Last November’s “change mandate” will be a millstone around the White House’s neck for several days. As pundits and commentators discuss the administration’s progress, they will inevitably end up disappointed with the pace and tenor of the president’s policies. On many fronts, President Obama is perceived as moving too slow, or not at all.
Obama’s foreign policy has been particularly hard for liberals and media buzzards to swallow. Guantanamo Bay will likely still be open after the president vowed to close it within a year. U.S. troops are still in Iraq and leaving slowly. The administration has not reversed several Bush administration policies on detainees. Afghanistan is likely to see more boots on the ground soon.
The domestic front poses many challenges as well. The economy, saved from free fall by the stimulus package, is still anemic. Job losses have slowed, and though the third quarter saw encouraging numbers, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner admits the recovery is “choppy.” Efforts to beef up financial regulations have met obstacles.
To the media, who fell hard and fast for Obama, this is all disappointing. The public is disillusioned, too. But to people who realize that governing is a messy business, that the world is a complex place, and that the perfect should never be the enemy of the good, it makes sense.
The president has begun the long work of fulfilling his vision for change under unenviable circumstances. This president’s congressional Democrats, elected in 2006 and 2008, are far more conservative and wily than their predecessors. This reality, coupled with a total lack of good-faith bipartisan effort from Republicans, has made passing sweeping legislation difficult.
The country’s condition at the end of the Bush era must also be recalled. As Bush exited, thousands of families had lost their loved ones in war, millions of people were without jobs, and foreclosure had seized homes across America. The nation was in shambles.
And yet here we are, madly weaving narratives. A media narrative is something like a Hollywood synopsis: “country meets president, country falls in love with president, country falls out of love with president.” Narratives are convenient storylines for journalists. If a story can be put in a box, it’s easier to talk or write about.
With a narrative woven around the president’s struggles and setbacks, yesterday’s election results are now much easier to parse and comment on. They fit into the narrative of a candidate whose rhetoric doesn’t match his governance, or a country that’s fallen out of love with their Commander-in-Chief, or an All-American favorite: the comeback (Republican Party).
Two truths must now be retold. First: as Otto von Bismarck said, “Politics is the art of the possible.” To pass a stimulus package, certain things were dropped, and to succeed in Afghanistan, more troops may have to go. To get to 60 votes in the Senate, the public option on health care might have to be modified.
These seem like unsatisfactory compromises or disappointments to many. But the prospect of doing a little good instead of a lot should never kill needed progress. The late Senator Ted Kennedy believed this and recognized a crucial truth: there are too many workers without health care, too many parents without jobs, and too many children breathing dirty air for our leaders to be inflexible. With so many problems facing the people of the nation, stubbornness is a sin.
The media could remind the public of this, but they won’t. Instead, they will spend time talking about who lost, who won, and what points were scored. They will take complex issues and throw them in narrative prison cells to rot. The coming mindless chatter and idle speculation is why so many people hate the media.
Luckily, the media is not God. Their power to influence public perceptions is matched by reality’s power to affect daily lives. If the stimulus works, if jobs come back, if health care reform brings down costs and helps businesses, then the political circuses won’t matter. Nothing talks like results.
The president and his advisers probably realize this. They have constructed a political strategy that maximizes the president’s strengths, like fundraising and oratory, in order to keep his and the party’s numbers up. But Rahm Emanuel and company also realize that although you have to take some hits now, the fruits of good policy will ripen in time for 2012, if not 2010.
President Obama is a figure skater. He’s unflappable, deftly twirling above the madness below. On the outside, he makes it look easy. On the inside, his mind might be working overtime to throw his next triple axel or it might be focusing on how the crowd is reacting. Let’s hope it’s the former. Let’s hope, as a veteran of Chicago politics, Obama remembers the late Richard J. Daley’s admonition: good government is good politics.