The Great Race

Grand Old Pretenders George Will has finally written what many Republicans are thinking: these folks aren't ready for prime time. In his Sunday column, Will laments the "vibrations of weirdness" emanating from the prospective GOP presidential field. Exhibit A this week is Mike Huckabee, often seen as the GOP front runner in what blogger Taegan Goddard calls "the Fox News primary." The wise New York Times columnist Tim Egan, still a hard-nosed, fact-based reporter at heart, lays bare Huckabee's "misspeak" this week about Barack Obama's growing up in Kenya. Of course, Huckabee got that all wrong. Obama grew up in Hawaii (still one of the 50 states), spent some time in Indonesia and didn't visit Kenya until he was in his 20's. But, as Egan points out, Huckabee not only misspoke, he had a whole line of factless argument built around Obama the Kenyan. This wasn't a slip of the tongue, but a premeditated argument aimed at driving the wedge over whether Obama is really one of us. Even more damaging to Huckabee is Egan's reporting on the fictions around a the case of a parolee that Huckabee never really had to explain during his short run for the GOP nomination in 2008. Read Egan's reporting and see if this guy really has a chance. Here's a bet that Huckabee opts to stay on Fox as a talk show host rather than troop around in the snow in Iowa and New Hampshire. Egan's piece will haunt him either way. George Will, meanwhile, does not count The Huck in the five candidates - Mitt Romney, Jon Huntsman, Tim Pawlenty, Haley Barbour and Mitch Daniels - that he sees as the great hope of the GOP. But, as he writes, "the nominee may emerge much diminished by involvement in a process cluttered with careless, delusional, egomaniacal, spotlight-chasing candidates to whom the sensible American majority would never entrust a lemonade stand, much less nuclear weapons." Exhibit B: Another piece this week, also in the Post, detailing the relationship - if that is the right word for it - between Huntsman and Romney. Reporter Jason Horowitz's fascinating piece about the two ambitious LDS politicians says: "The respective former governors of Utah and Massachusetts have vast fortunes, silver tongues and great hair. They are also distant cousins, descended from a Mormon apostle who played a key role in the faith's founding. The two men enjoyed the early support of powerful and devout fathers and performed the church's missionary work - Romney in France during the Vietnam War and Huntsman in Taiwan." Horowitz goes on to make the case that both Huntsman and Romney wanted to run the Salt Lake City Olympics, knowing that the high profile post would help their political aspirations. When Romney won out, the two men's personal and family connection was badly frayed. Horowitz also gets into the issue of which of the men is the "better Mormon." Neither the Huckabee story line this week nor the Romney-Huntsman feud can possibly be the narrative Republican strategists are hoping to develop. At this point, in the desperate race for money and attention, this kind of story line doesn't help build momentum, but does raise questions that will linger and linger, first among the chattering classes and eventually among the voters. Former Idaho Gov. Cecil Andrus - he won his share of elections - has a favorite saying: "you can't win a horse race with a dog." Admittedly, it's early, very early, in the all-too-long political nominating process. The economy and Middle East oil prices may yet be a greater threat to Obama than anyone in the Republican field but, having said that, none of these contenders is reminding anyone of Ronald Reagan, or even Howard Baker, Bob Dole or John McCain. The weirdness is vibrating and no one is running the lemonade stand.

Mourner-in-Chief

A Good Dose of Humility My favorite presidential historian, Robert Dallek, as well as anyone has, caught the essence of last night's remarkable speech in Tucson by Barack Obama. "The president is not just the prime minister, he's also the king," says Dallek. "And he has to be a healing force to speak to the grief." As a time when pundits, critics and pretenders to the Oval Office were wondering whether Obama had the right stuff to pull off a unifying speech in the wake of the Tucson tragedy, he came up with, I think, just the right tone and several great lines, including this one: "What we can't do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on one another." TIME magazine has a great take on the demanding, delicate job of the President as Consoler-in-Chief. While it may be hard to make the case that any one speech from any one president really has lasting impact in this superheated media age, think of the lasting impact of Lincoln at Gettysburg, Reagan after the Challenger disaster or Clinton after the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building. A pitch-perfect, heartfelt speech of mourning, as each of those were, has historically helped define a presidency. Obama's speech at McKale Memorial Center in Tucson may prove to be the moment when the nation sized him up as a leader and not just as a politician.

