What do BHO fans think about him now.
Posted: Mon Feb 09, 2009 1:59 am
K Strassel had a good column in the WSJ:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123388281570455005.htmlHere's a little flavor of the questions White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs has been fielding two weeks running:
Is this going to be bipartisan? What happened to the vetting process? Does this undercut the president's rhetoric on an era of responsibility? Will this restore the president's credibility on changing the culture in Washington? What's the point of having policies if you're going to have waivers? What kind of message does this send? Is the president embarrassed by this? Is this more Washington as usual?
The knock on Candidate Obama was that he put style ahead of substance. Who knew what he was going to do (and who cared)? It was all about how he was going to do it -- with bipartisanship and ethics and a new era of "responsibility." Now comes the reckoning. President Obama is being judged not on the what, but the how.
That's one way to make sense of these tumultuous first days -- from the furors over Tim Geithner's and Tom Daschle's taxes, to the howls over waivers for lobbyists, to the teeth gnashing over the Democrats' "stimulus" bill. Somewhere, deep in this administration, somebody is working on serious policy. Not that you'd know it from the debate over Mr. Obama's self-imposed standards for governing. It's an early glimpse of the challenges he faces going forward.
Mr. Daschle didn't get done in by his taxes. The administration stuck with Mr. Geithner, and would've stuck with Mr. Daschle (and his limo) right up through confirmation. Given the deference accorded to presidential nominees and Mr. Daschle's Senate history, Mr. Obama might rightly have expected success.
What Mr. Daschle didn't survive was his boss's own pronouncements about rich people and special interests. As the media dug into Daschle taxland, it discovered that (wow) he was a rich person, routinely paid by special interests to help them navigate the giant federal government.
Wait, wait, cried Mr. Obama, let's focus on the what -- namely, my health-care agenda, to which I believe Mr. Daschle is integral. No, no, roared the mob, we want to talk about the things you used to talk about, namely, how you could ever justify this. He couldn't. Next up: Leon Panetta and Hilda Solis.
His first full day in office, Mr. Obama imposed the "most sweeping ethics reform in history," barring officials from working on issues on which they'd lobbied in recent years. Then came the realization that a lot of really smart people hadn't just sat around for years waiting for him to give them government jobs, but had used their expertise for private profit.
What followed was a succession of waivers granting several top officials immunity from the rules. And what followed that was all the fury that could be collectively spewed by good-government types, left-wing blogs, and Senate Republicans. The administration attempted to explain that what mattered was that it was in the "public interest" to have qualified individuals running government. True. But that's not how Mr. Obama said he'd do things.
All this has put the president on defense, just as he should be nurturing something that really is related to policy -- his "stimulus." Not so long ago -- say, last month -- the measure of a president's success was whether he passed his agenda. George W. Bush would've been grateful to occasionally overcome a Senate filibuster. But this administration, riffing off its pledge to cross the aisle, set out an early standard of achieving 80 Senate votes. The White House outlined this aspiration, even as it handed over authorship to House Democrats -- partisans all.
What predictably emerged was a colossal spending embarrassment -- long on condoms, short on stimulus -- that justified every House Republican (and 11 House Democrats) in voting no. Mr. Obama didn't like the result, but since he's supposed to be changing the tone, couldn't gripe at his own party. Majority Leader Harry Reid knows this, and has ignored pleas to fix the mess in the Senate. Public support is ebbing away, giving the GOP more cover to run. Mr. Obama will get his stimulus, but what is in it will at most rank equally with headlines about how it was so many voted against it.
The president is reassuring the public that it takes time to change Washington. It also takes an understanding of the problems. Bipartisanship isn't just Super Bowl cookies; it requires Mr. Obama forcing his own party to make ideological concessions. More rules won't curb lobbyists. That requires cutting back the influence of government -- on which lobbying thrives. Will Mr. Obama go there?
Unless he does, it isn't clear how he navigates these problems -- which aren't going away. His promises to change the way Washington worked weren't throwaway lines tacked to an otherwise meaty agenda. They were his agenda. From now until 2012, he'll be flyspecked for every interaction with a special interest, lobbyist, wealthy individual, or Republican. The problem with lofty aspirations is that at some point they meet reality.