Politico has one of those 10,000 Harris/VandeHei word what-does-it-all-mean pieces about the Obama presidency. These pieces are often revolting, but IMHO, their piece in May/June 2008 (I can’t find it by google search) on how Hillary had no chance was one of the most sensible pieces on the 2008 campaign (which admittedly isn’t saying much). I think their take on Obama is reasonably accurate:
The imminent passage of financial reform, just a couple months after the passage of comprehensive health care, should decisively end the narrative that President Obama represents a Jimmy Carter-style case of naïve hope crushed by the inability to master Washington.
Yet the mystery remains: Having moved swiftly toward achieving the very policy objectives he promised voters as a candidate, Obama is still widely perceived as flirting with a failed presidency.
[…..]The problem is that he and his West Wing turn out to be not especially good at politics, or communications — in other words, largely ineffective at the very things on which their campaign reputation was built. And the promises he made in two years of campaigning turn out to be much less appealing as actual policies.
I think it’s a bit silly to conclude that the Obama administration is bad at politics (as opposed to passing bills), given that Obama’s approval rating is higher (eye-balling the numbers, about 3-4 points higher) than Reagan’s was at the same point of his presidency, in midst of an economy that is at least as bad as that of 1982. Reagan is, for better or worse (and I would say worse, of course), the dominant figure in American politics of the past 30 years, as Tom Schaller capably explain here. I can’t see how doing a little better than Reagan under equally tough or tougher circumstances makes the Obama administration bad at politics.
That said, I think the Politico piece is pretty good and I think this observation explains a lot of what is going on in terms of Obama media coverage:
In what would surprise media critics outside Washington, many reporters don’t much like Obama or his gang either. They accurately perceive the contempt with which they are held by his White House, an attitude that undoubtedly flows from the top. Insults and blustery non-responses, f-bombs flying, are common in how West Wing aides speak to reporters.
In a transactional city like Washington, personal relations usually only matter at the margins. But in a poor political climate those margins can be important, and there’s no mistaking that across the capital there are many people who seem to be enjoying the president’s travails, and cheering whenever he takes a cream pie to the face.
Update. Greg Sargent is right that the Politico analysis of liberal bloggers is dumb. I have to confess that my lack of interest in what Politico thinks about liberal bloggers made me skip over it when I read the article.
Brien Jackson
So, once again, the problem is that we have an irresponsible, unserious, juvenile press corp?
Davis X. Machina
I knew there was a reason I liked the guy.
Darius
It doesn’t surprise me that many reporters are rooting for Obama to fail. It does surprise me that Politico would admit this.
Mark
@Brien – my thoughts exactly. They sucked up to Bush rather than risk access by reporting the horrifying truth. And they were still treated like spectacular failures by the Bush administration. Now Obama treats them like failures too, and they revolt.
Sentient Puddle
I’m just going to relay a snippet of what Benen had to say about the article:
CalD
Well, silly me. I always thought that passing bills was a about the best objective metric there is for being good at politics.
merrinc
@Brien Jackson:
Edward R. Murrow wept.
Hmm, sounds familiar. Oh yeah, Bill Clinton. And Al Gore invented the internet but Bush was right to wage pre-emptive war. IOW, business as usual among the Fourth Estate.
DougJ
@Brien Jackson:
I think it’s mostly the economy that is the factor here. But, yes, our press corps sucks. I think pieces like this one from Politico truly are good in terms of setting the right perspective. It’s too bad that 90% of what goes on at Politico is just trolling for Drudge links.
DougJ
@CalD:
I’m just using their definition, I agree with you.
blackwaterdog
And yet, he marches on, accomplishing things that no one even dream to do for decades, and slowly, slowly, cleaning the most horrible mess any president ever left to his successor.
He might be just one-term president, but he won’t be the one losing from it. I wish the Left could see it, but i lost hope.
Brachiator
The Washington press corps is a necessary evil. I really don’t care whether or not they have pool parties with the Obamas, but I acknowledge the reality that journalist egos have to be stroked as often as those of Congress critters.
But I think that another issue is that some of the Obama Administration’s proposals don’t have fast, easy payoffs. For example, if part of financial reform led to an immediate decrease in consumer lending rates to 5%, you would have a tangible result that the average Joe or Jill could cheer about.
But Obama also has to do with an orchestrated ongoing attack from conservative media and politicians, which relentlessly criticizes everything that he does, even if Bush did exactly the same thing in the same circumstance, and which increasingly insists that the only legitimate political leaders are Republican Christians, preferably white males and oh yeah Sarah Palin and Bobby Jindal.
CalD
@DougJ: Understood. I was just piling on.
merrinc
@blackwaterdog:
Hey, nice to see you here. Love your photo diaries at GOS.
El Cid
This is a good question about recall — given that this much into their respective presidencies, was the Washington press corps already declaring that the Reagan administration had mostly failed? There was about as strong a dissent from the Democratic side as we’ve ever seen, including challenging the whole supply sider bullshit. But I think that with notable exceptions the press & pundit establishment was mostly happy with advanced knob-schlobbing of Reagan.
General Stuck
A quote from article by an administration official on background. Fairly apt, I would say. But also by the press clearly taking up as serious the wingnuts critiques of Obama and playing up the tea baggers xenophobic bullshit, who at best by polling, represent only about 18% of the population, but have absolutely dominated the news cycle on politics.
Why is this? The Black Elephant in the room? You decide.
And why did the left largely give Clinton breaks on his gooper light legislation priorities? Like backing NAFTA, and especially reforming welfare. Can you imagine the leftist heads exploding if Obama had done these things?
One thing I learned during the primaries is that a form of racism exists on the left as well. It is less virulent, and disguised in layers of nagging concerns and code talk of it’s own, such as Obama not being tough enough, or angry enough, Obama being too nice to repubs, etc…that begun with a black man can’t win the WH.
Davis X. Machina
When asked why they go to school, high school students routinely put ‘to learn stuff’ third or fourth on their lists. To see my friends and ‘to get out of the house’ always top their lists.
Political journalism seems to be committed largely for similar reasons.
DougJ
@El Cid:
Broder has a classic “Reagan has failed” piece from the early ’80s. I’ll see if I can find a link.
Comrade Jake
I’m sorry but I just perceive a lot of this to be incessant whining over access by political reporters. They need to get over themselves.
Adam Collyer
It’s insulting to me that “journalists” would gleefully cheer for the failure of the subject that they’re covering. I wish it weren’t like that.
I am not, however, blinded by the fact that it very much is like that.
For the past several years, I’ve enjoyed this administration’s chiding of the national media and Gibbs’ backhanded compliments and sarcastic quips. It’s often how I feel, and I’m glad they’re willing to slap them around a bit.
That being said, the administration would do well to cultivate positive feelings with the White House press corps. And, as sad as it is to say, supporters should probably not tear down the administration and rip reporters when the Vice President holds a barbeque for them. Instinctively, it’s uncomfortable. But in reality, even if this administration lasts 8 years, they will in no way affect the way the media operates.
The administration has no bearing on the media’s success. But the media has a great deal of weight on how the administration is perceived. Sometimes, I think you have to play the game.
neill
Two big things I see:
Politico is a big part of the nihilism-producing media miasma, which is actually one of the giant obstacles the Obama admin faces. Quite frankly, the media are dumber, more — for want of a better word, that would border on the theological — immature than anytime in memory, and afflicted with terminal narcissism… they all deserve to suffer major mentation difficulties and forget how to feed themselves and starve to death. But first I’d like to see a bunch of them eat Chris Matthews on the teevee in a great big zombie orgy.
