I’ve had John Harris’s piece in today’s Politico—“7 stories Obama doesn’t want told”—sitting on my desk much of the day, trying to figure out how best to articulate what’s so irritating about it. In the end I don’t think I have much to add to the thoughts of The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder and James Fallows, the latter of whom aptly describes the Politico item as “a distillation of the ‘perception is all we care about’ approach to the world.”
Still, one quick thought: it’s a little incredible that a leading political journalist could make a list of “storylines Obama needs to worry about” that includes the phrase “too much Leonard Nimoy” but not the words “jobs” or “unemployment.” While Harris is frustratingly indifferent to the actual merits of most of the criticisms he’s repeating, he’s probably right that, for example, Obama is suffering from “the perception that he is a profligate spender.” But the president is suffering much, much more from the fact that unemployment is over 10 percent. And if he’s looking to improve his standing with voters—not to mention improve the lives of millions of Americans—it’s that fact, not any of these perceptions, that he should be working to change.
Update: I hadn’t seen this before, but Ambinder has also taken a point-by-point look at the Politico piece.
The nice thing about stories is that you can hear them from someone and not need to check or verify the content before you spread them because they are just stories.
And nice people from all sorts of political operations are willing to drop off fresh heaps of stories, in the form of talking points, to repeat. Quite often, these talking points come from republican shops and republican websites like Drudge and Breitbart. In fact, Greenwlad has done a couple of stories on politico's relationship with Drudge.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/03/27/politico/index.html
The stupid thing is that there is a disconnect between the political class and the Obama public. These guys type up all these stories on deficits, spending, and too liberal policies while the reality is that democratic voters are losing their enthusiasm for politics because they see the president capitulating to the forces which screwed the country up all the time:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_11/021197.php
Obama is more willing to fight progressives than republicans and blue dogs.
The other stupid thing is that republicans and blue dogs never have to worry about the story of them being obstructionist jerks who claim to want to rein in spending, but support all sorts of loopholes and inefficiencies that benefit their cronies. These were the guys that voted against Franken's anti-rape amendment. These are the guys which have filibustered, or - as the press labels it since 2006 - forced bills to require a supermajority, 70% of the time.
But these realities don't end up in the talking points, so they don't really emerge in the journalist story lines when they write their snarky articles or have their snarky cocktail party salons or get on tv for their snarky discussion rounds.
These realities require work to understand and, if we know anything about the political class from their "OMG! Deficits!" reaction to a 10% unemployment economy, it's that many of them have a real contempt for work.
#1 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Mon 30 Nov 2009 at 09:53 PM
President Obama has only one response to adversity...
"Bend over". Show your ass. Brownnose.
He genuflects to homophobic, misogynist, antisemite Saudi princes as quickly as he does to Chinese or Japanese officials. He's an "agenda-neutral" suckass.
He's an undereducated, inexperienced freshman Senator who had never run a damned thing in his life before the liberal moonbats put him in office. He's never had to make payroll, because he's never actually been in a position to contribute anything to the American economy. His only jobs have involved spending government money collected from taxpayers.
The Dude never attended a public school in his life (at least not that I can find).
He's a total zero. He's the Dude who got into private Ivy League schools somehow with the helfp of Black Muslim friends ( we don't know exactly how because he won't disclose his academic record like President Bush did). He's never had to make payrol in the rea worldl. He's a guy who was in the Senate of the U.S. who never drafted a law and who was absent from more votes in his brief tenure than he was "present" for.
#2 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Mon 30 Nov 2009 at 10:15 PM
You got some weird vibes in your posts when it comes to black issues there, paddy.
Especially when you contrast Obama's records with the previous guy. Just weird. Black Muslim friends put Obama editor of the Harvard Law Review? Undereducated? What's next, lazy? Bad optics, my friend.
And your criticism of who he bowed to is just silly. It's diplomacy, not weakness, and America is trying to win hearts and minds with it.