Obama's Comeback

Never So High, Nor So Low It was as predictable as a Christmas sale. Make way for the Obama Comeback stories. Immediately after the mid-term "shellacking" of Barack Obama and his party, New York Times White House correspondent Peter Baker breathlessly and instantly analyzed the election under the headline - "In Republican Victories, Tide Turns, Starkly." The President, Baker analyzed, "must find a way to recalibrate with nothing less than his presidency on the line." Wow. What a difference seven weeks makes. A lead story at the Politico website carries the headline: "Obama Rebounding." Reporter Jennifer Epstein expands a tiny uptick in Obama's poll standings - his approval/disapproval now stands evenly split at 48-48 in the latest CNN survey - into the insight that more Americans support the President's policies than any time since mid-2009. Say what? What happened to the guy who couldn't find his groove? What became of the fatally wounded re-election bid? In that November 3 Times piece, former House Republican leader Dick Armey, a voice of the Tea Party, flatly predicted that Obama has "already lost his re-election." What's going on here is that politics sometimes resembles another game - baseball. Every day is a new game and, while every team looks unbeatable through a winning streak and impossible in a slump, seldom are the players ever as good or bad as they appear. The ups get exaggerated and so do the downs. The other phenomenon in plain view is the absolute fascination of the national media with the "comeback narrative." The so called "media elite" from the Times to Time, from Fox News to Politico can't operate without a simple, concise narrative. Every storyline needs, well, a story and there is no better political story than "the comeback." Need more proof? USA Today supplies it with a headline: "Obama Sets Up As Comeback Kid." Seven weeks is a lifetime in politics, particularly in a political environment as volatile as ours; an environment influenced heavily, it must be noted, by relentless and often misleading coverage of the latest poll numbers. Here's a thought. Rather than sitting around the Beltway cracker barrel, how about some political reporters go out into the country and talk to voters? They just might learn something. A few things are obvious, even if they don't fit neatly into the political narrative of the moment. The President has had a good lame duck session, he did recalibrate his stand on extending the Bush tax cuts and, as yet, the country sees no serious challenger to him in 2012. Meanwhile, by some accounts, Obama is quietly remaking his White House staff for the run up to his re-election and positioning himself as a reasonable, mid-ground alternative to the current faces of the GOP - Mitch McConnell and John Boehner. Also obvious, Obama is a good politician who displays the ability to grow in office. By the same token, he is not as good at the political game as his 2008 election made him look, but he is also not as bad as the recent mid-terms made him look. For Obama, like all politicians, the highs are always lower than they seem and the lows are always higher. In truth, as Michael Cooper astutely pointed out in the Times in the wake of the mid-terms, a good deal of political "analysis" is not just spin, it is mythology. But, political time and myth will march on and the national media will soon need to invent new narratives. In a few weeks, Newt and Mitt, Sarah and Haley will be showing up in places like Manchester and Waterloo and we can read and contemplate the unfolding of the endless presidential campaign. It will, no doubt, be the most important election in our lifetimes. You heard it here first. All this reminds me - and reminded Michael Cooper after the mid-terms - of the late Polish philosopher and political thinker, Leszek Kolakowski. Once a hard-headed Stalinist, Kolakowski came to see the Communism of his youth as a fraud and he eventually became a leading intellectual of the Solidarity movement in his native land. He won a MacArthur genius award and his work was celebrated by, among others, the Library of Congress. Kolakowski promulgated what he called the "Law of Infinite Cornucopia," which holds that for any doctrine one chooses to embrace there is never a shortage of arguments to support that view. So, welcome to the remarkable Obama comeback or, if you prefer, wait for "proof" that it never happened.

Tax Cut Politics

Fiscal Constraint Can Wait Considering the strum und drang of many Democrats reacting to President Obama's "deal" with congressional Republicans to extend the Bush-era tax cuts, one would think that there was ever a serious chance that Congress would actually change tax policy while the economy remains in the ditch. Wasn't gonna happen, but if there is a missed fiscal responsibility moment here it may turn out to be the failure by Obama and Democrats to leverage the moment to force a long-term deal to get the nation's fiscal house in order. Time will tell whether it was a missed opportunity. Announcing the tax deal, Obama acknowledged the obvious - the economy would not react well to a tax hike on the upper 2% or so of taxpayers even if most everyone else would see little if any change in tax rates. Add to that economic reality the fact that Republicans have largely won the broad political message battle over taxes and its impossible not to conclude - Keith Olbermann aside - that the President had little choice but to give way on his campaign pledge to let the tax cuts expire for the wealthiest taxpayers. The stark fiscal reality remains however, even as the politics of the moment crowd totals up the winners and losers. The co-chairman of the President's Commission on getting the budget deficit under control, Democrat Erskine Bowles, nailed the missed opportunity. Had Democrats been thinking along with Obama, they might have seized this moment to press for the grand plan to deal with the terrible mess both parties have created over the last decade. Democrats have yet to conclude that the country is ready for a call for shared sacrifice, pain and realistic action to cut spending, enhance revenue, scale back entitlements and reduce defense spending. Fiscal constraint will have to wait apparently, while all of us what for adults in both parties to begin to deal with nation's real fiscal problems. Still, given the push back from some Democrats, Obama displayed both political courage and political pragmatism in getting his deal. He also, importantly, got an extension of unemployment benefits that will have the benefit of keeping real money in the hands of real people who will spend it. Over the longer term, with this deal Obama may have also taken a step toward reassuring some of the independents who seem to have abandoned him in droves. Here is the real political reality: if Obama and Democrats don't make serious progress in getting the economy moving by Labor Day 2011, and moving in a way that most people feel in their bones as well as their pocketbooks, he and many othe Democrats won't have to worry about being around in 2013 to deal with controlling the deficit.