Gawd, how I loathe the media in this country…
The right wing fervor in this country is kept boiling by various actors and agencies to keep hate and fear fragmenting society, to keep a good chunk of the middle class and lower middle class fighting against their own best political allies — and against their best economic interests — and the whole political phenomenon on the right has tried to keep Obama & Co. boxed in in every way possible. They have largely succeeded and somewhat due to Obama & Co’s own gutlessness and refusal to address how dangerously desperate the world grows…
i guess, in short, everyday i wake up and we appear to be even more fucked, doomed, careening toward the void than the day before…
CalD
Strange as it may seem, I find myself unsurprised by this. However it might surprise Harris & VandeHei to learn that outside their village, it’s the villagers themselves who are generally held in open contempt.
DougJ
@General Stuck:
I don’t think it’s racism, I think the fact is that the internet has given people who are fundamentally activists — Jane Hamsher, John Aravosis, etc. — a louder voice than before (this is true on the right as well, I think, but I don’t think about it as much). Activists are nutty pains in the ass, that’s just how it does. I like and respect a lot of them but they don’t have the same perspective that you or I do. I worked at an activist blog for quite a while and they’re just not from the same planet as you or I are.
cleek
fuck Politico.
one reason for the lack of positive coverage is that liberals don’t have a Fox News of their own, where libs could go and get their message out without having to deal with indifferent or ignorant-but-pretending-to-be-hard-hitting hosts and the he-said-she-said format the ostensibly-neutral networks live by. libs can’t really get their message out if it’s constantly eye-rolled or shouted-over by douchebages like David Gregory or Wolf Blitzer.
El Cid
@General Stuck:
At the time “the left” didn’t, neither with regard to NAFTA or welfare reform. A quite large and active opposition between labor, environmental, and liberal/left media groups actively protested, spoke, and wrote against the legislation. (Having participated in these activities and met repeatedly with Democratic politicians, I can include myself.) And I think such people were right that its hostile passage with a Republican majority in both houses over and against a majority of Democrats in both houses contributed very strongly to Democratic losses in 1994. However, the treaty itself was pretty much immune to any sort of change lest the entire political establishment reverse itself, since alterations of NAFTA itself are barred else the entire treaty is in breach. So, once it passed, there wasn’t much to do about it.
KG
@Darius: the Washington press corp is really only interested in drama. 9/11 and the two wars that followed were great drama in their eyes. I’m not so sure they’re rooting for his failure as much as they are rooting for drama, you know something interesting to report.
My other thought was on this line:
In political campaigns you generally make vague general promises about what you want to do. When you actually win and have to govern, you have to deal with 535 members of congress who made similar promises which means you end up having to compromise. There’s that old saying about politics being the art of the possible and all that jazz. Well, it’s really about compromise and at some point you have to make the decision as to whether you’re willing to take half (or even a quarter) loaf today or not. On top of all that, governing is boring, people don’t care about it (see, Washington, DC and Sacramento, CA); but elections and campaigns? Now that’s where the action is.
General Stuck
@DougJ:
it is true the internet has given voice to more people, and it is impossible to know how that would have played out with Clinton. And maybe racism is too strong a word for what I’m describing/ There is something askew however, imo, that cannot simply be explained away as just activism. A disconnect from reality by some people smart enough to know better. I don’t know what it is exactly, but I am sure it exists.
Brien Jackson
@DougJ:
They’re not activists. Or, at least, they’re not effective activists. They’re preeners and self-promoters using the banner of activism to boost their profile.
blackwaterdog
@merrinc:
Ohh, thank you so much. Nice to be here. Sanity.
Brien Jackson
@General Stuck:
I think there’s a lot of obtuseness going on. The “why won’t Obama just get angry” criticism, for example, is just completely oblivious to the reality of how white America and the corporate media would immediately tag him with the Angry Black Man label, and what that would do to him politically. It’s racially ignorant, in other words, but I don’t know that I’d call it racism.
Hamsher, on the other hand, is building a portfolio to the extent that I think it’s fair to question her opinions on black people.
Davis X. Machina
@cleek: You mean The Nation isn’t enough? Damn…
The problem a lot of the time isn’t biased coverage as such. It’s refusal-to-cover that works out as the same as if it were in fact biased.
Posit a party A that basically has nothing but contempt for governance, and views the only legitimate function of the State as providing a police escort for their getaway car, and a party B that is, I don’t know, actually trying to form a more perfect union, promote the general welfare and such.
Now posit a press that considers anyone who takes this stuff seriously to be beneath contempt, hopelessly unhip, and probably a member of the math team. And that this is the motor that drives their coverage.
Which party profits from this state of affairs? And it’s free — you don’t even have to buy them off. Just keep them out there doing their ‘Too cool for school’ stuff, and it works out the same as if they were bought.
Turns out for some people high school isn’t preparation for adult life — it is adult life.
General Stuck
@El Cid: You are right about there being opposition, and we didn’t have the internet then. But compared to Clinton, Obama’s initiatives are much much more liberal than Clinton’s, and I stand by my observation that he is getting hammered by the left more than Clinton did, given Clinton’s DLC mindset and policies. Internet or not.
El Cid
O/T: Has Rush Limbaugh visited London recently? Did he explode over there? Have a digestive incident?
If they find a strong presence of oxycontin, we’ll know.
NonyNony
@General Stuck:
They didn’t. Bill Clinton was pretty reviled by “the left” during his early term in office. And by “the left” here I mean the white, middle-class to upper-middle-class guys that are usually meant when reporters, bloggers and others use the phrase “the left” – much like Obama, Bill Clinton’s support from minorities on the political left was pretty rock solid for his time in office.
Where Bill Clinton soared back into popularity, and got “the left” back onto his side, was when Newt got into power. Suddenly Clinton started looking really good. Hell I was pretty much on the “other side” at the time – I voted for HW Bush and had been raised in a Republican house – and Newt’s House of Representatives was the thing that really jarred me into severely re-assessing everything I’d ever been taught about being Republican. And my friends on “the left” suddenly stopped whining about Clinton and started defending him. And that was when Clinton started his rehab with the left. The articles of impeachment being read against him reinforced it, and by the time he left office he was a liberal hero.
So yeah, Clinton was objectively worse in some ways than Obama was for leftist politics. But if Boehner or Cantor become Speaker of the House you’ll find “the left” suddenly energized behind Obama again. Especially if the dipshits in the House go to make a martyr of him and drum up impeachment articles over pointless crap like they did with Clinton – that sort of shit is exactly the kind of martyr complex crap that will get everyone on “the left” back to promoting Obama as a liberal hero. Even as he performs his version of Clinton’s welfare reform.
Our politics really are fucking stupid, aren’t they?
wengler
I just thought how embarrassing it will be when “news” operations like Politico lead the way to try to impeach Obama.
DougJ
@Brien Jackson:
They have a similar mindset to local activists I’ve worked with.
Corner Stone
@El Cid:
Thank you for correcting this.
The left was furious, and continues to be very hot under the collar about several large items of WJC’s presidency.
It’s also one of the reasons I hold Rahm in such disdain, as he continues to somehow believe NAFTA was a good thing for D politicians and policies.
