Questions of competence begin to dog Obama
By: Chris Stirewalt
Political Editor
August 20, 2009
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| President Barack Obama during his meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2009, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) |
President Barack Obama's fellow Democrats are again in an uproar over health care.
Liberals say they'll blockade any bill that doesn't include a government-run insurance program. And labor says it will sit out the 2010 elections if the president doesn't come across with a stout public plan.
Meanwhile, the moderate Democrats who were wooed for weeks by the administration are sidling toward the door, saying that the best thing would be just to start over.
Many at the White House no doubt wish they could take that advice.
It's been 177 days since Obama made his initial pitch for a health care overhaul to a joint session of Congress. That the president's team is still spending so much time stroking the Democratic base is evidence of how dire the situation is for this young administration.
Two decisions on health care have rattled Democrats.
First, the president chose to not sell his own plan but instead tried to get Congress to rush something through before lawmakers -- and the public -- fully understood what was in the bill. Second, the administration attempted an ungainly flip-flop on the issue of government-run insurance.
Many Democrats think that the stars were aligned for health care but increasingly see the administration as having squandered the moment.
Press Secretary Robert Gibbs took a beating Tuesday for an outright evasion on whether Obama has changed his position on the public option. Down the hall, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel snarled to the New York Times that the White House is finally done with bipartisanship ... again.
Democrats can't be blamed for wondering if these guys know what they're doing.
It doesn't help with liberals that Obama is escalating the war in Afghanistan, sticking with Wall Street on bailouts, and going slow on social issues. But Democrats are really alarmed because they have lost faith in the political powers of the president and his team.
Competency trumps ideology almost every time.
Americans would rather have a competent president with whom they disagree on some points than a president who shares all their views but can't get the job done.
For George W. Bush, the tipping point of his presidency was August 30, 2005, when the sun rose on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Fair or not, the perception that Bush was not up to the task in New Orleans fractured public confidence in his administration.
When the brushfire of sectarian conflict in Iraq burned out of control in early 2006, there was little the president could say to reassure Americans. Having taken the rap for letting 1,800 citizens die in a storm, Bush couldn't regain control of the national narrative in Iraq.
As Democrats like Obama hounded and hectored him, voters came to conclude that the president and his party weren't up to the job of running the country.
With tremendous discipline and a top-notch team, Bush was eventually able to regroup and build enough support for the troop surge that pulled Iraq back from the brink in 2008. But big deficits, a Wall Street bailout, and the memories of Iraq and Katrina saw Bush leave office with only about a third of Americans in his corner.
About half of the country still approves of the job Obama is doing. But as voters lose confidence in Obama's gifts, victories will be harder to come by.
The simple answer for breaking the cycle would be to listen to moderate Democrats who say that starting over would be better than a humiliating defeat, or worse, passing a screwed-up bill.
But Obama set the stakes for the game when he allowed Emanuel to convince Democrats and the press this spring that failing to pass a bill immediately would be electoral death next year.
Once the August deadline was blown and the president started dropping in the polls, Obama had no choice but to keep plunging ahead. Plus, his personality makes it unlikely that he'll admit a mistake of this magnitude.
The way Obama brushed off the challenges of both Hillary Clinton and John McCain last year made Democrats believe he had infallible political instincts and was a forceful leader.
But what if Obama was lucky in the adversaries he drew and in the timing of the economic collapse? What if Democrats confused serendipity and ego for keen judgment and executive ability?
Those questions are the reason for the panic you see on the faces of congressional Democrats.
Chris Stirewalt is the political editor of The Washington Examiner. He can be reached at cstirewalt@dcexaminer.com
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