Obama Getting Lost in Details

[Hein van Meeteren]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Sorry, smart = specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, time-bound......

Op 1-2-2010 11:25, Cees Binkhorst schreef:
> REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl
>
> SMARTCC - Specifiek, meetbaar, afgesproken, realistisch, tijdgebonden,
> consistent en compassionate? Oh ja, ook nog verkopen ;)
>
> Groet / Cees
>
> February 1, 2010
> Letter From Washington
> Obama Getting Lost in Details
> By ALBERT R. HUNT
>
> WASHINGTON — John Gardner, the estimable founder of Common Cause and
> former secretary of health, education and welfare, said one of the
> conditions for effectiveness in Washington is to employ “inside-outside
> alliances.”
>
> He was talking about citizen action. The need to walk that line between
> outdoor politics, summoning public support with some explanatory
> eloquence, and indoor politics, making the essential compromises,
> cutting the deals with legislators and vested interests, that are the
> essence of most democracies. This is even more applicable to governing.
>
> President Barack Obama’s inability to practice this art over the past
> year is a major factor in some of his difficulties. While winning
> legislative victories on the economic stimulus and health care, the
> administration allowed the opposition to define the measures.
>
> “There’s a disconnect,” says Bill Carrick, a top Democratic strategist
> in California. “They’re doing some good things, and people don’t know it.”
>
> This isn’t simply a matter of message or public relations. Obama
> advisers delude themselves when they say that most of their setbacks
> stem from process issues like not televising the health care
> deliberations on C-Span, a cable channel devoted to government affairs.
>
> Mr. Obama has saturated the media with interviews — far more and diverse
> than anything his predecessors did — and the public arena with speeches,
> some superb. Yet he has failed to convey any overarching vision; his
> initiatives aren’t centrally connective.
>
> Thus, the stimulus bill, to most Americans, was about parochial
> pork-barrel projects, not about the millions of jobs saved and the more
> severe economic dislocation it avoided. To be sure, the stimulus was
> bracketed between and associated with the Treasury’s Troubled Asset
> Relief Program, which most Americans saw as an unconscionable bailout of
> Wall Street fat cats, and the rescue of the auto industry, which remains
> unpopular though it has been turning out pretty well.
>
> To many in the public, the health care bill was more a matter of death
> panels or special deals for Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska — who gave
> Democrats a crucial vote in support — or labor unions than about
> insuring 30 million more Americans, or ending discrimination against
> people with pre-existing conditions, or, most important, improving the
> economy and creating jobs.
>
> Deals always are cut to grease legislation — the bigger the spending or
> tax measure, the more special provisions. The issue is, which dominates:
> the pieces or the whole?
>
> A telling example is Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts in 1981, the centerpiece
> of that president’s agenda. He proposed huge but simple across-the-board
> tax reductions intended to spur economic growth. A congressional bidding
> war ensued, and the bill was laden with so many corporate loopholes and
> special favors that the budget director, David Stockman, later said “the
> hogs were really feeding” as it “just got out of control.” The end
> product was so bad that Mr. Reagan had to increase taxes each of the
> next three years.
>
> Yet that wasn’t the message conveyed. Mr. Reagan’s optimism in
> articulating the purpose overwhelmed any criticism of the particulars.
>
> By contrast, the Obama White House, which was intimately involved in
> shaping the particulars of both the stimulus and the health care bill,
> became so obsessed with the inside game that it lost sight of the vision
> or the narrative. Supporters had little idea what they were supposed to
> be supporting.
>
> Many Americans embrace the concept of overhauling health care and many
> of the particulars of the Democrats’ plan. It is the vague Obama plan,
> as defined by his opponents, that worries them, even in Massachusetts.
>
> This discord, or disconnect, is more important for the White House to
> try to address than the other suggested changes to the Obama presidency.
>
> The political left insists the problem is the president has lost his
> moorings and needs to energize the liberal base. The reality is that Mr.
> Obama is no left-winger, and liberals lack a majority in the Congress
> and the country.
>
> The other side says, move to the center and eschew those far-out
> policies. This is equally false. The health care measure rejects any
> government option and is embraced, in varying degrees, by the drug and
> insurance industries and the medical associations. They aren’t members
> of any liberal cabal, and neither is Mr. Obama; he’s a pragmatic
> progressive.
>
> Well, some say, then he took on too much; he should have waited to take
> on health care. The current measure’s fate hangs in the balance. But if
> Mr. Obama had waited, there would have been little chance any major
> effort would have been enacted in his presidency, whether it’s one or
> two terms. Ask former President George W. Bush about entitlements.
>
> The Obama slide has little to do with ideology or a too-ambitious
> agenda. It is a reflection of both the difficulty of the situation he
> inherited and the administration’s inability to balance conflicts, which
> is what effective leaders do.
>
> In few places is this value more necessary than the approach to big
> banks and Wall Street. Anti-corporate populism is a bankrupt policy for
> governance and often has a short political shelf life. Still, Mr. Obama
> can ill afford to cede the very legitimate populist anger over bailouts
> and bonuses and go back to business as usual on Wall Street.
>
> On this, he is off to a good start by channeling this anxiety into more
> than just a populist rant with the looming presence of Paul A. Volcker
> and the “Volcker rule” on limiting banks’ risks.
>
> The president threaded some of these needles in his State of the Union
> speech last week, adhering to his basic principles and articulating them
> well, while offering some concessions to political opponents. It won’t
> be easy to build on that over the next few months.
>
> It is harder, as the Obama camp is right to argue, because they
> inherited from the Bush administration a terrible mess: a fragile
> economy, out-of-control budget deficits and a dysfunctional and
> dangerously expensive health care system. Recently, a top Obama aide
> lamented to the president how much better it would be to govern in good
> times.
>
> “If it were good times,” Mr. Obama responded, “we wouldn’t be here.”
>
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