General Stuck
@NonyNony:
yea, And i must admit to not being involved with politics during most of Clinton’s presidency, so I defer to those of you who were. I am just trying to make sense out of the stupid shit I read on blogs is all. Maybe it is simply natural with an open forum like the internet.
Zandar
The larger problem is that Politico is pretending that they are not part of the problem of spreading the false meme of the Already Failed Obama Presidency while simultaneously declaring that the Obama administration has failed at politics.
Brien Jackson
@Corner Stone:
A segment of the left, anyway. Trade issues don’t really break down on left-right terms, and there’s a large segment of the left who very much embraces free trade.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@DougJ:
Now that’s a surprise.
On topic: It’s the economy. Barring something like 9/11 or Katrina (or a blow job), a huge chunk of any president’s approval rating is going to be based on the economy. Given how extraordinarily bad the economy is–my sense is that it’s much worse than it was in the early ’80s, but I was a kid– and the fact that Obama is still the most popular national politician (by a pretty good margin, IIANM), I think this article is pretty well off base.
El Cid
@General Stuck: I’d like some way of objectively answering that question. I mean, if you don’t see chatter on internet blogs as some amazingly significant thing, I don’t really recall ‘the left’ being harsher on Obama. Personally my friends who were and still are on the left said much harsher things about Clinton than they have about Obama.
And though there was no internet, back then if you read not just the major name writers for The Nation or The Progressive, etc., and made your way to lefter publications or letters sections, I think you saw much harsher things being said.
So, I disagree with your recollection. I don’t think I’ve seen anything convincing that opinion on the left and liberal side is harsher on Obama than on Clinton, and from what I’ve seen it’s the reverse, and far more favorable to Obama. I mean, just going back to NAFTA, there hasn’t been active organizing and public debates and the like opposing an Obama administration policy anything like that, and, no, in my view, the minor complaints and internet fund raising campaigns against HCR on the left-liberal side of the spectrum don’t seem to me on the same scale.
Davis X. Machina
@Zandar: The Politico is essentially the non-instructional part of my day, with the proviso that you replace ‘the election’ with ‘the prom’.
General Stuck
So I guess the dems will have to lose the House for lefty’s to rally around Obama. Go figure.
Lawnguylander
As for the anonymous White House attack, I’m not biting on that one, and I hope others also refrain from doing so.
That’s the closing sentence from Sargent’s article and it convinced me that he doesn’t believe his own blanket defense of liberal bloggers.
Tonal Crow
Now I loathe most of the media. But it’s painfully obvious that the WH’s failure to butter them up is politically damaging. C’mon, who’s going to write a more favorable story: the reporter whose stupid questions you’ve graciously acknowledged and whose appetite you’ve plied with steak and alcohol, or the one you’ve flipped off and fed granola bars and water?
That said, it’s fine to flip off Fox “News”. They’re not journalists, but pure GOP hacks. And they’re never going to write anything favorable anyway.
blackwaterdog
@General Stuck:
Actually, there’s more than a touch of racism there, and it’s undeniable. Obama is being held to a different standards than any previous president, and there’s a very disturbing lordship underline is much of the criticism coming from the Left.
slag
I’m going to disagree with this assessment (as much as it surprises me to do so). I’m more convinced by Ambinder’s argument (to some extent):
Admittedly, I don’t care about it being popular to like Obama; I do unpopular shit all the time and have no intention of stopping now. But I do think that the doldrums will only be cured by seeing government alleviate some real, current problems. The economy, the war, the goddamned fucking oil spill…serious improvement in those areas is the only thing that’s going to help Democrats out at this point.
I love to hate on some media. I can’t deny that. And their gossipy assholery may not be helping us recognize the improvements we’ve made since the election, for sure. Nonetheless, no amount of yakkity yakking is going to put more money in people’s pockets, capture Osama Bin Laden, or clean up the Gulf of Mexico. At least not now.
Or, to put it bluntly: It’s the reality, stupid.
General Stuck
@El Cid: Sorry, I cannot agree with this assertion. But I can see the left rallying around Clinton due to the impeachment and other crap done by the winger majority in congress. Paying too much attention to internet chatter on my part, at least in my grumpy state today is likely spot on however. So I will shut up on that.
Zifnab
@cleek:
They’ve got MSNBC. They’ve got the Daily Show / Colbert Report. And that’s as close as you’re going to get.
I know plenty of conservatives that soured on FOX a long time ago, because it was shallow and obnoxious and highly inaccurate. And they go around saying, “Boo-hoo if only we had a real conservative network, rather than a pack of media hacks, the Republican Party would be doing better.”
No. The Democratic Party isn’t doing well because it’s repeatedly forced to compromise on good legislation. And the Republican Party isn’t doing well because it’s repeatedly embraced bad legislation. The media game gives legislation a spin and casts politicians in a certain light, but the fundamentals don’t change.
If you want to know why Obama is getting his ass kicked – take a page from Bill Clinton. It’s the economy, stupid.
If Obama’s programs can turn the economy around, no one is going to give a fuck what Chris Matthews and Sean Hannity think.
Joshua
The strange this is by all accounts, Bush didn’t much like or respect reporters either. Remember the time he tried to run them over with a tractor? And there is no indication he threw cocktail parties with Sally Quinn, either.
Yet they all still kissed his ass. For 8 years.
Corner Stone
@Brien Jackson:
Agreed to some extent.
I was against NAFTA for mainly labor issues, other people I knew were against it for environmental reasons, and some were for it on humanitarian reasoning.
General Stuck
@blackwaterdog: I agree, but we seem to be in the minority on that count, at least on this thread.
Kryptik
And all I have to wonder about this section is…do they wonder whether or not the latter is REASON for the former? I wonder. After all, it’s not like people could remember the promotion of the ‘Not a Real Citizen!’, ‘Seekrit Muslin’, ‘Radical Black Racist like Rev. Wright’ crap from the election. Not to mention showering McCain with Lauds, Coffee, and Doughnuts.
Allison W.
@Adam Collyer:
Several years? how long have I been asleep?
AxelFoley
@General Stuck:
This. All this.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@General Stuck:
I doubt the firebagger/Naderite left is really big enough to effect the elections significantly. The problem, as I see it, is old patterns that are made larger by two current trends: 1) The mid-term electorate is always older, whiter, richer, more rural than presidential voters, and this problem is exacerbated in 2010 by the fact that Obama brought in so many new voters, people who weren’t and aren’t in the habit of voting and don’t really get the importance of mid-terms; 2) again, the economy, people are discouraged and frustrated. I admit I don’t have any data for that first point, it’s just my general sense.
slag
@DougJ:
Maybe. But I’d still like to see a Balloon Juice Act Blue page dedicated to the midterms. Just because. I’m needy that way.
Chrisd
You’d see the same rally again if Obama were to be impeached by a hostile Republican congress.
I do think the left’s reaction to Obama’s centrist policies is far stronger than it was to Clinton’s, however. But I attribute this to “fool me once” rather than racism.
Zifnab
@General Stuck: I think if the Democrats lose the House, the independents are going to get a cold glass of Gingrich-style wtf. And they’re going to rebound back to Obama. And then, once the liberals feel they’ve got the independents behind them again, you’ll start seeing their opinions change too.
Liberals see the President losing popularity and don’t want their pet policies to go down with Obama’s ship. So they turn on him. If the President regains popularity and power, you’ll see the liberals come back to him.
