The problem with a trip like this last one is that with “social” dinners thrown in-it leaves little time for booming or blogging. I opted for booming and let my blogging slide. I’m home for the weekend now and catching up.
A whole group of people are up in arms about the recent article by Mark Halperin about the Obama administration’s failure to communicate.
Barack Obama is being politically crushed in a vise. From above, by elite opinion about his competence. From below, by mass anger and anxiety over unemployment. And it is too late for him to do anything about this predicament until after November’s elections.
With the exception of core Obama Administration loyalists, most politically engaged elites have reached the same conclusions: the White House is in over its head, isolated, insular, arrogant and clueless about how to get along with or persuade members of Congress, the media, the business community or working-class voters. This view is held by Fox News pundits, executives and anchors at the major old-media outlets, reporters who cover the White House, Democratic and Republican congressional leaders and governors, many Democratic business people and lawyers who raised big money for Obama in 2008, and even some members of the Administration just beyond the inner circle.
Now the douchebags writers of idiot conservative blogs are all agog saying “See? We told you so?”. I find that very laughable because they are conveniently forgetting that there was not a good alternative on the GOP side of the aisle in 2008. Sarah Palin? Please-she was a deal breaker from day one and still is. John McCain? Which John McCain-the guy we knew in 2000 or the useless asshole who has trashed everything he used to believe in to placate a noisy mob within his own party.
And it also ignores the fact that a lot has been accomplished-even though the President gets absolutely zero credit for it. If McCain had won we would still have over 100,000 troops in Iraq, for example.
Nonetheless-it would be well for key decision makers in Obama’s circle to pay heed to what Halperin is saying. Because Obama is losing the communications battle. If he has a message-no one is hearing it.
Part of that is the Teabag noise machine-aided and abetted by Fox News, but that is not all of it. Obama bears a lot of blame too-he has not been a good communicator, and he has picked his fights poorly.
As a result-Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are the symbols of the Democratic party and that’s not good for anyone.
In 2009 Obama missed a huge opportunity to slap both of them in the face by not vetoing the Omnibus spending bill. It was a no brainer and he could have made the case that he was hear to save the Democratic leadership from its worst impulses. He would have gone a long way towards building a bridge towards moderate Republicans.
But he did not-and then he dawdled while Glenn Beck and Saint Sarah made millions feeding the Teabagger beast. As Dick Armey fiddled, Rome burned. As the summer of 2009-he never made a case that could have been easily made-that the nations health care system is broke and real Americans are getting screwed at the drive through by insurance companies. Oh they made some noises-but they never bundled it up into a coherent message that today’s attention deficit afflicted, factually impaired, average American could understand.
So if the supposed GOP wave happens-as it appears it will, you can trace the beginnings of that wave back to August 2009. Because that is when the Teabag noise jammer first kicked into high gear and the Obama administration did not field any effective countermeasures-like shooting the jammer down.
The question now however, is whether, Obama will actually take an objective look at his past two years and make the required adjustments to allow the truth to be heard.
And that is where Halperin’s thesis should probably be examined closely. Because they actually have done a lot more than they are getting credit for-but its not being heard or acknowledged by the 65% of us who don’t smoke on the teabag crack pipe. If you don’t do something to change the perception-the perception, however flawed, becomes reality.
Time will tell if they actually do it or not-and I hope they do. There is too much at stake to simply lie down and allow the country to be steamrolled into the Hobbesian hell that your friendly neighborhood douchebag tea partier wants to cast you into.