Let the shrieking commence, but I kinda agree with Paul Waldman, in the Washington Post, on those who critique President Obama’s “stagecraft”:
… The criticism in a case like this tends to be of the third-person variety: whoever’s doing the criticizing says, “I understand why substantively this doesn’t make any difference, but other people are going to look at it and be upset.” But I’m not sure who’s sincerely upset about it.
It isn’t that these accumulated critiques are inaccurate. In many ways it appears that he has indeed stopped bothering with a lot of the things that contemporary presidents spend their time worrying about. Barack Obama isn’t Bill Clinton — working a room, whether it’s full of donors or full of senators, isn’t his idea of a good time. So he’ll go to the fundraisers, because that’s still something with practical importance for his party. But he isn’t going to massage Congressional egos, because at this point it won’t make a bit of difference. He’s enjoyed almost perfect support on legislation from congressional Democrats (and almost perfect opposition from Republicans), and there isn’t going to be any major legislation in his last two years anyway, not with the GOP controlling one and possibly two houses of Congress…
Back when he first ran for president, Obama and his team prided themselves on their ability to see beyond the fury of that day’s news cycle, avoid the distraction of whatever was in Politico that morning, and keep their focus on their long-term goals. That was a central part of the “No Drama Obama” ethos. What’s happening now is in some ways an extension of that perspective. It may be that Obama has decided that it’s no longer possible to affect how most Americans think about him — after nearly six years in office, there’s no clever press strategy that will revive his approval ratings. The only thing that will make a difference is results...
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Apart from armchair quarterbacking (and throwing peanuts at those who do), what’s on the agenda for the evening?
max
“I understand why substantively this doesn’t make any difference, but other people are going to look at it and be upset.”
I don’t give a shit about winning the day, the cycle or how it looks. I do care a lot about policy. War, the economy, and social policy pretty much covers that angle.
max
[‘I bitch when I am unhappy on those fronts.’]
max
@max:
I like Obama just fine the way he is -AHEM- appearance-wise.
max
[‘Pardon me while I gag at the usual Beltway morons.’]
Baud
Fixed for precision.
SiubhanDuinne
There is a fine old Southern expression “can’t win for losin’.”
That’s President Obama. It doesn’t matter what he does or doesn’t do, when or under what circumstances he does or doesn’t do whatever it is, what he says or doesn’t say about why he is or isn’t doing what he is or isn’t doing. He can’t win for losin’. He is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t.
If he speaks out on Ferguson, he is playing the race card and injecting himself into an ongoing investigation. If he says nothing, he is throwing the African American community under the bus and basically being a pûsšÿ.
If he plays golf on vacation, he is AWOL and out of touch. If he stays in Washington working at the White House, he is trying to portray himself as irreplaceable.
If he asks Congress for advice and consultation, he is showing a lack of leadership. If he acts on his own, he is arrogant and abusing his executive powers.
Can’t win for losin’.
Baud
BTW, I remember the good old days when Obama was a “rock star” who was all stagecraft and no substance.
schrodinger's cat
Why is it such a given that the Republicans are going to win both the Houses in November. I don’t buy it. The MSM told us that the Hillary was inevitable, that senators don’t become Presidents, Presidents don’t win when the unemployment is high and so on. MSM pundits are rarely right. Obama is right to ignore the likes of drunk Noonan, Mustache of Wisdom and mean girl MoDo.
schrodinger's cat
@Baud: The tween girls of MSM are crushing on Rand Paul right now.
amk
@schrodinger’s cat:
Yup. That’s why bw hacks are pissed off at the kenyan. He proved repeatedly all their stupid talking points are indeed stupid.
WaterGirl
@schrodinger’s cat: Was that an autocorrect mishap? You intended to say “mean girls”, right? And it changed to “tween girls”? :-)
Baud
@schrodinger’s cat:
They go through cycles. I think they like Rand right now because he’s the Republican who “reaches out” to black people.
WaterGirl
@schrodinger’s cat: You know, when I played volleyball, I never listened when the opposing team called a ball on our side of the court “in” or “out”.
I do not know why so many people on the left believe what the MSM tells them about our chances in 2014. Has no one ever heard of a self-fulfilling prophesy?