Conservatives, after ’06 and ’08, hated GWB with a burning passion. Not because of what he did, but because of what his image did to their causes. Liberals aren’t much different in that regard.
Allison W.
I found this at Think Progress:
http://thinkprogress.org/2010/07/15/bush-miss-poll/
Davis X. Machina
@El Cid:The Nation and The Progressive were both strongly anti-Clinton on nearly everything except the Middle East. The post-’94 midnight-basketball-and-school-uniform Clinton liberalism drove them to a level of shrill little different from that later heard against Bush II. I let Nation subscription lapse at one point in the ’90’s not because they were wrong, but because they were so damn repetitious. That and the belief on the part of one or two of their columnists that two hundred years after Voltaire’s death being vocally anti-religious was still somehow edgy and transgressive.
The ‘left’ that was vocally pro-Clinton prior to impeachment was largely a technocratic, bien-pensant left — in other words, not very left at all. A Tony-Blair-New-Labour sort of left.
Brien Jackson
@Tonal Crow:
Interestingly, for as much as I hear Obama ought to act more like a Republican, this is basically one place where he kind of is. After all, conservatives don’t do much in the way of buttering up the media; they attack them relentlessly, treat them with scorn, and never give them credit for anything. It works for them, not so much for Democrats.
Brien Jackson
@blackwaterdog:
I think that probably has more to do with the revised history progressives have internalized than it does with racism.
schrodinger's cat
It is becoming increasingly clear that the Beltway media is much harsher on the Obama administration than it ever was on the Bush administration
JC
This is just the normal Beltway gossip backbiting sharks, trolling the water, and the ‘analysis’, that looms whenever a Gallup poll is low.
It’s interesting as a temperature of the Beltway class, but not much else. If Obama got another big win, or the polls went up, the narrative would soon change, and suddenly the political team would “have the pulse of the country”, or some such.
No, like I said in a previous post, the problem is structural. I think obama and his team, given the political and structural realities, have done a good job.
Now, do I think things should have been done differently?
Well, let’s look at decisions made, that I wanted to be different:
a. Summers and Geithner. I didn’t want those guys who were ‘part’ of the mess, to be in charge. Obama made a mistake?
rebuttal:. It was imperative, though grating, that the ‘bankster class’, had someone, though not right on the inside, someone who they could ‘do business with’ An outsider, given the fragility of the financial world at the time, would have made things worse. (Structural limitation that Obama and team faced)
b. Should have had a bigger stimulus. Paul Krugman, others who knew what they were talking about, all said a bigger stimulus was needed.
rebuttal. The stimulus bill barely passed. And wouldn’t have, if it had been bigger. (Senate political limitation that Obama faced, along with conservaDems)
c. Health care should have been everyone on Medicare, or some better form of universal coverage. I agree!
rebuttal. Just look at how close the vote was. Obama and team got what they could get. (political limitation, as above)
As i said earlier, though, right now, the angry right is energized, while the regular voter is enervated, and unhappy, because of the job situation.
And Obama and team can’t even get through unemployment extension, much less a 2nd stimulus.
so, very possible the american public will ‘punish’ Obama, for the ‘JUST SAY NO!’ tactics of the Republicans. And if this means they Republicans take the House, then forget about any more policy improvements, for the next 2 years, as the conservative noise machine will decide to live out of House Investigation chambers. you know. Setup beds. order in pizza every night. Etc.
So this last year and a half of policy deliveries, may be as good as it gets, until the Republicans embarrass themselves again, and Obama wins another term.
Then we get another year and a half, of, I hope, even more infrastructure investment, improvements of the medical system, as well as a big push towards climate change stuff.
Kryptik
@Brien Jackson:
Republican Attacks Media for Being Too Liberal > News outlets fall over themselves to assure that they’ll be covering the Beck beat in a ‘fair and balanced manner’
Democrat Attacks Media for Being Too Conservative > News outlets fall over themselves to assure that they’re just being fair and balanced and hippies need to stop begging for more liberal bias.
Brien Jackson
@Corner Stone:
Yeah, trade issues have a lot of fault lines that aren’t neatly wrapped up by any particular over-arching political identity.
Corner Stone
@Zifnab:
I don’t understand this. What liberal policy is Obama associated with that any change in his popularity could effect?
Can no one understand that some factions of the populace feel very strongly about certain issues?
And isn’t it just as likely that he will regain popularity and power when those issues are addressed?
Nick
@General Stuck:
Well that’s the point when they realize they’re irrelevant, so yeah. There were zero influential progressive groups after 1994 until Clinton’s impeachment and barely any after until about 2004.
Zifnab
@AxelFoley: Bullshit. Race has absolutely nothing to do with it. If anything, being the first black President gave Obama extra leeway, because the progressives were looking for change and were ready to grasp at anything.
Obama has embraced the status quo after George Bush dragged said quo deep into right field. He’s stood ground on secret prisons and wiretapping and enhanced interrogation. He’s repeatedly offered to compromise with Republican Senators and Congressmen – folks who are simply aching to destroy him both politically and personally. He’s not Che Barack and I think a lot of people thought he would be. He’s friendly with corporations, compassionate towards upper income taxpayers, bipartisan in word and deed.
A number of liberals wanted Liberal George Bush. Someone who would break all the laws and bust all the asses that George Bush did.
This is not 1992. We are not coming off a twelve year Republican Dynasty. People had expectations – in part fueled by Obama’s own election year rhetoric. There was a genuine let down. Don’t play the race card here.
Allison W.
Well snubbing the media is working for Palin. Maybe Obama should sex it up a little, leave his shirt open a bit once in a while.
Tonal Crow
@Brien Jackson: Conservatives don’t have to butter up the media; the media are already leaning their way. Also, there’s no comparison between how activists (and even most Congresscritters) can treat the press, and how the WH — as the singular representative of the executive branch — can do so. And I really meant that bit about steak and alcohol. The stomach’s influence on the brain is quite remarkable, and only a fool ignores it.
Brien Jackson
@Zifnab:
1. You know, you lose a lot of force behind your argument when you go from secret prisons to comprising with the minority Congressional party on legislation. Just saying.
2. For the umpteenth time, in various places there was no alternative to compromising with Republican Senators, because their votes were required to pass the legislation.
Nick
@JC: This doesn’t jive with the
realliberal fantasy world.Mark S.
@Zifnab:
Wow, you know a lot more intellectually honest conservatives than I do. The ones I know get all their fucking news from Fox. Well, that’s not entirely fair. They also get some from Rush and chain emails.
General Stuck
@Zifnab: Sorry zifnab, I will call bullshit on your bullshit charge. Flatly stating that race is not a factor whatsoever with the left is absurd. We all have problems with processing racial difference, no matter how liberal minded we think we are. And the rest of your critique of Obama embracing all of Bush’s bullshit sounds like firebagger blather I didn’t expect from you.
Tonal Crow
@Brien Jackson: On compromise, Obama should begin with a position more ambitious than he really wants, then let Senator Obstructo bargain him back to his ideal. Instead, he’s usually begun with a significant compromise, and let Senator Obstructo bargain him firmly onto the GOP side. Ambition often creates its own momentum, while precompromise often kills it. Would we have put a man on the moon in 1969 if Kennedy had said, “I might make it a priority to consider sending a human to the moon sometime within the next decade”?
slag
@Nick:
Haha! When has the left ever not realized they’re irrelevant? I’m pretty sure that constant realization is the very reason for their antipathy toward Democrats, in general, right now. Or, at least, I’m pretty sure it’s my reason.