Why 2010 Isn't 1934

Two Democratic Presidents, Two Approaches to a Pivotal Mid-term In 1934 the unemployment rate in the United States was 21.7%, just two percent lower than it had been when Franklin Roosevelt entered the White House two years earlier. The Great Depression had its claws deep into the American economy, Roosevelt's big business and conservative opponents were on the march and the president's Congressional allies were bracing for the mid-term elections. Yet, amid persistent charges in 1934 that FDR was taking the country toward socialism, fascism or dictatorship and trampling on the Constitution at every turn, Democrats won a stunning victory in that year's mid-term elections increasing their numbers in both the House and the Senate. The Senate gains were particularly impressive with Democratic numbers going from 59 to 69 seats. Historical parallels only go so far, admittedly, but there are some striking similarities between 1934 and 2010. But it is clear now that one thing is very different. The election outcome next Tuesday will be a near historic spanking of the party in power with Democrats almost certain to lose control of the House of Representatives and find their numbers sharply reduced in the Senate. Heading into the final weekend of the campaign, it is not impossible that the GOP will take the Senate, as well. So, the obvious question: Why was Franklin Roosevelt able to pull off his 1934 political miracle - only the second time in history a party in power in the White House increased its numbers during a mid-term - with an economy still deeply in the ditch, and why will Barack Obama spend next Wednesday trying to explain what went wrong, while welcoming new House Speaker John Boehner to the White House? I'll offer a simple theory to a complex question - Obama, unlike FDR, has let his opponents define him and his policies and thereby he managed to lose control of the narrative arc of his presidency. It has been said that one can go from hero to zero just like that in politics and Obama has. There will be plenty of "what ifs" and "what might have beens" after next week, but in the simple language of communication - and this applies to a school board election or a mid-term - if you are constantly playing defense, as Obama and Democrats have been, you almost always lose. Folks on the right who will be celebrating next week will be quick to point out that the election signals a repudiation of Obama and Democratic policies and, to some degree, they'll be correct, but there is a deeper issue for the president and Democrats. They haven't mounted anything approaching an effective defense of what they have done and are trying to do. You can trace this failure - the wisdom of the policies notwithstanding - back to the summer of 2009 when Congressional town hall meetings were overrun by opponents of the health care legislation and, looking back, Obama and his supporters couldn't begin to explain how the massive bill really helps most Americans. Instead they played defense, ceding the political narrative to the media's fascination with the Tea Party, and, I would argue, have never developed a consistent message. They also went for months acting as though passing legislation in the hothouse environment of Washington, D.C. was a substitute for a coherent explanation of what they were trying to accomplish. Contrast this failure, the months rolling by with no focused message and a fatally late start to engage, with FDR's robust defense, packaged in terms of American ideals, that he began to mount early in 1934: “A few timid people," FDR said then, "who fear progress, will try to give you new and strange names for what we are doing. Sometimes they will call it Fascism, sometimes Communism, sometimes Regimentation, sometimes Socialism. But in doing so, they are trying to make very complex and theoretical something that is really very simple and practical. "I believe in practical explanations and practical policies. …that what we are doing today is a necessary fulfillment…of old and tested American ideals.” Obama has been frantically on the stump the last few weeks, but Roosevelt was out on the hustings as early as August of 1934. In one speech he rejected the arguments of the Liberty League - an earlier day Tea Party - that contended that the New Deal was harming big business. "Sound economic improvement comes from the improved conditions of the whole population and not a small fraction thereof," Roosevelt said. In contrast to Barack Obama's early start in his sprint for the White House and his determined, disciplined campaign, his PR skills have come up wanting over the last many months. He engaged his detractors too late and then ineffectively and only after he had lost any chance to stay on the offensive. FDR's great biographer, James MacGregor Burns, wrote of Roosevelt's performance in 1934: "At a time when Americans wanted a man of action in the White House, he provided action or at least the appearance of action. At a time when they wanted confidence, he talked bravely, reassuringly about the future, whatever the mistakes, we were Looking Forward we were On Our Way, the title of two books he put out in 1933 and 1934. At a time when Americans wanted good cheer, he filled the White House with laughter." Burns said Roosevelt's secret in 1934 was his "hold on the people," a grasp that Obama had fleetingly, but has lost and will now struggle to retrieve. During FDR's pivotal second year in office, Burns has written, FDR "maintained his popularity through timely action, unfailing cheerfulness in public and private, and a masterly grasp of public opinion." In short, while the Great Depression still roared and two in five Americans were out of work, Roosevelt inspired confidence. "Businessmen, labor chiefs, bankers, newspaper editors, farm leaders left the White House cheered, impressed, relieved," in Burns' words. Roosevelt succeeded in 1934 by giving a broad cross section of the American public a sure sense that he was one of them, looking out for them and fundamentally a champion of their cause. Such a feeling of public connection with the president helped overcome both FDR's many detractors and the horrible economic circumstances - circumstance, like Obama, that he inherited - during the 1934 mid-term elections. As much as this mid-term will be cast as a referendum on Barack Obama's policies, it is also a sure sign that he has lost the confidence, the trust if you will, of a significant number of Americans. Once lost, those are qualities hard for any leader to re-establish and that helps explain why 2010 is going to be so very different than 1934.

A Declining Presidency

Less Imperial, More Reactive Robert Dallek is one of the best of the current crop of presidential historians. He's fair-minded and a scholar, but also possesses a keen ability to link the present to the historic. It was no accident that when President Obama, not once but twice, had a small group of historians to the White House for dinner, Bob Dallek was on the guest list along with Robert Caro, Doris Kearns Goodwin and a half dozen others. He's also discreet. When I visited with him a few weeks ago, Dallek was carefully respecting his own ground rules for the White House salon. He said he'd gladly talk about what he had told the President, but wouldn't attempt to interpret Obama's response or reaction. Others in attendance, at least at the first dinner, haven't been so careful. The brilliant and provocative Garry Wills wrote a while back about his advice to Obama and his disappointment with the president. Perhaps not surprisingly, Wills didn't get invited back. Wills has argued that Obama is making a Kennedy/Johnson-like mistake by pursuing the path he is on in Afghanistan. In a nutshell, Dallek said he also warned Obama about the historical quagmire that Afghanistan has been and looks like has become again. Bob Dallek's books about JFK and LBJ are important and enduring works and give him a perspective on Obama's challenges that is worth attention. Dallek is on to something with his observation to the New York Times' Matt Bai this past weekend that we are seeing "the diminished power, the diminished authority, the diminished capacity to shape events" of the Obama presidency. Since at least 1933, when Franklin Roosevelt put his hands on the levers of presidential power, each succeeding president has attempted - many have succeeded - in expanding the authority of what the historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. once famously called "the imperial presidency." We may be seeing the decline of that all powerful, too powerful perhaps, presidency. It is, Bob Dallek says, "the presidency in eclipse." I tend to the historical view that the presidency has, since FDR's day, become too powerful and that Congress has lost its way in checking that power, particularly when Congress acquiesces to foreign policy adventures cooked up by presidents of both parties. So, a pulling in of presidential power is not an altogether unwelcome turn of event, whatever the cause. Still, there is a problem. Is it conceivable the current Congress - on both sides of the aisle - is capable of exercising more responsible authority? Can the Congress rise, while the presidency is in eclipse? Don't hold your breath. The days when a J. William Fulbright, a Frank Church, a Howard Baker or an Everett Dirksen could speak with moral and political authority - and often in opposition to a president - on a national or international issue seem like a distant memory. The Founders envisioned a separation of powers in the national government with each one of the three branches purposely structured to check the influence and power of the others. If it is correct, for a variety of reasons, that Barack Obama is presiding over a shrinking presidency, then the leadership of Congress must step up their game. The balance envisioned by the Founders has to work and the responsibly for ensuring that it does is both diffused and shared. (Note: Bob Dallek's latest book - The Lost Peace - a history of the immediate post-war period, will be out in October.)

