President Obama during his campaign for the White House was widely hailed as a charismatic charmer with a talent for speechmaking and a dangerous ability to parlay popular appeal into policy.
More than a year later, a different picture of Obama is emerging. Impatient with gainsayers and frustrated with the political process, the president seems increasingly disenchanted as progress on his own agenda remains elusive.
Obama’s manner and tone at last week’s marathon health care summit was noted for his irritation, imperiousness and dissatisfaction.
“I think he is running up against the reality of getting things done in Washington, which is you have to play more hardball,” said Democratic strategist Keir Murray. “He could take a page from the old Bush team — shove it down their throats and defend it later.”
Obama came to office promising to change Washington, and he tried to set a tone early on with novel gestures like hosting a bipartisan cocktail party for lawmakers and inviting others for basketball.
But those invitations have tapered off as Obama’s agenda has stalled in Congress. It more often appears that his limited experience in elected office failed to prepare Obama for how frustrating governance would be in such a partisan hothouse as Washington.
“The entire 2008 Obama campaign was built around a cult of personality,” said Republican strategist Kevin Madden of the Glover Park Group. “He is totally lacking the kind of leadership skills you forge after a long time on Capitol Hill.”
Now that he’s in the White House, Obama appears more often surrounded by campaign acolytes than dispassionate advisers, and his bristling performance at the health care summit did little to advance the case on his signature legislative item.
“He is the president and titular leader of the free world, and Paul Ryan is a congressman from Washington,” Madden said. “As far as command and control of the issue, they were on a level playing field, they looked like equals.”
John Fortier, a political scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, described Obama’s troubles in the past year as a failure of decisiveness.
On health care, emissions, Afghanistan and other issues, Obama struggled to keep his party together and manage intermittent mutinies from the liberal and moderate blocs in Congress.
“A lot of the criticism he gets from the left (on health care reform) strikes me as somewhat backwards,” Fortier said. “The problem was not that he needed to stand up to moderates in his own party, the problem was he needed to stand up to his own base and say, ‘Keep quiet and take this deal.'”
Obama’s storied charisma also suffered last week. The Times of London headline after Obama’s health care summit read: “Try to stay awake; the president has a health care bill to pass.”
But it’s not just a problem in Washington. A recent New York Times/CBS News poll found the president’s personal approval rating dipped to 39 percent — a stunning turnaround for a politician who just a year ago seemed to many the personification of a new, more hopeful style of bipartisan politics.