Edit: I think it’s just like global warming. We have never had this set of circumstances before, so ally he predictive models for weather seem to be wrong even more than usual.
I think the same is going to be true of 2014 and 2016. We just need to work our asses off Turnout, turnout, turnout.
schrodinger's cat
@WaterGirl: No, I am meant tween girls. What Beiber is to tween girls, Rand Paul seems to be to the Beltway hacks these days. They are overjoyed at his every pronouncement.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
This. It annoys me to no end whenever someone posts a comment about how the other side is “winning.” Like, who gave you the official political scoreboard and told you when the game was going to end?
Mike in NC
@Baud: If only he’d gotten into the habit of giving the WH Press Corpse cute and insulting nicknames…
Baud
@Mike in NC:
That would be juvenile and totally disrespectful to the honor of the office he swore to uphold. /MSM
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@schrodinger’s cat: my favorite piece of dead (sure to come staggering back in a quest for braaaaiiiinzzzz) is that Dems can’t win without a Southerner on the ticket.
Hal
Sigh. Can we please stop giving Bill Clive so much credit? Clinton gave us DADT, DOMA, welfare reform, NAFTA, and massive deregulation. This is what Bill Clinton needed to stay in office. This is what working the room looks like.
Baud
@Hal:
I’ve never understood the attack on Clinton for DADT. IIRC, he wanted to end the discrimination policy altogether, Congress balked, and DADT was the compromise that led the way to the eventual repeal. For the other stuff, I can see the criticism.
El Caganer
@schrodinger’s cat: Yeah, the idea that the Republicans are going to take the Senate puzzles me. What exactly are they running on that’s such a winning platform? Maybe they’ll do it, but I’ll be damned if I see how.
burnspbesq
Then there’s this. Barf-bag strongly recommended.
http://www.salon.com/2014/08/24/cornel_west_he_posed_as_a_progressive_and_turned_out_to_be_counterfeit_we_ended_up_with_a_wall_street_presidency_a_drone_presidency/
Keith G
Rhetorically speaking, this is a truism and a bit hacky at that. It sounds like something that would be used in the next Cadillac commercial.
Presidents have a lot of stagecraft tools at their disposal. Some have used them very well and others…. not so much. Some presidents found ways to add tools to the stagecraft tool box – As in Reagan starting the stupid custom of presidents returning salutes. That should not be done, but I am not sure that a president now can set things right – all because of stage craft.
It will probably be a bit hard to tease out how much Obama’s choices hurt or helped his agenda until some time after his time in office when we can get a fuller picture with a cooler temperature.
@schrodinger’s cat:
I don’t think many reputable places are calling it a given in the Senate. The House is in the GOP’s hands for a bit because of safe districts. The Senate is trending GOP because of the large number of seats the Democrats have to defend. Some of those seats were won initially in the ’08 Obama wave. 2014 will not be an Obama wave. Worse, retirements have left a few seats open with no incumbent advantage.
Obama’s low approval in job performance is a factor that is noted. The party holding the White House tends to lose seats in mid terms and this low of an approval rating does not bode well. Combine that with what at times seems to be Obama’s reticence to take up the “cloak” of Head of the Party and Campaigner in Chief and the result is the notion that Democrats do have a very vigorous challenge ahead.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Baud:
DADT didn’t lead to repeal, it was found to be UNCONSTITUTIONAL.
El Caganer
@burnspbesq: I dunno, I thought it was pretty amusing, in a Shocked! Betrayed! Sold Out! kind of way – I find that sort of huffing and puffing to be good for a laugh or two. Maybe it’s just me.
mclaren
Just a little fact I thought I’d toss out there for the hell of it: the total annual cost of social scurity + medicare = 2.2 trillion dollars per year. The total annual cost of our national deficit = about 222 billion dollars in 2014. The total national debt of America stands at 16.6 trillion dollars as of 2014.
And the annual cost of tax avoidance?
Five.
Trillion.
Dollars.
Yep.
Crack down on the goddamn billionaire tax cheats, and you could pay off America’s national debt in less than four years.