Is 2010 Really 1938?

Getting an Economic Consensus There are no perfect historical parallels. Nothing is ever precisely like it was in another time. At best, history can help illuminate the present and should, if we're paying attention, help us avoid making the same mistakes over and over again. Take 1938, for example. But, alas we are Americans. We can't get agreement on how to crown a national college football champion, how can we possibly get consensus on what to do with the economy? President Obama went to Cleveland this week to roll out a plan for more stimulus spending on infrastructure and small buisness tax cuts as a way to get people back to work. He was greeted by reactions ranging from ridicule to yawning. Meanwhile, House Speaker-in-Waiting John Boehner, developing economic policy while he measures the drapes, started dropping hints about what a Republican Congress would do with spending (cut it, including unspent stimulus dollars), the economy (grow it) and taxes (leave the Bush cuts in place). All the while leaving room for a few well placed subpoenas. These two versions of economic policy couldn't be more at odds. It does sound a good deal like 1937 and 1938. As Franklin Roosevelt's Democrats faced the mid-terms in his sixth year in office, the Great Depression was in its eighth year. Wall Street was restive. Labor unions were sitting down on the job. Democrats were frantic and the president's counselors were divided. Should FDR double down on spending and fiscal policy aimed at reducing unemployment or should the administration send a message to the markets and business that it was determined to get a ballooning budget under control? Confronted with what historian David Kennedy has described as, "repeated budget deficits, escalating regulatory burdens, threats of higher taxes, mounting labor costs, and, most important, persistent anxiety about what further provocations to business the New Deal had in store," business confidence was sapped. "Capital," Kennedy said, "was hibernating." Sounds familiar, eh? At a pivotal Cabinet meeting late in 1937, FDR fumed about his advisers constantly telling him about the sorry state of the economy, but "nobody suggests what I should do." His economic and political advisers eventually won the debate. The president's Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau, a balanced budget advocate, put it succinctly. "What business wants to know is: Are we headed toward state Socialism or are we going to continue on a capitalistic basis?" FDR's chief political lieutenant, Jim Farley, chimed in. "That's what they want to know," that the administration would reduce spending and balance the budget to reassure business and the markets. "All right, Jim; I will turn on the old record," Roosevelt responded. A new fiscal policy aimed at reducing spending and balancing the budget was ordered. The New York Times' Paul Krugman argues that FDR's decision brought on the "Roosevelt Recession" of 1938, caused unemployment to top out at 20% and contributed to stunning Democratic losses - six Senate seats and 71 seats in the House - in the 1938 mid-terms. What's more, Krugman asserts - and he's critical of Obama from the left for being too timid with his stimulus efforts - the public in the late 1930's took exactly the wrong lesson from FDR's shift in policy. Americans became convinced that stimulus spending and job creation efforts hadn't worked and wouldn't work. That debate, check the morning paper, still rages. I keep thinking there must be some middle ground somewhere in the current debate, but I've been wrong before. Couldn't we get something approaching national consensus around two or three major issues? One, Wall Street and investment banking excesses must be brought under control. Does anyone really think that what happened in the run up to the financial collapse shouldn't be avoided in the future if at all possible? Regulating greed and excess is not a partisan issue. Two, spending on well-conceived public works (OK, infrastructure) is both a good long-term investment and good short-term job stabilizer and, one hopes, job creator. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said recently that the stimulus has - big surprise - increased the deficit and reduced unemployment. And, three, the deficit needs to come down, but maybe in a planned, systematic way. Maybe the timing on the expiration of those Bush-era tax cuts is really not very conducive to getting capital out of hibernation. Perhaps a compromise is in order? Someone, the president or John Boehner or the ghost of Henry Morgenthau needs to find a way to knit all the pieces together into a 2010 whole cloth of economic growth, job creation and fiscal sanity. Not holding your breath? I understand. There is a poem entitled "Nineteen-Thirty-Eight" by Andrea Hollander Budy. It's about a young woman who lies about not graduating from high school in 1938: yanked out when her father lost his job. Now it was her turn to make herself useful, he told her. Nineteen-Thirty-Eight was not a particularly good year and not one to repeat. That much history tells us very clearly.

The Verdict of History

Was It Worth It? Barack Obama recorded another presidential first last night. He became the only president in American history to have opposed a war and then been given the responsibility to manage and, in his case, end that war. The only historical parallel, I think, that comes close to what Obama signed on for is Dwight Eisenhower's pledge during his 1952 race to "go to Korea" and end the fighting there. Ike, a military man to the soles of his feet, had been careful to steer clear of opposition to Harry Truman's intervention in Korea. He did, however, question the conduct of the war. It fell to Obama to declare the end to United States combat operations in Iraq last night in a somber, respectful speech from the Oval Office heavy with appropriate respect to the men and women who fought, died and were injured there. No "Mission Accomplished" in this speech, but more "this is what I promised to do." While the American people seem to have made their minds up about the war, the president's political opponents seem intent on litigating the success of the Iraq effort post-2007 when George W. Bush and his generals shifted tactics and employed a "surge" counter insurgency approach to bringing something approximating peace to the ancient land. What seems to be missing at this Iraq moment, and perhaps can't really be ascertained with any certainty, is what next and what lessons? It has been sobering to read, in the context of American troops and treasure being devoted to Iraq, of the virtually permanent American presence - 30,000 troops - that remains in South Korea today 60 years after that war "ended." Add to that reality the fact of no permanent Iraqi government in place, basic services in most of Iraq still wholly inadequate for a modern country, a jittery Iran blustering in the region, by even conservative estimates tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians dead and more injured and displaced, and there is still Afghanistan. The American experience in Vietnam effectively ended in 1973 and as a country we have yet to come to closure on the meaning or lessons of that conflict. It will take, I suspect, just as long to sort out the Iraq experience. What the war should tell us is something about the limits of American power. The American military, well trained, equipped and lead, could rather easily knock over a tin horn like Saddam. But the harder task, as most military folks well know, is to apply the soft touch of the different skills required for "nation building." Are we done with Iraq? Hardly. And there is still Afghanistan. As the fine historian and biographer, Jean Edward Smith - he's written, among others, about FDR and U.S. Grant - noted last year: "Like President Obama, Eisenhower was an incrementalist who preferred to move gradually, often invisibly, within an existing policy framework. But on the question of war and peace, his views were categorical. He rejected the concept of limited war, and believed that American troops should never be sent into battle unless national survival was at stake." Eisenhower also said, having made the decision to seek peace in Korea, that wars have many costs: “Every gun that is fired," he said in 1953, "every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed….” History will render the ultimate verdict on whether it was worth 4,400 American lives, thousands of injured soldiers and billions in national treasure to reach a point where, at best, it can be said that Iraq has a very uncertain future. History can, and often does, judge harshly.

