the argument that President Obama is a centrist in part because of his desire (or need, if we want to be psychological) to fit in with every crowd.  Take this comment, and add to it the historical reality that Democrats do not want to seem weak on defense, and that probably explains most of the explanation for Obama sending more troops to a situation that may or may not benefit. 

I am sure Obama is convinced that the policy objectives are achievable, since he is smarter than I could ever dream to be, but I am also sure that, like the centrism on dealing with the economy (lots of money for states to plug budget gaps and private companies in the form of contracts, but nothing for the poor suckers who need it most), he is attracted by the ideas of those around him, and naturally moves toward them.  That includes military advisors.

Since he isn't giving General Petraeus the whole number requested, Obama is already being criticized for not giving the generals all they need.  As if the generals know what is best policy.  They don't, you know...nor do the critics, regardless of whether they have any experience in macro-level military policy.

I remember being four years old and in the waiting room to see a psychiatrist (long story, but suffice it to say that my mother was at her wits end in trying to deal with my rather active and manipulative behavior..high IQ/ADHD/Middle Child Syndrome, or some combination).  I saw General Westmorland on the cover of Time and asked my mother about him and Vietnam.  Even to this four year old, the plan did not make sense to me.  I have the same feeling here.

I have a former colleague in Afghanistan; he served as Finance Minister for several years.  The stories he has shared in his surprise visits back lead me to believe that, unlike Iraq, there is no civil, educations, or economic infrastructure in Afghanistan.  I do not see an increase of troops as promising development.

For the sake of my former students and the tens of thousands of people who are serving there, I hope I am wrong...

Just When I Think Cable TV is Useless for Understanding Political Matters...

Well, my missive against Morning Joe needs to be tempered by the following conversation between Chris Matthews, Chris Mathhews, and Rev. Thomas Tobin, Bishop of Providence, on the problem of religion dictating specific political positions.  As much as it pains me to admit it, Matthews drives home a central point, often unexamined, about the problem of bishops telling members of Congress what they want in terms of abortion.

Watch the entire clip (12:30), as it exposes one of the inherent weaknesses in the position being pushed by the conservatives among the American bishops. 


My experience with leaders in the American Catholic Church is that most of them are not very good politicians in a diverse and deliberative setting. Bishops who speak out tend to think they are the able to maintain their faith status when they become lobbyists.  Roger William had this one correct...

Another Lesson in Why We Should Not Watch Cable

During the 2008 presidential nominating campaign, I became somewhat addicted to Morning Joe on MSNBC.  The obsessive talk about campaign politics early in the season was perfect no-calorie candy for my political sweet tooth.  By April, however, I had grown weary, and instead began watching reruns of Law and Order (part of me still wants to be a litagator) or Malcolm in the Middle (speaks to my childhood more than I care to reveal).

Every once in a while, however, I lift the political candy ban, and every time I do it, I realize what it must be like to be a recovering addict.  This morning was one of those days.

I flipped to MSNBC at 6:00 to fill my attnetion while I ate my cereal and what do I see? Joe Scarborough talking about the 2012 presidential election, reporting a poll that shows that Obama and Palin are in a dead heat right now.  The presidential election of 2012 has already begun for these people!!!

Please, someone take my television from me...

Interesting Graph on a Tale of Two Montana Senators

Athough the warning is to Senator Blanch Lincoln (D-AR), the graph examining the fates of the two Montana senators is fascinating.  One, Baucus, relished the attention he has gotten as chair of the Finance Commitee.  The other, Tester, has been very quiet.  Which one do you think has suffered?  The one at the middle of the now-vitriolic health care debate.  Maybe Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Joe Lieberman (?-CT) should heed the advice that Nate Silver is giving: just shut up and take a position, unless you wish to kill your political future...

President Obama May Have Been Boxed In.

There is increasing concern that Preisdent Obama is betraying the progressive wing of his own party.  Additional evidence of this can be seen in the week's Time article on how Greg Craig got forced out of his position by the pragmatists, especially Rahm Emmanuel, who prefer decisions that give red meat to liberals while also reassuring centrists or traditionalists that Obama isn't one of these crazy liberals.  In the case of Craig, it was the backtracking of the promise to liberals to end all the things the Bush Administration did that got hundreds of thousands of ideological liberals to knock on doors for John Kerry in 2004 (what else could have stirred so many to spend so much time working for such a boring and uninspiring candidate?).

The strategy is consistent with Obama, the WYSIWYG President, but it may also be playing into the Republican hope that they may make significant gains in 2010 by driving a wedge into the Obama coalition.  Republicans seem to have done a great job of labeling Obama as an ideological liberal  for those who think they are uncomfortable with liberals (for those of you who have forgotten, he was probably the most centrist of the 2008 Democratic nomination candidates).  The anger among progressives that seems to be emerging over Obama's reluctance to take a clear stand on virtually anything (like W did, much to the chagrin of those very liberals who now complain about Obama), combined with what is an irrational fear among conservatives that Obama is a liberal socialist commie authoritarian multiculturalist, spells potential doom for Obama in 2010. 

