Obama: Less Than Three Weeks In Office And Hope And Change Morphed Into Fear And More Of The Same
Obama: Less Than Three Weeks In Office And Hope And Change Morphed Into Fear And More Of The Same
by
Ken Eliasberg
I have to confess— I never for a moment thought that the bloom would so quickly come off the Obama rose. I thought he was just too smooth — not smart, butsmooth — for this to happen. In addition, there’s always the honeymoon that is granted a new President — particularly a Democratic President. And I thought that this would certainly be the case with Obama for 2 reasons: (1) the demonization of George W. Bush had reached almost frenzied proportions, and (2) Obama was so silky and personable in his delivery that I thought it would take some time before the patina which had oxidized around him would begin to fade. Moreover, the fact that he was picking Washington insiders indicated that, while it might disappoint many of his “hope-and-change” devotees, he would probably not make the same missteps of some of his predecessors — e.g. Carter, Clinton, and George W. Bush — all of whom were Southern governors who came to town with an entourage from their locales, who, as a consequence, were unfamiliar with the ways of Washington. And it took each of them some time to familiarize themselves with how things were done in the nation’s capitol. You may recall that the transition of each of these Presidents was not without some confusion and delay (Bush’s being largely occasioned because of the disputed nature of the 2000 election).
Obama picked people who were steeped in the Capitol’s culture — almost all old Clinton hands. And his choice of Rahm Emanuel I thought inspired, since Emanuel is both savvy and tough (and mean), and, as a consequence of his having served in the Congress, intimately aware of what goes on on the Hill. In short, I thought that Obama was proceeding in a careful and thoughtful manner — and, frankly, this scared me much more than if he had acquiesced in the clamoring of his base and picked a bunch of hard core ideologues (although these guys are more than hard core enough, to be sure). Why did it scare me more? Because his picks were politicos, wise in the ways of how things are done and thus less apt to make some of the stupid mistakes of a less practical ideologue.
As matters turned out, I was wrong; things have gone amazingly badly; not that it makes a great deal of difference (certainly no immediate difference to most and none at all to his hard core enthralled legions), but it does remove a great deal of the luster, if not the magic and mystique, surrounding Obama. He is beginning to look quite human, and this could slow down (and possibly eventually derail) the Obama locomotive which has been going at full throttle since he took office.
And, frankly, while I always knew that he was more glib than deep, more personable than profound, I have been surprised at just how shallow he is. His first press conference was, in my opinion, nothing short of a disaster — he looked pathetically inadequate. The whole thing looked staged; he took 13 questions, answered none of them (save possibly the meaningless one on Alex Rodriguez’s steroid use), and used each question as an opportunity to offer up 12 mini speeches.
My wife, a political observer, noted early on that we are going to see a lot of Obama on T.V. I don’t think that she had any idea of how right she was. In about 8 weeks we have seen more of Obama than we did of Bush in 8 years. By the way, this is an indictment of each — Bush because he used the bully pulpit so infrequently and, for the most part, so ineffectively; Obama, because he is overdoing it, at the possible cost of wearing out his welcome. He is like Clinton in that he is always in campaign mode, only more so, i.e. Clinton on steroids. Although, to be fair, he is pushing a big agenda, and he is out there pushing it hard, knowing that he will never have a better opportunity than he does right now, i.e. I would bet the farm that he will not have the dream-like free ride that FDR had. And, in all fairness, FDR would not have the free ride today that he had in the ‘30s — not with round the clock media coverage. Both during the depression (which, thanks to his mismanagement of the economy, went on for over 20 years) and WWII, FDR was fairly well insulated — you really didn’t know what was happening until well after it had happened. With the advent of television, the internet, and increased competition for news coverage, no politician can hide for very long. Which is unfortunate because it influences not just the quantity of the news but, more important, its quality as well. Indeed, many in the media seem to feel that journalism has become either an entertainment vehicle, on the one hand, or, on the other hand, a news-making (as opposed to news reporting) institution.
Let’s take a brief look at the first 8 weeks of the Obama Administration (a hectic 8 weeks to be sure) from both a stylistic and substantive point of view.
Actually, it is less style than tone that concerns me on the “form” side of the Obama honeymoon period; his style is always the same — affable, pleasant, supremely self confident, graceful —and empty! Here I am more concerned with the tone of how things have proceeded than I am with the substance (which we’ll examine next).
The tone.- Initially, one of fear, i.e. we are in the worst shape of any time other than the great depression, and, if you don’t do exactly what I propose, the current crisis will turn into a catastrophe! This approach was hardly comparable to FDR’s statement that we have nothing to fear but fear itself. Indeed, this was fear itself, and even drew criticism from that other snake charmer, Bill Clinton who suggested that Obama might do well to use a less anxiety-producing tone. Perhaps the dire tone was an effort to move his “stimulus” package — you know, the one that no one read, let alone understood — along, for it seemed to end with the passage of the that colossal legislative effort. Thereafter, Obama was a bit more upbeat. I guess a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, even if it means scaring the public to death.
When the tone wasn’t vacillating between these two extremes — caution and confidence — it was one of uncertainty. I don’t know how many occasions that Obama used to demonstrate that, without a teleprompter, he seemed at best ill at ease, and, at worst, not to have the faintest idea of the subject that he was talking about. There was no consistent pattern of either comfort or confidence with respect to the situations with which he was dealing. He always seems personally confident, but, if you listened carefully to what he was saying (on those rare occasions when he was saying something without a teleprompter) it wass not apt to inspire confidence in an informed listener (as opposed to just another hero-worshipping acolyte). -To be continued.-