Recapturing the Narrative

OK, Now What... There is a great line in the 1972 film The Candidate starring the young Robert Redford. In the film, Redford's character is an aspiring politico named Bill McKay who takes on the seemingly hopeless task of running for the U.S. Senate against an older, wiser and completely entrenched incumbent. Through many fits and turns and much learning on the campaign trail, the younger man pulls off the improbable upset. As the reality of winning begins to sink in, McKay turns to an aide and, displaying genuine wonder, asks: "What do we do now?" He never gets an answer as the film ends. That scene is art imitating life. No successful candidate - at least those completely honest with themselves - would not ask themselves "now what" as the flush of victory gives way to the reality of governing. Campaigns have a beginning, middle and an end and are about organization, style, poetry and luck. Governing - real governing - requires a different skill set and, very often, different personalities. Governing is day-by-day, hour-by-hour and, more and more, thanks to the never ending news cycle, minute-by-minute. I've always thought that every newly elected candidate ought to be handed, along with a certificate of election, a card printed with an old and almost always true political axiom - the people who help you get elected are often not the people to help you govern. The Obama campaign crew - as good as they were at getting him elected - may just have run out of steam when the political hill climb is becoming the toughest. Admittedly everything in Washington is an echo chamber and, while the intensity of the political game is greater inside the Beltway, the political reality is that more than a year and half into his term Obama - and his team - have ceased to be able to drive the national narrative. A Republican friend, genuinely amazed by Obama's legislative accomplishments and astounded by the White House inability to shape the national dialogue, said it well. The White House hasn't had a week on message in weeks. From the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to the ham handed firing of an African-American women in the Department of Agriculture to the Muslim cultural center in New York the White House seems always to be reacting to events and even then can't get a coherent message out. Fellow Democrats aren't helping. The ethics scandal surrounding Charley Rangel, and now Maxine Waters, seems sure to dominate the political narrative for weeks to come. Add on the polls. According to Gallup, Obama, at 46% or so approval, is in the pre-mid-term range with Bill Clinton in 1994, Lyndon Johnson in 1966 and Reagan in 1982. Democrats lost 53 seats in '94 and 47 seats in '66. Republicans dropped 28 seats with the Gipper in the White House in '82. There are two indispensable qualities most politicians need and many lack - self deprecation and self awareness. The impression has settled in that Obama is cold and aloof. Where some see smart and thoughtful, many others see above the fray, out of touch, elitist or, worst perhaps, someone so sure of himself as to be too sure of himself. It is a deadly combination this aloofness and sureness, if it sticks. Todd Purdum, the former New York Times White House correspondent, has a great political junkie piece in the current Vanity Fair. Purdum, after interviewing most of the top Obama brain trust, comes away thinking that the President is going to keep on keeping on. He's made a calculated decision to try and play the Washington game differently. As Purdum concludes: "Obama’s gamble is that, if you look after the doing of the presidency, the selling of the presidency will look after itself. The short-term price may come in stalled poll numbers, electoral setbacks, and endless contradictory advice from the kibitzers. The payoff, if there is one, lies out on some future horizon. Obama may be right about this strategy, or he may be wrong. But it is the strategy he is following nonetheless." It is a gamble and I think the President could help himself and those of us who at least don't wish him to fail if he let us inside the thinking that shapes his gamble. He could also learn from others who held the office and ended up successful in history and on policy. John Kennedy had the remarkable ability to poke fun at himself at news conferences and to be genuinely self deprecating. He once quipped, as Jackie was received like a Princess on a trip to France, that he was merely the guy who accompanied his attractive wife to Paris. Ronald Reagan had an actor's timing and sense of humor and both qualities never failed to serve him well. When Franklin Roosevelt, the truest patrician to ever occupy the White House, died in 1945 a distraught mourner was asked if he had personally known the president. No, the man answered, but he knew me. Good quality for a successful president. Obama needs to remind Americans why so many of them found him an appealing candidate in the first place. His exuberance. His ability to get off a good line, often at his own expense. His candor about race and his sense of reality about how tough the problems really are. A case in point. Rather than ignore the ridiculous charge from some in the Tea Party crowd that he is a "socialist," Obama would be better off to find a funny and engaging way to point out just how nonsensical the notion really is. He also needs to resurrect the prime time news conference from the East Room. Take the questions. Bat aside the silly ones. Call on FOX News and join the dance. Above all educate the country about our hard choices. The guy got elected, after all, in no small part because he made a lot more sense most of the time than an angry, snarling John McCain. The headline on Purdum's Vanity Fair article is Washington, We Have a Problem. We do. If Barack Obama really hopes to change Washington, and have a second term to do it, he has to adapt a good deal more than he has or than he appears inclined to do. It may be time - or past time - to ask those smart guys who helped get him elected: Now what?