Crack down on the superrich tax avoiders, and you could pay for 20 years of social security + medicare in just 8 years of tax receipts..
Something to think about…
Villago Delenda Est
@Baud: Sort of in the same way that English merchants “reached out” to the natives of West Africa and gave them free cruises to the New World for full time employment opportunities.
burnspbesq
@El Caganer:
The part that cracked me up (and simultaneously outraged me) was West portraying Obama as Kenny G. That was really low. I said somewhere else that while Obama may not be Coltrane, history will say that he was at least Hank Mobley, and maybe Wayne Shorter.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo): DADT was a step forward at the time. Anyone who denies that is unaware of the the political climate of the early 90s.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@burnspbesq: Has Prof. West ever run for office? Bitching from the sidelines is easy.
burnspbesq
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
I’m sure that Prof. West would reject your characterization of what he’s doing. You’d get about six paragraphs about how it’s essential for the academic gadfly to stay on the sidelines, detached from the fray, constantly reminding us of how much better Obama could and should be doing, so that he can be properly held to account. Or sumpin sumpin like dat. Which, in fairness, is only about 85 percent wrong.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@burnspbesq: I never have and never will run for any office. I have a history that prevents it, I have a personality that prevents it, and so on. West sounds to me too much like the Nader people of 2000. While the goals they espoused were goals that I want, I doubt that our society will deliver them in the very near future. It does not mean that those goals are not worth pursuing.
burnspbesq
This is too fucking funny.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/erick-erickson-sickened-by-the-snake-pit/
It’s a bit late to be worrying about the beast you created slipping its leash, Ewwick.
PhilbertDesanex
@SiubhanDuinne: Prime example: If he goes to war, well then the war is his fault. And if he doesn’t, he’s a pussy. Eventually you get to the point of, if you can’t please ’em, fuck ’em.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@mclaren:
Nope. Someone is trying to tell you that tax cheating equals 1/3 of our entire GDP. That’s a farcical number. Before posting, you should at least try to contemplate whether your math makes any sense.
gian
@max:
I wish he’d aged visibly less. It ruins the whole Vulcan thing that the stress has aged him something like 15 years in the last 6
gian
@Keith G:
in the image versus results thing, Obama is the mirror mirror universe version of Reagan in that way. I was a kid in JR and high school when Reagan was running the show and people loved that son of bitch but hated his policies. there’s a segment of the population which loves Obama’s policies and hates the person.
Now you might think that’s because of mustard on hamburgers, or jelly beans but I don’t think that’s it.
I think it’s a function of race haters plus democratic party haters. It’s a venn diagram that doesn’t fully overlap (see Hillary’s 2008 primary shout-out to “hard working white people”)
gian
@schrodinger’s cat:
I know she’s the NYT
but Mo Dowd’s rush for a story on legal marijuana in Colorado screams the truism that libertarians are republicans who smoke pot.
evap
@schrodinger’s cat: It’s not just the MSM, it’s people like Nate Silver who say that the Rethugs will certainly take the House and have about a 60% chance to take the Senate. Nate Silver tends to be right about these things…
Ben Cisco
@burnspbesq: Amazing that a non-VIP invite to an inaugural led to such a consistent, focused, and ultimately useless minstrel show.
Yes, the metaphor is uncomfortable and clearly not something everyone could say. I’m saying it.
El Caganer
@Ben Cisco: That’s when I discovered the true entertainment value of Cornel West. Mr. Lefty Man-of-the-People was deeply offended that ‘the guy who carried his bags at the hotel’ could get a ticket to the inaugural, but a Serious Intellectual was SOL.
Bill Arnold
@mclaren:
I’m not looking to pick a fight, but … source? That number seems large.
As far as simple tax evasion (not avoidance) this wikipedia article on US tax evasion isn’t bad, placing the evasion number at around 300 billion dollars in 2010.
Ben Cisco
@El Caganer: You got that right. DONE with him.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
How horrible of Obama.
Personally, I would offer Obama is making a subtler ploy here – the other side is acting like a bunch of screaming child desperate for attention, so he is presenting himself as the responsible adult. Obviously the press which is manly about sensationalism isn’t going to like that.