Hey Obama, this is the "change" Americans wanted

In his latest for the New York Times, David Brooks explains that Barack Obama ran on two major points of "change": less partisan politics, and a more activist government.

And as Brooks argues, Americans wanted the less partisan, but they never said much about the activist part.

The problem is that in his first year in office, Obama has instead heavily promoted that second part (the activist government) while not making any inroads on partisan politics. Brooks suggests he flip-flops his agenda and give the people the change they want.

When Obama came into office, the press and other politicians were talking about Obama being the next FDR, but the American people were asking for economic recovery and jobs (two totally different concepts, despite them once coinciding during a war-time president's term). Obama's priorities instead focus on ushering America into a great new age, with new programs and fixes and health care and climate change and ah ah ah!

Now, as things are worse for the people, they just want some help. As Brooks says, "Voters are in no mood for a wave of domestic transformation. The economy is already introducing enough insecurity into their lives. Unlike 1932 and 1965 [when FDR and Lyndon B. Johnson brought similar "great new ages" to America through Democratic politics], Americans do not trust Washington to take them on a leap of faith, especially if it means more spending."

There's a reason Obama is having trouble floating bills out there that people like: "Voters are not reacting to the particulars of each bill. They are reacting against the total activist onslaught." They want a fix, not an agenda. Although Obama thinks he's giving them what he promised in his speeches, they insist on results now, or at least a president who is OK with setting aside sweeping changes to make sure people can get through the next few years.

Brooks' solution? "The next challenge is to find a new project, a new one-sentence description of what this administration hopes to achieve. It is obvious: President Obama will show that this nation is governable once again. He should return to the other element in his original campaign.
That would mean first leading a campaign of brazen honesty with the American people. He could lay out the fiscal realities and explain that voters cannot continue to demand programs they are unwilling to pay for."

Obama needs to remember that, for many people who voted for him, there was an intense desire to not so much change the way America's government affected life (which is what he's trying to do now) as there was to change America's government, period. (Once government changes, than its effects will, too.) Obama promised ditching partisan politics, and finding compromises, and helping everyone get along. He said there wouldn't be backbiting, and that one party wouldn't take over the process to push its way through (speaking against the Republicans then, but that's what his party is doing now).

People genuinely want that. And Obama has the speaking chops and leadership ability to bring it. But does he really want that? Or was that a campaign slogan he used as part of his grand scheme to usher in his Democratic system?

One of Brooks' suggestions is this: "Obama could serve as a one-man model for bipartisan behavior. Right now, the Republicans have no political incentive to deal on anything. But the president could at least exemplify the kind of behavior voters want to see in their leaders."

Or, in my own words: The politicians are going to fight, bicker, be self-serving, and shoot down any hope of progress either side has, so if most measures are going to fail, why not just take the high road? Be a new kind of person. Set a new kind of example. Show the politicians, stuck in their ruts, that there's a different way of doing business. Don't tell them; don't complain about them; don't whine when progress isn't made. Show them. Show.

This, of course, starts with the outlandish spending. There are cuts that can be made. (Imagine how much money could be freed up if the extremely expensive health care battle was shelved and, shock and awe, the President focused on reducing health care costs before trying to overhaul the system. He has said saving money was the point of the whole reform, right?)

As Brooks says, "If he really put aside the publicity gimmicks, he could illustrate the difference between responsible government and the permanent campaign."

That's what people are looking for: leadership, not more politicians constantly trying to woo people. Obama has the brain to think up new solutions, the leadership to unite people and charge into new challenges, and the communicating ability to reach out to politicians of both stripes as well as the populace. He could do much good in changing the political culture without ever passing a bill.

Isn't that what many Americans were voting for in November 2008?

A final word from Brooks: "We can spend the next few years engaging in kabuki bipartisanship, in which each party puts on pseudo-events to show that the other party is rigid and rotten, or somebody can break the mold."

For that person, I suggest the President of the most powerful country in the free world.

Bipartisanship: Change Obama no longer believes in?

Some gleanings from Joe Klein's column in the Feb. 1 issue of Time magazine (released before President Obama gave his State of the Union address).

-I love the idea of killing partisanship, of everyone getting along, of politics getting tossed out the window...but I've always been concerned with how Obama thinks that's actually going to happen. From early on, his way of making "change" and "hope" happen always went back to people, and as he's seen in his first year of office, people like the way those concepts sound on their ears but don't necessarily know what they'll look like in reality (or like them when they do show up in reality). Or, if they're politicians, this happens:

[Joe Klein writing] "I asked Obama how he thought his Administration was perceived by someone in the Boston suburbs who had supported him a year ago, looking for "change" — and now saw the President making deals with everyone from Joe Lieberman to the labor unions to Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska (whose special Medicaid deal was a public embarrassment) to the pro-life forces, not to mention the drug and insurance companies. 'When I promised change, I didn't promise that somehow members of Congress weren't going to be looking to try to get a project in their district or help a hospital in their neighborhood,' the President said halfheartedly."

-Klein points out that Obama hasn't done much this year to see people in their current plights, experiencing economic hardships. I agree. The ever-present campaigner hasn't been hanging out with everyday Americans very much, and what ever happened to him being like FDR and using the Internet to have fireside chats with the American people all the time?

-The health care agenda Obama so vociferously pursues is "peripheral to most Americans, who have relentlessly told pollsters, by huge majorities, that they are happy with the health care they currently receive and far more worried about other things." Exactly. Why the heck is Obama still letting Pelosi run rabid on this one? It's not like he birthed this bill himself; it's an amalgamation of all he says he hates about Washington, waiting for his signature. And the people don't even want it.

-"His has been a serious and substantive presidency. But the question, a year in, is whether it has been politically tone-deaf — and why the best presidential orator in a generation finds it so hard to explain himself to the American people." For all the things the Republicans are complaining about, has anyone noticed they're not complaining anymore about how he woos people with his words?

-One of Obama's biggest obstacles was that, even if he did want that bipartisanship thing, he wasn't even getting token participation from the elephants in the room:

"Obama came to office attempting bipartisanship. The Republicans weren't buying. 'The classic example being me heading over to meet with the House Republican caucus to discuss the stimulus,' the President said, 'and finding out that [minority leader John] Boehner had already released a statement stating, We're going to vote against the bill before we've even had a chance to exchange ideas.'"

If John McCain was the President, those Republicans would have wanted the Democrats to jump on board, since the economy was in the crapper and needed some kind of fix. But the Republicans were playing us-against-them from day one (and the Dems have been, too).

-And the clincher: Is bipartisanship the kind of change Obama no longer believes in?

"By August, the President was saying privately that he didn't know if bipartisanship was possible when the polls said that a third of the opposition party didn't even think he was an American citizen."

-Obama's comment on a question about the Middle East peace process is telling as to how his perspective has changed:

"...if we had anticipated some of these political problems on both sides earlier, we might not have raised expectations so high."

Whew.

My gut reaction is that Washington is going to stay partisan, and the Republicans are going to remain critical (of his policies, his star power, his speaking) — so why doesn't he just do his best to connect with the people? Because if they want bipartisanship enough, wouldn't they vote for others like him?

(Or did he blow that chance by being, ahem, partisan and pushing a very liberal health care bill through?)

Year two will be interesting.