An Earlier "Tea Party"

Lessons from the 1930's Both Barack Obama and Franklin Roosevelt began their presidency by inheriting a country in economic meltdown. Both were Washington, D.C. outsiders who had mobilized broad, new coalitions in order to reach the White House. Both achieved dramatic legislative successes in their first two years in office. Both engendered tremendous right of center opposition bordering on genuine hatred. Obama spawned the Tea Party movement in 2009. FDR provided the catalyst for something called the American Liberty League in 1934. The two movements, separated by more than 75 years, have as much in common as the circumstances of the Obama and Roosevelt presidencies. The language each used - focused on the Constitution the Founders envisioned, the threat to the country from "socialist" policies, and the insidious hand of big government - is nearly interchangeable, at times eerily so. In their book - All But the People - George Wolfskill and John Hudson described the leaders of the anti-FDR Liberty League as focused on the Constitution and private property and convinced that the country was bound for socialism or fascism, or both. In the mid-1930's, leaders of the Liberty League were convinced that FDR was trampling on the Constitution and, as Wolfskill and Hudson wrote in their 1969 book, the country was "on the brink of chaos, threatened by bankruptcy, socialism, dictatorship, and tyranny" there is a "trend toward Fascist control" of the economy and on top of all that the banking industry had been taken over by the federal government.

One Tea Party website today says: "In this current day and age of politics many of (our) freedoms and liberties have come under attack, and are in danger of being taken away altogether. The Constitution of the United States, which is the definitive document that governs all of America, is routinely violated, disregarded, and trampled on by the very persons we have elected to defend and uphold it."

New Deal historian David Woolner has written: "In hundreds of published pamphlets, the (Liberty) League often sent mixed or contradictory messages, variously accusing the New Deal of being inspired by fascism, socialism or communism, and the President’s leadership of being so strong that it was tantamount to the establishment of a dictatorship, or so weak that he rendered himself unable to ward off the sinister influence of his socialistic advisers."

Hard times - in 1934 or 2010 - engender uncertainty and, yes, some chaos. It has happened before in our history. One thing that is different from FDR's day to ours is that the Democratic president in 1934 had no hesitancy to take on those who came at him. The country didn't dissolve, despite the overheated rhetoric, into "socialism" or "fascism" and the Constitution has survived. FDR fought back against his critics and, even with a new wave of New Deal revisionism underway, has been vindicated by history.

Roosevelt seemed to almost relish the battle with his opponents. He attacked the Liberty League as agents of Wall Street and he termed his well-funded opponents as the "malefactors of great wealth" who did not care about those less fortunate. When FDR ran for re-election in 1936 he famously said: "Never before in all our history have these forces (the anti-New Deal, Roosevelt forces) been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me - and I welcome their hatred." Talk about a bring 'em on statement.

New Deal scholar Woolner noted recently, "President Obama has chosen not to take on the Tea Party with anything like the same rhetorical conviction, preferring to take a more reasoned as opposed to emotional approach to a remarkably similar anti-government backlash in a time of crisis. This might be more in keeping with his style of governance, but it may be a decision he will live to regret come November."

Two lessons here. One, politics is a contact sport. If you are not pushing back on your opponents, you are most often loosing ground. Two, Americans reward conviction, not process.

Obama has a narrowing window to recast the last year or so as being about what FDR said in 1934, getting the country on sound footing and taking care of those Americans who don't need a handout, but a hand up. Roosevelt vigorously defended his activist government as what was needed when the country faced enormous economic and social challenges.

Obama's term so far has often been defined by "process" - the legislative process to write a health care bill, the process to find a path forward in Afghanistan, the process to cap an oil well in the Gulf of Mexico. Process isn't politics. Emotion and conviction are.

Harry Truman said "the only thing new in this world is the history you don't know."

Franklin Roosevelt's response to the American Liberty League in 1934 offers a playbook for the current president. Has he read the history?