Sentient Puddle
@Allison W.: That and/or rejigger his video addresses as such.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Brien Jackson: Seriously? She was the one who taped and posted the video of PUMA’s going off at that DNC meeting. If she was a PUMA herself, why would she post that?
redoubt
@Davis X. Machina:
Agree x10. Never forget–these people hate democracy, and the democratic process. That’s why they run opinion polls instead of campaigns. They self-select a handful of people who agree with them and call that “everyone’s” vote.
Zifnab
@Corner Stone: Take health care. The House and Senate embraced some serious compromises to get the bill passed. When the last vote was cast, the bill had something like 38% approval.
Democrats wanted more. They wanted public option or Medicare-for-all. And they wanted cheap pharmaceuticals and a guarantee of lower costs of care.
Republicans wanted less. They wanted to kill the bill, or at least retain the large corporate subsidies that the bill ended.
So now, when the bill is unpopular, the Democrats turn on the President claiming their pet issues would have made the bill MORE popular, in response to Republicans who claim the bill was never popular to begin with. I’ve pulled this rhetorical trick myself, claiming that if the Public Option had been left in and drug prices were reduced, you’d have seen better approval ratings.
Had the bill held 50+% approval, I think you’d see fewer liberals complaining or bucking the President, because when challenged they could claim everyone loves the bill for it’s merits. Now they’ve got to claim, “Well I’m in the majority too – I don’t like the bill. But not for your reasons.”
The bill is – politically speaking – Obama’s baby. So its popularity and Obama’s are linked. If Obama’s popularity rises, HCR popularity rises, and liberals will be more comfortable supporting both the bill and Obama.
That’s my prediction.
slag
@Mark S.:
Mega dittos here!
danimal
Things I believe that no one else is saying:
1. The political winds that are at the GOP backs will shift two or three times before November.
2. The media creates a narrative of success/failure that shifts with the political winds, or often enough BEFORE the political winds shift. IOW, the media narratives alternate positive and negative in order to generate controversy, discussion, ratings, etc. Example: Watch Tweety and see how he shifts the objects of his bashing from Dems to Reps.
3. Obama is in “getting stuff done” mode. He will pivot to “campaign mode” later in the summer.
4. For some reason, the GOP gets even more wacky during the summer months. It’s their peak season. When the wingularity occurs, it will be in July/August.
5. News events are fickle. Ending the oil spillage, capturing OBL, improved jobs numbers, or any number of plausible events can lift the fog of depression quickly.
6. We really haven’t internalized the gift the GOP has given us with the tea party and their craziness. The GOP has painted itself into some tight corners.
7. Despite points 1-6, not much else matters if the economy sucks, expect losses until the economy improves.
Bill H
My lack of interest in what Politico thinks anout anything is such that I have not actually been to their fucking site in years. When that silly idiot with the pursed lips, what’s his name? oh yeah, Roger Simon, comes on Hardball and starts giving his prissy opinion about anything I go clean the bathroom or bathe the cat or something.
El Cid
@Davis X. Machina: I’ll accept your recollection, because I just didn’t so intensively follow either The Nation or The Progressive.
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
Gee, now there is a shock.
Because outside of the White House, pretty much everybody else in the country holds the American media and the press corps in such high regard. We just put them on a pedestal and hold them up as a standard to the world.
Why is the White House so out of step on this?
NonyNony
@Mark S.:
All of the intellectually honest conservatives I know are either Democrats or Independents these days.
Hell that’s a good chunk of what’s wrong with our political discourse – two conservative parties. One of them that is good old fashioned conservative (Democrats) and one that’s batshit crazy and is out to drown the country in a bathtub (Republicans). Is it any wonder our political system is fucked up when our political discourse is so skewed?
JC
danimal,
I agree with all your points, but number 7 is key. And will end up driving both actual congressional losses, and the narrative.
bobbo
I question the assumption that this whole piece is based on.
The ever-present passive voice makes it just a meaningless, unprovable assertion that says more about the writer that it does about Obama. And he gets to make it sound like it’s not strictly his own view, which it is. “Widely?” By whom? Me and my drinking buddies?
You can’t then try to explain a fact that isn’t actually a fact, no matter how many words you spew.
El Cid
@Corner Stone: I actually opposed NAFTA due to not only US issues but the work of Mexican independent (i.e., not controlled by the then-ruling party) unions and peasant organizations in opposing it.
Brien Jackson
@Tonal Crow:
Oh ferchrissakes, this again?
Midnight Marauder
@DougJ:
It’s interesting, because every time I see this topic come up-about (latent) racism on the Left, especially with so-called “progressives”–I immediately think back to this piece by Al Girodano:
I don’t really have any respect anymore for so-called “progressive activists” (I’m especially looking at you, David Sirota), because they aren’t progressives and they aren’t activists. They are wholly self-interested agitators. They have no interest in actually solving problems in a fashion that works in the real world and benefits actual living human beings, otherwise, they wouldn’t engage in such egregious counterproductive behavior when people are trying to achieve allegedly shared goals. Sure, they do some nice things from time to time, and that’s all well and good. But there are a lot of assholes in this world who do nice things from time to time; I appreciate the nice things you are doing, but make no mistake–you are still an asshole with no serious credibility.
Do you know why they don’t have the same perspective we do? It’s because their perspective is oozing with actual elitism. They don’t care about the people their proposed policies would supposedly champion; they are about increasing their reputations and self-worth. Anyone who can say with a straight face that the Affordable Care Act doesn’t actually benefit anyone is being an oblivious, ignorant fool. You either don’t think those millions of people are worthing cracking the door open for, or you do but not if it doesn’t happen on the terms you want. Either you’re selfish or you are just petty. There’s nothing really that makes you look favorable here. My eyes are open to this on the Left just as much as it is on the Right.
And in other news, my already sagging esteem for Dave Weigel just took another critical hit, with his post today, “Is New Black Panther panic the right’s answer to militia panic on the left?”:
What on Earth…? Because Oklahoma City is the only example ever of domestic terrorism committed by radicalized white separatists and supremacists? And this guy is supposed to the preeminent expert on the right wing? Seriously?
El Cid
@bobbo:
Maybe this just means he winked at Bush Jr. in a really rakish manner.
General Stuck
It gives me great comfort and joy, the knowledge that blogs have little impact in the real world. Maybe they spawn an occasional Politico article, or a left/liberal guest segment on cable news that nobody watches, but that is about it. Thanky the lard. Think I’ll go Galt a while, and flush out the libtard angst.
cleek
@Zifnab:
definitely agree.
which makes it even more odd that it wasn’t designed to get going more quickly. dragging it out for years and years probably makes some sense from an implementation standpoint, but it does fuck-all for the political fortunes of the party who deserves credit for it. yes, i know improving our health care system is more important than electoral concerns. but on the other hand, it’s not a non-concern. plus, the slow implementation gives the GOP a lot of time to fuck around with the programs, and possibly to abort them before they even get going.
Davis X. Machina
@cleek: The #1 reason for the slow implementation, especially the 2014 roll-out for the big stuff, was to guarantee that the 10-year CBO score would arrive where it needed to be to clear the Senate. The more expensive items — especially the subsidies — then are paid out for only 6 of the ten years, 2014-2020.
