Americans understand that the presidency is an awfully hard job.
That generates much-needed good will, especially in tough times. But voters won’t tolerate a president making things harder than they need to be.
And with the latest changes in how we deal with terrorists, Americans are again worried that President Barack Obama is making the seemingly impossible job of protecting the country unnecessarily complex.
Having the FBI investigate the CIA for seven-year-old offenses against mass murderers or turning the war in Afghanistan into a decade-long effort to build a liberal democracy are examples of Obama’s tendency to make a hard job harder.
It may be a lack of humility or it may be a misunderstanding of the real exercise of power, but whether it is health care, the economy or foreign policy, the president prefers calligraphy where block printing will do.
Talking about why the president let Attorney General Eric Holder take on the CIA, Obama’s point man for counterterrorism, John Brennan, said this to The Washington Post:
“Obama is approaching the issues as a game of three-dimensional chess. It’s not kinetic checkers. And I think the approach in the past was kinetic checkers. There are moves that are made on the chess board that really have implications, so the president is always looking at those dimensions of it.”
Gulp.
Anyone who listened to Dick Cheney on “Fox News Sunday” heard a man who wasn’t playing a game in any dimension.
Many Americans might not want to have a beer with Cheney, but they don’t doubt that he would do what was necessary to keep them safe. He may be a blunt instrument, but he’s an effective one.
As Obama increases the limitations on U.S. forces but increases the size of their mission, Americans are given cause to wonder if efficacy is his primary concern.
It took George W. Bush almost three years and the invasion of two good-size countries to take his Gallup job approval rating down to 50 percent.
Obama got down to the pass/fail mark for American presidencies in less than eight months.
The moment when Bush first slipped down to the halfway point was in November 2003.
American deaths in Iraq were rising fast, foreign fighters were pouring in and hawks like Sen. John McCain went public with the criticism that there weren’t enough troops on the ground.
It was in this deteriorating environment that President Bush delivered a speech reframing the fight in Iraq. It was no longer a fight to knock off a dictator before he could team up with al Qaeda, but instead the first part of a “forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East.”
Moderate voters swiftly rejected that notion, especially when the task at hand seemed plenty difficult.
Obama’s team says that the president is suffering with voters because he is taking bold action during a troubled time as Ronald Reagan did. Democratic pollster Peter Hart predicts that his party may be facing the kind of election cycle that battered Republicans in 1982.
After coming to power amid similar circumstances as Obama did, Reagan’s approval rating slipped to 50 percent at the end of his first year and didn’t get to the sunny side of the street for almost two years.
But Reagan stayed on message — lower taxes and stronger defense — and when things turned around, people gave him the credit. Certainly, no one ever accused Reagan of excessive nuance.
Leadership isn’t a popularity contest.
Harry Truman did miserably in the polls for most of his presidency and is now lionized across the political spectrum for his straightforward approach. Bill Clinton spent most of his days in office near 60 percent, but he is seen as mostly ineffectual and distracted.
The reason Obama has lost 20 percentage points of his support since taking office isn’t for bold leadership. It is because he seems to be worrying about the wrong things.
Jimmy Carter also started near 70 percent job approval, slid for 18 months and never got over the halfway point after the spring of 1977.
Like Obama, Carter was a three-dimensional chess player.
If the president can’t find a way to simplify his agenda and his message, he may meet the same fate.
Chris Stirewalt is the political editor of The Washington Examiner. He can be reached at [email protected]
