Live and Learn (Updated)

E.J. Dionne: For most of the debate, Obama has cast himself as a benevolent referee overseeing a sprawling and untidy legislative process to which he would eventually bring order. He…

E.J. Dionne:

For most of the debate, Obama has cast himself as a benevolent referee overseeing a sprawling and untidy legislative process to which he would eventually bring order. He urged Democrats to knock out small spending measures that had caused public relations problems while doing little to defend the overall package or to reply to its Republican critics.

In the meantime, those critics were relentless, often casting logic aside to reframe the debate from a practical concern over how to rescue the economy to an ideological dispute about government spending.

I think Obama's experiencing now what college quarterbacks often say about the experience of making the adjustment to the NFL: "The game is played a lot faster up here."  There are a lot of Heisman trophy winners who never made the adjustment. Will Obama be like one of them? Or will he make the adjustment and get into that zone in which the game seems as if it's happening in slow motion?

Obama's had a bad week because he hasn't made the adjustment yet. It looks as though he's reacting rather than commanding, running around frantically trying to fix a hundred things at the same time. For what it's worth, I don't think Hillary would have done any better. I don't think anybody is ready on Day One for a job like this. It just takes time to get into that zone, no matter what one's previous experience or raw political talent. In the old days, a new president was given a grace period, but that's no longer the case–at least not when Republicans are in the opposition. This has been an ugly week he and the rest of us just have to get through, but I believe in his talent and that he'll be fine. He's a big-time player, and he'll find his game.

I think he had to learn the hard way that this bi-partisan thing just isn't going to work.  Maybe things look one way from the Senate and quite another from the White
House–especially if you're a Democrat in the White House. Maybe he thought that the kind of cooperation so many Democrats gave the Bush administration would be afforded to him. Maybe he he thought his personal relationships forged during his time in the Senate would matter. Well, live
and learn. What is obvious to you or me from a distance may not be obvious to someone like him whose political life has been so charmed. I suspect he sees himself as not governed by the same rules as those who went before him. And that may prove yet to be true, but if he is not to be governed by the rules he has to change them, and that will not come automatically or easily.  It's something he will have to struggle to make happen–he's going to have to invent a new way of doing things, and I think he has the talent to do it. Whether he has the will is another question.

As I've argued before, hIs job is not to forge a consensus with the kind of person who gets elected to national office. It just isn't going to work. He has to go over the Beltway's head and forge a consensus with the American people. His speech and WaPo column this show that he's starting down that track. I'm waiting to see how he's going to use Campaign for America that John Ortbal wrote about in his comments to the above-linked piece. But whatever initiatives he takes in reaching out to the American people, he should proceed expecting the worst kind of cynical political calculation from Congressional Republicans as a group and most Beltway Democrats.

These Beltway insider types are cynical game players who don't care one way or another about whether Obama succeeds, so long as they advance their own personal or factional interests. They don't care if the plane crashes so long as they have a parachute.  But most Americans want him–need him–to succeed. He has to manage or neutralize the Beltway types, but he has to find a way to work with the aspirations of American people.  If he cannot exploit the power to be found in the latter, he will, like Bill Clinton, be the victim of the former. 

Clinton had the people behind him, but he didn't know how to (or didn't want to) use their support to fight for their interests.  I think Clinton wanted to do good things, but he wanted more to be one of the insiders, so he decided to try to beat them at their own game rather than to change the rules. There is no winning this game if it is played according to the Beltway rules, and he lost badly.  His only real achievement was his surviving. We need Obama to do more than merely survive; we need him to change the rules.  I think he understands this; it's just a question of whether he has the will and the imagination to do it.

***

UPDATE: David Corn makes the same point, more or less:

President Barack Obama needs to get outside the Beltway.

Not necessarily by hopping on Air Force One (which he has yet to use), but by reaching out to the millions of Americans who are rooting for him in order to obtain their active support for his economic stimulus plan. In the first fortnight of his presidency, Obama has mainly played an inside game, as he has tried to win congressional approval of an economic recovery package. When the nearly $900 billion measure was being considered in the House, Obama largely deferred to House Democrats, who shoved many long-yearned-for spending initiatives into the bill. Thus, a 647-page creature was born, which included provisions easy for Republicans and conservatives to deride and oppose. . . .

What's missing from all this? The people.

The Obama campaign mastered the art of political connection. It engaged millions of voters and volunteers, causing them to feel like they were part of a movement. It did so by effectively deploying new social networking tools and strategies and by fashioning a message that resonated. There had never been such a powerful use of both technology and tone.

That has not yet happened regarding Obama's number-one governing priority. Obama has generally focused on pushing and pulling levers in the capital. And, it turns out, some are quite sticky. He has not done much to apply any pressure on the players within the capital. Read more. [He goes on to talk about Campaign for America]

An inside game is unavoidable if any kind of legislation is going to get passed.  The point is that he has to change the way the game is played.

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    Matt Zemek

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