Because right now America needs some favors and with two wars ongoing, an economic crisis, and energy problems coming down the pike, machismo isn't going to get things done.
There are problems, serious problems, with the way Obama is running things, but Obama's way is a huge step up from his predecessor and the issues you mentioned are just not where the significant problems are.
Obama's problem is that he is status quo, he doesn't really want change, when the system he's inherited is broken.
And he fights the people who do want change and advocate for it:
http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2009/09/06/van-jones-a-moment-of-truth-for-liberal-institutions-in-the-veal-pen/
You should be thankful that he is overly gracious to his political enemies and overly harsh with his political allies. Where would the republican gridlock be if they had an executive who pointed the finger at them for causing the crisis and now obstruct any attempts at a solution?
Obama had a strong hand of cards but he plays the weakest ones exclusively because he desires friendly change and doesn't want to offend all those "reasonable people" that oppose him.
He likes to pay a passive game, a cautious game, when times call for an active player. You shouldn't complain about Obama, you could have had Howard Dean. He'd be wiping the floor with you in such a way that would turn people anti-conservative and anti-republican for a generation.
Obama might not make it to 2012
#3 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Tue 1 Dec 2009 at 12:14 AM
Somebody said something bad about Obama? Emergency! Damage control!
Funny how this never happened with Bush.
#4 Posted by JLD, CJR on Tue 1 Dec 2009 at 12:15 AM
No, What happened under Bush was "Bush is wiretappi...." "We interrupt this news cycle to bring you this special message. TERROR ALERT! JOHN ASHCROFT ANNOUNCES TERROR! TOM RIDGE ELEVATES TO CODE MAUVE!"
Let's not bring up the Bush Administration. We don't want to make Obama look good in this thread.
#5 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Tue 1 Dec 2009 at 12:33 AM
A little new:
http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/11/20/sarah-palin-wwe-star
The really beautiful thing about the culture war, from an entertainment standpoint, is that it is fundamentally irresolvable. There isn’t a concrete set of issues involved, where in theory both sides could give in a little and find middle ground, reach some sort of compromise.
That’s because there are no issues at all. At the end of this decade what we call “politics” has devolved into a kind of ongoing, brainless soap opera about dueling cultural resentments and the really cool thing about it, if you’re a TV news producer or a talk radio host, is that you can build the next day’s news cycle meme around pretty much anything at all, no matter how irrelevant — like who’s wearing a flag lapel pin and who isn’t, who spent $150K worth of campaign funds on clothes and who didn’t, who wore a t-shirt calling someone a *NSFW name* and who didn’t, and who put a picture of a former Vice Presidential candidate in jogging shorts on his magazine cover (and who didn’t).
It doesn’t matter what the argument is about. What’s important is that once the argument starts, the two sides will automatically coalesce around the various instant-cocoa talking points and scream at each other until they’re blue in the face, or until the next argument starts.
And while some of us are old enough to remember that once upon a time, these arguments always had at least some sort of ideological flavor to them, i.e. the throwdowns were at least rooted in some sort of real political issue (war, taxes, immigration, etc.) we’ve now got a whole generation that is accustomed to screaming at cultural enemies as an end in itself, for the sheer dismal fun of it. Start fighting first, figure out the reasons later.
And a little old:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-july-15-2004/talking-points
#6 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Tue 1 Dec 2009 at 09:52 PM
It seems as though the only people that actually comment on this post is biased and ignorant constituents’. Why does Obama pass matter now? He is our President and we chose him to the run our country. Everybody always want to the point the finger at the Obama administration about the decisions about health care reform and two-ongoing wars, but it amazes me that the people who are pointing the finger has no solution or ideas on how to fix and resolve the issue. What a hypocrite. What makes you think that you can do things better?
#7 Posted by So Disappointed that People can be Ignorant, CJR on Wed 2 Dec 2009 at 09:47 AM