Measuring the Health Care Fallout

A Win is Better Than a Loss Anyone who says they know with any degree of certainty the short and/or long-term political impacts of the health care/insurance reform legislation is guessing or, depending upon your politics, thinking wishfully about the party they favor. There is no sure fire way to predict the impact. Lots of people are riled up for sure, but many also consider passage of the bill the great accomplishment since Social Security. The truth is no one knows the political impacts yet and with seven months to go until November, lots of things can shape the mid-term. Having said that, I'll venture two predictions and the first is easy because it is already happening. After any big, prolonged political brawl, and this was one of the biggest and longest in many years, its fascinating to watch the conventional wisdom - the CW - shift. After the special Senate election for Ted Kennedy's old seat was won by an anti-Obamacare candidate, Scott Brown, the wisdom from the Beltway wise guys was simple: the whole blood mess was toast, Obamacare was dead, DOA, nada, ain't gonna happen. CW held that the very best the president could do was cut his loses, trim his sails, buck up and take a beating. Apparently even Rahm Emanuel was counseling a strategic retreat. But wait. Hear that? That would be the sound of the CW creaking around and changing direction. Polls taken since Sunday's dramatic vote in the House are already showing a swing in favor of the controversial legislation. Stay tuned for even more of a bounce despite the attorneys general in a Baker's Dozen (or more) states, including Idaho and Washington, promising legal action. Meanwhile, the retribution begins with the former Bush speechwriter, David Frum, suggesting what was once described as Obama's Waterloo is becoming the GOP equivalent of Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. Fearless prediction number two: the unemployment rate on Labor Day, coupled with a sense of whether the nation's economy is finally recovering, will have more to do with the outcome of the mid-term elections than the last year and a half of turmoil over health care/insurance reform. Congressional Republicans have bet the Congress on making the 2010 elections about health care. It might have been a better bet - we'll see - to put all the chips on the economy. Every poll in every state says one thing - folks are worried more about the economy than anything. There are, I think, some almost universal political truisms at play as the dust still swirls around the Washington action on health care/insurance reform. Democrats want you to believe it was a once in 50 year historic vote. Maybe. Republicans want the story to be, as GOP House leader John Boehner said, "Armageddon." Probably not. More than the verdict of history or the demise of the country, this is politics and certain rules will apply. Johnson's Rules: Winning is Better than Losing I've long been a fan of the Hollywood writer and director Preston Sturges. He won the Academy Award in 1941 for the screen play for a very funny political movie - The Great McGinty - and went on to make a string of classic, screwball comedies including The Palm Beach Story and Sullivan's Travels. Sturges once came up with his 11 rules for box office success, including such gems as: "a pretty girl is better than an ugly one, a bedroom is better than a living room, a chase is better than a chat, a kitten is better than a dog, a baby is better than a kitten, a kiss is better than a baby, and a pratfall is better than anything." With apologies to the great filmmaker, but in the "spirit" of his rules - some things in politics are always better than some other things in politics - I offer my rules as something to think about as the next political chapter rolls out. 1) A win is better than a loss. Obama and Democrats have won. Politics tends to reward winners. Losers tend be regarded as, well, losers. Maybe the intensity around the current issue trumps that truism, but I doubt it. Bill Clinton went limping into the 1994 mid-terms reeling from a health care defeat and dogged by ethics allegations. He looked like a loser and was. Different story line now. A win replenishes political capital and support. A loss is a loss. 2) Hope is better than fear. In virtually every presidential election, at least back to Richard Nixon in 1968, the candidate who expressed the greater sense of optimism won. Think about Reagan and Carter, Reagan and Mondale, Bush and Dukakis, Clinton and Dole, Bush II and Kerry. Americans like the upbeat guy, the positive guy with the smile. Americans bought Obama's optimism in 2008, I'm betting a majority still do and recent polling bears this out. The GOP message on health care was about the destruction of the country, creeping socialism, fear and dread. Now turn the media attention to the president selling the positive attributes of what he's created and I'd bet a donut (hole) his optimism looks better to most Americans than John Boehner's Armageddon. New York Times columnist Charles Blow sliced and diced the poll numbers recently and concluded that while the president's approval numbers have certainly come down over the last few months, people still think he is inspiring - 61 percent - and that he makes them feel hopeful - 54 percent. Optimism trumps fear. It also doesn't hurt Obama that the press loves a comeback narrative; exactly what he's running with right now. 3) Being for something is better than being against something. Democrats, say what you will about the merits of the bill they just passed, were trying to do something, Republicans were trying to stop something. Being for something and winning - Bush's tax cuts or Clinton's welfare reform, for example - almost always beats playing defense, especially when you are defending an indefensible status quo. 4) A specific is better than a slogan. Republicans have always been better at the message game than Democrats, but now Obama and Democrats have specifics to talk about, Republicans don't. Expect a lot of talk about the "donut hole," about the end of denying coverage for "pre-existing conditions" and greater "regulation of insurance companies." Details are good, if they can be understood. Those talking points, repeated over and over, can be understood, particularly since they now represent a done deal. 5) And, an improving economy is best of all. I began this analysis with a prediction that the state of the economy will have more to do with the fall elections than the nasty spectacle in Washington over the last 13 months. By November, if there is a genuine sense that the economy is improving - not a sure thing by any means - if American troops are continuing to come home from Iraq and maintaining in Afghanistan, and if the president is able to convincingly display a sense of optimism and confidence about the future of the country, then the mid-term could be more typical from an historic standpoint. Charlie Cook, the best guesser of which way the Congress will swing, now predicts Democratic loses in the House, for example, but not a GOP takeover. Expect R's to win 25 to 30 House seats. Seven months to election day. Much can happen, and probably will. Those are my predictions and I'm stickin' with them - for now.

A Passion For Anonymity

When the Staff Becomes the Story What we now think of as the modern White House staff dates back to the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Before FDR - Woodrow Wilson, for example - presidents had a White House staff that basically included a secretary to handle correspondence and scheduling and maybe a typist or stenographer. Roosevelt changed all that just as he changed almost everything about the modern presidency and the operation of the White House. When fear was expressed that FDR was engaging in executive empire building by expanding the White House bureaucracy, he famously responded that his assistants would be characterized by a "passion for anonymity." What happened to that idea? I'd be the first to concede that the demands of the 21st Century White House, at least in some respects, pale in comparison to those of FDR's day. FDR didn't have to deal with the 24 hour news cycle and most everything moved more slowly. Still, Roosevelt battled a depression and won a war with a handful of personal staffers who for the most part didn't become household names or the subject of long profiles in the New York Times. There wasn't a Rahm Emanuel or Karl Rove in the group. I got to thinking about this while reading what was, at least for political junkies, the admittedly fascinating piece on Emanuel in last week's Times Magazine. If the piece was intended to restore a certain calm to the No Drama Obama operation and tamp down the storyline that the president's Chief of Staff is - take your pick - tired, discouraged, out of sorts or sync with his boss, too visible, too overbearing, a lightening rod, etc., it doesn't seem to have worked. Emanuel has been the subject of a Letterman Top 10 List, countless stories and even a sole-subject blog Rahmblr. The Rahmblr will be profiled, along with his brother, on "60 Minutes" on Sunday. Can you say overexposed? I'm admittedly from the old school. FDR had it right. In my old school view, political aides, generally speaking, best serve the boss when they aren't always part of the story. While there is something to be said for a political aide taking the arrows for the boss when the going gets tough, there is not much to be said for political staffers becoming the story. After a campaign in 2008 where turmoil among Hillary Clinton's staff and John McCain's advisers seemed to define the out-of-control nature of both their campaigns, I had a naive notion that an Obama White House might not succumb to the usual inside the beltway fixation on who is doing what to whom among the president's closest advisers. Naive indeed. Political operations are unique beasts organizationally and culturally. There is nothing quite like them. Nonetheless, in at least one way, a political operation, be it the white hot White House or some backwater congressional office, are like corporate boardrooms or big league baseball locker rooms. When the antics of the CEO's underlings or the third baseman's relationship with the shortstop start to get more attention than the substance of the business or the score of the game, then the boss or the manager usually has a big problem. Considering the qualities and intelligence of the people involved, it is amazing to me that Clinton and McCain didn't immediately put a stop to the dysfunction in their staffs during the last campaign. Their failure to do so speaks volumes about their own management and leadership abilities. Stay tuned to see if Obama tolerates more of what seems to be the building drama in his organization. I think I know what FDR might have done. He had a few trusted advisers - Louis Howe, Steve Early and Harry Hopkins, for instance - but he never let any one adviser totally dominate the administration or his thinking. He kept his own counsel, often not sharing his thinking while keeping his own staff guessing and agile, and he made sure that he, and he alone, made the big decisions. A little more anonymity, and frankly modesty, from people who haven't been elected to anything would be a good thing. My old boss, Cece Andrus, the only fellow elected governor of Idaho four times and someone, as even his detractors admit, who knew how to work the levers and make decisions, used to remind his Statehouse staffers - me included - that "there are lots of names on doors around here, but only one name on the ballot." In other words, I'm the boss and you work for me. Keep your head and your profile down and tend to business. Words to govern by.