Again, no filibuster, no problem.
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
Don’t know if you are saying that cheek in tongue, or are serious, but it’s true. Neither the blogs nor the media in general can be shown to have any particular impact on the real world (in other words, on votes). The press generally thought that Reagan was a well meaning doofus, and the voters loved him even more.
I think it’s hilarious that a bunch of college professors run a blog that pimps the media’s influence on the world, and does so without even a granule of empirical evidence to support the theory, and won’t brook any disagreement with the theory. One front pager here even claimed that it wasn’t even worth discussing.
Self referential navelgazing is a powerful drug in the blog and media business, Stuckeroo.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Midnight Marauder:
Weigel wrote those words? Wow. His brains must still be scrambled from being dropped on his head by Donnie Graham. What, exactly, are the good intentions of the militia movement, so fairly unrepresented in the liberal media (I guess)? Do they do fund-raisers for children’s hospitals or something else I’m unaware of?
@El Cid:
LOL
General Stuck
@DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective:
No tongue in cheek. I think it’s a true fact mr. TZ/
It is usually fun navel gazing though, better than smoking a cig to kill 5 minutes.
Midnight Marauder
And in what world is this even a real fucking thing?! Do they even know what a media critic is, or what they regularly talk about? I mean, I always knew the Village was a totally different world, but this different?! I am always amazed when entities I know to be hopelessly imbecilic manage to achieve new heights.
Kudos to you, Politico. Kudos indeed.
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
@General Stuck:
Fun, but in the same sense that nailbiting or leg jiggling are fun. Eh?
Anyway, I am five years smoke free in about 3 weeks! Almost any bad habit is better than smoking.
I am pretty sure I could be dead by now if I hadn’t quit.
El Cid
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Someone has to stop Hillary Clinton from ordering a Russia-UN invasion of the Heartland in order to stop us from discovering that Big Medicine has hidden from us that colloidal silver can stop all illnesses.
Kristine
@Davis X. Machina: Yet they accepted this attitude from the Bushies, and seemed to compete with each other to earn conservative approval.
Chicago Todd
“I think this observation explains a lot of what is going on in terms of Obama media coverage: In what would surprise media critics outside Washington, many reporters don’t much like Obama or his gang either. They accurately perceive the contempt with which they are held by his White House, an attitude that undoubtedly flows from the top.”
But how does one explain the Bush and Co. coverage who dissed the press corp openly and aggressively, and yet the press all fell in line and swooned over Bush (at least until it became safe not to when other conservatives started bashing him). Lapdogs I think was the phrase.
Obama has a “D” after his name — there are some lapdogs (thinking Jonathan Alter), but the rest of the high school gaggle of reporters are happy to not “much like Obama” because they want to be part of the cool kids on the block. And the cool kids are bashing Obama.
And this coming from a deeply disappointed, disgusted voter for Obama who was stupid enough to “hope”. If this was “hope”, I “hope” I never win a million dollars!
Mark S.
On the other hand, Malkin and her cretins going Defcon 5 over Rachel Ray wearing a scarf while shilling for Dunkin Donuts was a valuable contribution to the national discourse.
About the only part of the article I agree with is the unemployment section. The rest is just concern trolling, such as:
I didn’t know presidents were supposed to ensure that our House of Lords members never have to suffer the indignity of a primary. As for the states in question, Arkansas is a lost cause, Colorado looks like a tossup (I didn’t know anything about it until five minutes ago, they haven’t even held their primaries yet so it’s very up in the air), and I like our chances in Penn against the club-for-growth guy.
Davis X. Machina
See my post #30. They may have been held in contempt by the Bush White House, but they had an opportunistic community of interest with it stronger than any desire for revenge.
Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac
Obama has a low approval rating because about a third of the country has lost its mind.
Was there a swath of people in this country who were so antithetical to reality as the Tea party is today back during Regan’s years?
Tom Q
A couple of things:
As one who was around, I have to concur that there was plenty of lefty contempt for Clinton. I even remember arguing with one friend who said that Clinton had brought all the pseudo-scandals (TravelGate, etc.) on himself, deserved his treatment. There just wasn’t the Internet amplification we have today; plus the press didn’t have the interest they have today in using that as a means of indicating presidential weakness. The press attitide then was that ignoring the left was the only proper thing to do.
And, as far as NAFTA, I’d agree it was an underrated cause of the ’94 debacle, alienating as it did alot of what used to be called the lunch-pail Dems. But the press never even considered this possibilty; they were in lock-step that Clinton had failed by “lurching to the left”.
One lefty take on Obama that truly irks me is the notion that he’s not matching liberal fantasies of past or present. One oft-repeated complaint is, Obama’s health care is less progressive than the one Jimmy Carter proposed. Well, fine — but I’d tend to rate his bill against others that were actually ENACTED. I could propose today that we send a man to Pluto — I don’t think that would undercut the achivement of the first person to fly to Mercury.
I think Politico subtextually makes a big confession: that coverage of Obama all year has been driven by “we don’t like him/let’s imagine worst-case” thinking in the press. In effect, this entire year –at least since Scott Brown — has been covered through the prism of an election debacle that hasn’t yet happened and may never happen. I don’t deny the effect a bad economy can have on a midterm, but things are roughly where the GOP had them in 1982, and they escaped losing only 26 House seats and, I believe, staying even in the Senate (far better than had been predicted shortly before Election Day). If we got a like outcome this year, I think most Dems would be fine, given context. But it would render an entire cycle’s worth of coverage essentially null and void.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Harris and Vandehei, of course, both being alumni of the Post, and members of the club Weigel was fired from. If DW had posted that shit about the “New Black Panthers” being the equivalent of the militia movement, he probably not only wouldn’t have been fired, he’d have been invited for chamomile and ginger snaps in Uncle Broder’s office.
Davis X. Machina
@Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac: If you accept as a working hypothesis that at any given time just under one-third of the country at any given time is frankly psychotic, a lot of things make sense.
I don’t know if it’s true, but like any good theory, it saves the phenomena.
El Cid
It’s too bad the West Virginia murderous mine owner asshole Don Blankenship is unlikely to face a firing squad.
The real problem here, though, is that there was too much regulatin’ and too much enforcement. We shoulda let the free market save these guys’ lives.
You do, however, have to give them credit for on-the-spot creativity in avoiding annoying danger alarms.
Kudos, and I don’t say this often, to NPR, for doing actual journalism.
Zifnab
@Brien Jackson: I’m not suggesting what Obama did was wrong in his attempts to compromise. I’m just saying his lack of confrontationalism is a huge departure from the Bush Years. Cheney, DeLay, and Frist regularly busted balls. A fair number of liberals and independents didn’t want to see Obama, Reid, and Pelosi play so nice.
Hell, more than a few Democrats were insulted when Pelosi refused to spend all of ’07 and ’08 on an impeachment trial.
Again, strategically and politically, Obama got his bills passed. That’s a lot more than can be said for Bush’s Social Security Privatization or his Patriot Act 2. But playing nice has a political price just like playing dirty does. He lost some support because his supporters wanted to see heads roll.
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
Of course. The only differences between then, and now, are that (a) the swath was less visible and less vocal, and (b) the media paid less attention to them.
I grew up listening to Dan Smoot on the radio. You ain’t heard crazy shit until you have heard Dan Smoot crazy shit.