Shades of Clinton in 1994?  Or, shades of LBJ in 1966?  My hunch (and by the way, my hunches are nearly perfect, although I do not have the proper documentation to support this assertion) is that Obama will be more like FDR in 1934 or 1938...

What I learned from reading the Audacity to Win.

Well, I listened to it, unabridged, during a trip to New Jersey (including a mightmare 9 hour drive--it is usually under four) and finished it in the past week.

I am usually wary of books written by political operatives, since they tend to be self-justifying and congratulatory, and they tend to really be written by a ghost-writer.  David Plouffe, the campaign manager of the Obama campaign, does engage in some of the first (but less than I expected), and wrote the book himself. The result is a very interesting and useful book.

Although I recall most of what Plouffe shares, his book reminded me of two very important things that can help to understand President Obama today.  First, the strategy of the campaign--to stay close to Clinton in big primary states while winning big in the smaller state--was a real innovation and reinforces the idea that Obama takes slightly different paths than the one most traveled.  Plouffe's discussion of how winning big in the Idaho primary while losing in New Jersey by a dozen points actually led to Obama getting more delegates than Clinton.  The Clinton campaign's refusal to compete in the small states did them in.

The second major insight is Obama's consistency.  Despite my suspicions that this is a bit exaggerated, when things looked dicey for Obama in the spring, he never wavered.  That steely confidence will likely be seen once Obama makes a decision on Afghanistan.

A third insight is the extent to which Mark Penn, the main consultant for Hillary Clinton, has no friends in the Obama Administration.  Plouffe takes as many opportunities as possible to insult Penn, who, by the way, probably deserves most of Plouffe's arrows...

Obama - The WYSIWYG President

Modern and postmodern presidents generally have avoided presenting their true selves to the American people.  Be it the replackaged product that hid the real, dark character of Richard Nixon, the simulated image of Ronald Reagan as the ideal president we might see in a movie from the 1940s, or the American Dream presidency Bill Clinton, presidents rarely present themselves as themselves.  Even relatively straightforward presidents like Carter and George H.W. Bush hid behind images (Carter the humble, hardworking puritain and Bush the silver-spooned tough guy).  Not so with Obama.

I have to give credit for this insight to my colleague at Providence College, Julia Jordon-Zachery.  In a series of conversations I have had with her since Obama's election, she has convinced me that all that we should expect from Obama is that which we have already seen in him.  In other words, he is WYSIWYG (a now-antiquated computer term, "What You See is What You Get").

What does this mean for us?  We should not expect him to change his pragmatism.  We should not expect him to make moves that are dramatic.  We should not expect him to make ideologically-motivated decisions.  And, we should not expect him to do anything other than try and stay in the middle.

For liberals, Obama will continue to disappoint.  But they should also take heart, because Republicans will never be able to pull off the tactic, now-outdated, as demonizing him as an extremist.  The fact that the GOP still tries to do this (even in the face of extensive evidence to the contrary) is an indication of how addicted they have become to the politics of personal destruction.  Unlike Bill Clinton, whose personal conduct (even before we realized he was doing inappropriate things with an intern) always suggested that Republican critics were right, Obama's personal character, which is apparently who he really is, cannot be associated with the excess of big spending liberals. 

So, the lack of inference between Obama's character and excess makes it hard for his opponents to successfully pull off a "Clinton," and the reality that Obama's policy approach matches his character means that we have a symmetrical presidency, one where what we are seeing is actually an accurate reflection of what we are getting. 

I know that people are used to the separation of the concept of a person and the actual person, but, as I have written before, Obama is a throwback.  Who is the last president to be WYSIWYG?  My pick is Truman...

When Outsiders Leave the White House

White House Counsel Grag Craig, the Clintons' classmate at Yale Law School who jumped Team Clinton for Obama in 2008, is leaving his position at the White House.  Why?

I am not sure I know the answer, but I wonder if he just felt out of place, or whether the Chicago Guys (my new name for the inner cirlce of Obama, created in response to a recent conversation with Amy Sullivan of Time Magazine) just did not like the intruder.  However, this follows a familliar pattern of first-year adjustments to the White House Staff that we can discern across presidencies.  The internal dynamic here seems to follow the familiar pattern: those closest to the president in their lead up to winning the office seem to crowd out capable people who drank the Kool-Aid relatively late in the game.

Who else might leave?  Good question.  I guess I need to go and look at the list of senior White House aids who (1) are not early Obama people, (2) are not Biden people, and (3) are too old to keep up with the (to borrow Sullivan's concept) frat house atmosphere...