Better Late...

U.S. Attorneys Nominated for Idaho, Eastern Washington If you need any proof that the confirmation process for high officials of the United States government works about as well as Toyota's braking system, consider the long delayed, but finally announced appointments of U.S. Attorneys in Idaho and eastern Washington. Barack Obama took office more than 13 months ago and as of last week, according to the website Main Justice, he has nominated just over half of the 93 U.S. Attorneys in the country. The Senate has approved just 34 of the nominees. What is strange about this pace is that no one seems to think its strange. The good news is that both the nominees recently announced, Wendy Olson in Idaho and Mike Ormsby in eastern Washington, are highly respected attorneys and quality people who should be quickly confirmed by the world's greatest - and slowest - deliberative body, the United States Senate. The Main Justice site has good profiles of both Olson and Ormsby, including the interesting tidbits that Olson once interned in the Los Angeles Times sports department and that Ormsby is part owner of the Yakima Bears baseball team in the Northwest League. Olson is the consensus choice of the entire Idaho delegation, which put out a joint statement expressing approval. The fact that a consensus choice of a long-time and highly respected career prosecutor, whose appointment has been the best kept secret in Idaho's legal circles for months, could take so long speaks volumes about the time consuming, onerous vetting process that now slows down even the most obvious presidential appointment.

In Ormsby's case, his nomination, also speculated upon for months, was slowed by questions about his role in a controversial downtown Spokane development and by what the Seattle PI correctly called "partisan gridlock" in the capitol. Now that the Justice Department and the FBI have combed over the story, he should receive - and deserves - quick bipartisan approval in the Senate.

[Full disclosure: I've known Mike Ormsby for a long time and know him to be both a quality individual and a fine attorney. That a fellow of his experience and ability is willing to undergo the months-long vetting process, with all the uncertainty and turmoil it must create for his existing practice, is a testament to his commitment to both professionalism and public service. He'll do a superb job.]

Federal prosecutors play extremely important roles in our justice system. They should be people of great experience, sound judgment and outstanding character. The advice and consent of the Senate is properly the place to double check on those qualifications.

By the same token, when an election takes place, a new president - regardless of party - must be able to make timely and considered judgments about the people he wants in important positions. We will soon have new, high quality U.S. Attorneys in place in our neck of the woods, but it certainly hasn't been a hasty process.

A better approach for these important jobs might be to do what Bill Clinton did following his election and request the resignation of every U.S. Attorney. Then during the long vetting and confirmation process a career prosecutor would be in charge of every office. The opportunity for political mischief is actually reduced under this scenario. The Obama method has left in place for months and months a gaggle of the previous administration's political appointees, with many likely going through the motions of being a United States Attorney.

Maybe the best that can be said is that the deeply flawed confirmation process in Washington, involving everything from assistant secretaries of this and that to Supreme Court judges, is so onerous and so time consuming that few people with real flaws can possibly survive running the gauntlet. Maybe that's the point. But, does it have to take so long?

Too bad we can't apply the same level of scrutiny to the Eric Massa's of the Congress. That kind of vetting would be worth the wait.

An Election That Matters

Why Scott Brown Won... Great piece in the Boston Globe today on why Massachusetts' voters made the decisions they made recently; putting a Republican, Scott Brown, in the Senate for the first time since 1972. The analysis, based on Election Day polling by respected Democratic pollster Peter Hart, is worth reading in the context of the president's State of the Union tonight. That speech, in many ways, will be read as a response to the Senate contest in the Bay State. Here is one telling paragraph: "Still the economy, stupid. The economy, not health care, drove the vote. Among those who felt the economy was doing well, (Who are those people?) [Martha] Coakley won 52-to-43 percent. For those who said the economy was not good or poor, Brown won 56-to-39 percent." Those findings confirm the oldest rule in politics: when the economy is sick, politicians - particularly those seen as most in charge - get the flu. Many Democrats would like to be able to respond to the current political turmoil by saying "we inherited all this," but that referendum was held a year ago November. George W. Bush is a fading memory and voters are telling national Democrats one unmistakable message: "it's the economy stupid and you guys have been in charge." We'll see fairly soon, I suspect, whether anyone is really listening and, if they are, whether they can articulate a program that starts to make more sense to the worried American voter. My sense is there is political danger for anyone right now who comes across as looking less than completely serious about the economic challenge. Links here will take you deeper into some of Hart's polling or an interesting new survey from National Public Radio.