There’s nothing really new in the crazy shit world. The only new thing is the visibility created by modern media and technology.
brendancalling
interesting.
after demonstrating that they’re a bunch of feckless, dishonest, stupid, juvenile, contemptible worse-than-whores with no dignity from 2000-2008, the press is now very upset to be treated like bunch of feckless, dishonest, stupid, juvenile, contemptible worse-than-whores with no dignity.
funny how that works…
cleek
there’s also the “blood in the water” aspect. the HCR process was a debacle (regardless of the outcome; and because of the implementation delay, its benefits can’t overcome the GOP’s attacks). the oil spill handling has been weak (optically). his poll numbers are low (not extraordinarily, but still they are sub 50%). the economy sucks. etc.. so the press now thinks “Obama is weak and failing”. and they’re going after him.
of course, this happens to all politicians who hit streaks of bad luck. it’s part of the job.
Brien Jackson
@El Cid:
Meh, get back to me if they actually keep pushing it to the point they force it to be a story.
Brien Jackson
@Zifnab:
This is basically just revisionist history. It also ignores that Senate Democrats from 2003-05 weren’t nearly as obstructionist as the current Republican minority.
Corner Stone
@Zifnab:
I still think this is a little like argument by tautology. The President is popular because he’s popular. Or he’s unpopular because he’s unpopular.
What about the idea that his popularity can be driven by producing outcomes people like and perceive as making their life better?
A kind of cause and effect type thingie.
Speaking just for me, I don’t judge a legislative outcome on how much wood the President gives me in the morning. Nor do I judge it on who is opposed to it.
tomvox1
I think the really pernicious aspect of these sorts of stories is the way it is just assumed as fact that it’s important to properly court the Villagers because if they don’t like you, it really doesn’t matter what you achieve in terms of policy (and conversely, if they do like you, it doesn’t matter how badly you fuck up). This innate high school pettiness in today’s press corp (its Sally Quinnification, if you like) makes it impossible for them to recognize that the gears of history are turning all around them and record the results accurately. Those are qualities of observation and interpretation of real-time events that used to define the occupation of “journalist” and “pundit.” Now they are a bunch of gossip columnists with axes to grind dressed up in “very serious” drag.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Brien Jackson:
In 2005, Democratic use of the filibuster was a low-level Beltway crisis; in 2010, sixty votes has been the threshold for passage of bills in the Senate ever since we were attacked by Oceania.
also, too, Bush-Cheney were able to steamroll through Congress for the same reason Obama can’t: Blue Dogs.
I’m sure Harris and Vandehei are willfully oblivious to the first as the Hamsher/Avarosis left is to the second.
FlipYrWhig
Just chiming in late to add re: Bill Clinton, the would-be left hated Bill Clinton for his triangulation, his free-trader-ism, his handling of the wars in the former Yugoslavia, and his caving on gay issues, among other things. They thought he was too much of a Republican. That’s what drove them to be unenthusiastic about Gore in ’00 and then anyone But Hillary in the primaries. And I think a lot of the angst about Obama is really concern that he’s following the Clinton path all over again — too much compromise, too much coddling of the investor class, etc. But, once again, as a nation, we can’t afford too many more elections like 2000, and that’s what happened the last time the self-identified left got demotivated about politics.
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
One of the better descriptions I have seen. Spot on.
Bloggers are pretty much the same thing, except that they don’t get invited to the parties.
AxelFoley
@Zifnab:
Plucked a nerve, didn’t I, muthafucka?
I ain’t playin shit, dude. I calls it likes I sees it. I expected this bullshit from the right, and they didn’t let me down (see Tea Party, obstructionalist GOP, etc.), but this shit coming from many on the left pisses me off to the highest levels of pisstivity.
All this shit about him not being what many on the left thought he’d be–who’s FUCKIN’ fault is that? People like you on the left made him out to be something he never was, nor never claimed to be. YOU muthafuckas projected that shit on him, thinking he’d be some Great Liberal Savior, not him or his supporters.
David in NY
@slag:
Me too! I’ve been reading about the big money going to Republicans, and I always give some, but I need folks to organize my giving (i.e., tell me who needs it most that I can give to without vomiting) and to nag me a little. I’ve been waiting for Commandante Markos of the Great Orange Satan or somebody here to send out the word. But crickets so far. Help!
(P.S. I know it’s too early some places, with primaries yet to happen, but still …. Some of these races are set to go now.)
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@bobbo:
Anytime you catch a political journalist using the passive voice to state the fundamental premise upon which the rest of his/her argument hangs, immediately translate it to:
“I’m a lowdown lying muthafukka, just sitting here counting my blood money. caa-ching!“
Mike in NC
To the Villagers, 2008 was to be the year that their beloved maverick politician finally got the plum that was denied him by mean George Bush in 2000. They were all set to welcome President McCain and Vice President Lieberman, whom they presumed to know and love. (If those two went and bombed Iran, well so much the better for ratings.) Then everything went topsy-turvy: McCain proved to be a terrible campaigner and all-around asshole, crazy Sarah Palin replaced Good Old Joe, the national economy collapsed, etc.
In short, Obama wasn’t supposed to happen and they’ve never gotten over it.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
There is so much stupid in this sentence I hardly know where to start. It’s a complete myth that Carter was unable to “master Washington,” his administration was loaded from stem to stern with insider hacks and his policies almost completely conventional. He took a rightward turn and began the Reagan Revolution about a year and a half before official history says it happened. Sure, the pundits rode the “hick” angle pretty hard, but I don’t think it ever gained any more traction with the public than Johnny Carson’s nightly monologue. Carter was quite predictably done in by a lousy economy and the hostage crisis, not political ineptitude, though I’m not surprised that a couple of purveyors of Politico CW think otherwise.
Passing the two big bills referenced will “decisively end the narrative” of failure in the minds of Obots and pundits to be sure, since both care mostly about tick marks next to an individual’s name. But let’s plow into it a little more deeply. The right flank hated health care from the start. The left flank was POed by the numerous compromises. The mushy middle was put off by the seeming endlessness of the sausage-making spectacle. As a result a reform that almost everybody was for a couple of years ago is now polling plurality to slight majority negative. FinReg is suffering a similar fate; a bill that should be broadly popular is polling poorly, probably because it’s taken two years, a hundred compromises, and limitless demagoguery to finally address an event we were all assured was economic Armageddon.
All that said, it’s at least as foolish to put a tick mark in the “failure” column. Pundits are nothing if not binary thinkers. These two years will go down as a period of incremental improvements on the domestic front, whether that’s good enough remains to be seen.
You understate. I’m tempted to call it a bald-faced lie.
David in NY
@DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective:
I am getting my political kid Richard Hofstadter’s “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” so he will understand that the crazies will always be with ye (in the US, anyway). If you aren’t familiar with it, you might like it too. Dated at points, but pretty much a history of the Tea Partiers of the past.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@tomvox1:
This isn’t a accidental byproduct of sloppy thinking and lazy writing. It is the whole point of this sort of exercise, from Politico’s point of view. The media Village is a power center, one of several in DC. Shitting on people in the other power centers when they get out of line is precisely how the media Village maintains its power over the long haul. In this case, the bark is the bite, coming from this particular dog. And if they can intimidate others into echoing their line, that just makes them even more powerful. Media Narrative Lycanthropy is the name of the game.
Zifnab
@Corner Stone:
Well, you can take it that way. But my point was more that the President is popular when independents and centrists perceive him as popular. And the reason he is popular when the middle ground embraces him is because its easier for liberals to express their satisfaction with him and harder for conservatives to express their dislike.
Liberals can’t say they like the President when no one else does, because then they just sound like fan-boys. So they have to find flaws with him, but they have to find liberal flaws. Independents can like him or dislike him however they damn well choose, because they aren’t considered biased from the start.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.):
I don’t agree. You might want to check out the chapter in the book Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner about the way Carter badly bungled the politics of water projects (the 3rd rail of western politics, especially back in the 1970s) early in his administration, alienating key congressional allies, especially in the Senate. Or if you prefer online sources, here’s just a couple links I found with a quick google search, that give a little taste of the topic:
Pres. Carter and the water projects
Jimmy Carter and the water wars [pdf]
Tonal Crow
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
This ought to win the entire week here.
Norwegian Shooter
This is poppycock. Personal relations are central to everything people do. For instance, do big political contributors send a check in the mail unsolicited with a note about what they want done? (This would be pure transaction) No, they go through elaborate courtship rituals (speeches, dinners, phone calls) and personally deliver the money.
Tecumseh
I hate articles like this because they always assume a fair and level playing field. Like if Obama said this or did that or passed this bill, he’d have 60% approval ratings and everybody would love him. None of these stories deal with the fact that it’s not a fair and level playing field. There’s no analysis of the failure of the press to cover things that he’s done or giving to much sway to Republican craziness. There’s no analysis of the broken political system and the fact that Obama can’t do a lot of things because of Republican obstruction or even give him credit for doing what he’s done considering Republican obstruction. And there’s no analysis or mention of how undemocratic that is and how broken our system is.
Obama’s made a ton of mistakes but it’s not as much as he has to fix things with his administration as much as it is that WE (especially the press) have to fix things.
Allison W.
@Sentient Puddle:
omg, I have a crush on that guy. seriously. when I first saw his commercial I had to pick my jaw up and smack myself back to reality.
drooooool.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Bungling a single issue should not create an entire narrative. There’s no doubt, for instance, that Obama badly bungled the whole Guantanamo thing, which he made quite a show of on his first full day in office, is there? History is often retrofitted to accommodate simplistic memes, and the Carter “hick” thing is an example of that.
Corner Stone
@Allison W.:
We’ll wait here until the sound dies down a little.
CreativeAnarchy
I’m mystified as to why we still care about public approval ratings or why we think we can compare presidents of two different parties from two different centuries by them. Public Opinion polls are a snapshot reflection of attitude. They are completely biased by events standing. If the Berlin wall fell during Obama’s watch or if Regan was elected into a deadlocked congress, those numbers would have been massively different but still completely independent of the performance of those men. Presidents need to know public opinion as a leadership tool but we can’t conversely use it as a metric for a president’s success. Public Opinion Polls are more a reflection of which celebrity just visited the White House than how a President is serving the Nation best.
DougJ
@David in NY:
I’ll talk to John about an ActBlue page.
bcinaz
Corporate Media. Haven’t you noticed how most of the news you get about the White House and the Obama Administration is reported as the right-wing reaction to Dem policy, without reporting the actual policy. To wit, the health care debate – nobody knew what was in the actual bill, only how the wing-nuts framed their talking points (Death Panels!). Now it’s Deficits Don’t Matter because tax cuts for the rich are… something. I never, ever read anything about some guy who worked and paid taxes his whole adult life and now is not able to find a job, and now is cut off from benefits, and the wing-nuts just call him a hobo and a deadbeat. and 39% of the Senate (Minority Rule is Awesome!) looks around and finds a hole in their brains where a conscience would be.
jetan
@JC:
Right you are. Naturally Politico imagines that Obama has a communication problem because they also imagine themselves to be in the communication business and that’s all they understand. Obama has an unemployment problem, period.There is nothing else to say about his poll numbers. But that is not good for too many Politico “think” pieces.
Elie
@danimal:
this is the best summary yet. right on…
I would also add that this election in November is critical to HCR… the reason that Obama made the recess appointment of Berwick is that they need to get goin on the infrastructure necessary to implement real quick. If we get a Republican Congress, they will be 24/7 trying to block everything — the necessary supporting regs for the new agency, new regulations to start the planning , etc — everything..
That said, I think Obama will prevail and slowly, ever so slowly, he is changing us and our political landscape…
Elie
@CreativeAnarchy:
This too
Elie
@Sentient Puddle:
LOL!!! yeah — ME LIKEE
lol
@Tonal Crow:
Ah yes, the “he needs to shoot for the moon on his first bid” argument.
If you don’t make a realistic initial offer, the other parties (in this case, Conservative Democrats + Snowe/Collins/Brown) think you’re not serious and walk away, which they’re fine with because they prefer to do nothing.
That’s how negotiation works in the real world.
In constrast, the blogosphere thinks negotiation is some video game simulation where an outrageous first bid might outsmart what passes for an AI.
Corner Stone
@lol:
Have you ever actually negotiated anything? In the real world?
I’ve seen other parties open with something so laughable an outcome it was…laughable.
But we didn’t laugh and we didn’t put our napkins on the table and bid them Good Day.
Tonal Crow
@lol: You’ve mischaracterized what I said. I did not say that the first bid should be such that it’ll be rejected out of hand. I said that it should be substantially more than the bidder wants. That’s how negotiation works. If you start with less than you want, you’re almost certain to get even less than that.
Tonal Crow
@lol: Also, you’ve got to enthusiastically promote your first bid. If you don’t, your counterparty gets the idea that your bottom line is much lower.
[Dang WP wouldn’t let me ETA this to my last comment: “permission denied”]
lol
@Corner Stone:
Because you *wanted* or possibly even needed to make a deal. What if the other party wanted to sell you a product you neither wanted nor needed and they opened with a laughable bid? Still going to stick around?
Conservative Dems/moderate Republicans don’t want to make a deal. They’re looking for any excuse not to make a deal. They’re just fine with the way things are. They want *nothing* and they already have it.
So I find the general notion prevalent in the blogosphere that if only Obama had started with single-payer, we would’ve ended up with medicare for all, to be pretty stupid.
At the end of the day, when you get down to it, Obama has gotten 95% of what he asked for and the 5% he’s given away has been just precisely enough to get precisely enough votes to actually pass the damn bill. There’s no slack in the margins of victory.
Corner Stone
@lol:
But that’s just not true. A couple of them have OBVIOUSLY wanted something, or else we would not have seen a few things pass Congress.
It’s evident that somebody wanted something.
Finding out what that is is the process where negotiation takes place.
And you know what? I’m not asking Coburn what he wants. If I’m in the catbird seat with favors to give/trade, I’m finding people who want to deal.
Negotiation starts in a lot of crazy places. I’ve put together deals with people who do not share a common language with me.
chaseyourtail
I thought Politico’s analysis of liberal bloggers was spot on. There I said it.
Nick
@chaseyourtail: I agree. Today was the good example.
HuffPost went on a tirade over some anonymous source saying Geithner hates Elizabeth Warren. Geithner’s deputy flatly denies it an says Geithner likes Warren to head the Consumer Protection Agency, GoS takes credit for him “changing his mind”
even though the only proof he ever opposed Warren was an anonymous source “familiar with Geithner’s views”