Leadership, Obama Style

It's been a year since that exhilarating night last year when we heard the news that Barack Obama would be our next president. Over the course of that year, we have seen the leadership style of our new president.

Some say it is too early to tell; he's only been in office for a little over nine months. But that's a very literal view of leadership. Sure, we won't know the outcomes of many of his decisions for years. We won't know, for example, if the health care reform bill he ultimately signs really turns out to be "budget-neutral" ten years from now. But we can see how he let its budget-neutrality become the central theme of the debate and the way he has tacitly or explicitly supported, or failed to support, different aspects of that legislation, including ways of paying for it that either do or don't come out of the pockets of working and middle class Americans -- the same people who are just seeing their health care premiums raised by a third in anticipation by the health insurance companies. And in that sense, I think we have seen the clear outlines of Obama's approach to leadership.

Genuine leadership means setting the agenda. It means taking tough stands. It means telling people the truth forcefully and evocatively in a way that makes them want to listen and act. It means drawing lines in the sand when you must, and refusing to compromise your values even if you have to compromise on some of the policies born of those values when you have no other choice. It means fighting for what you believe in and taking on powerful vested interests when people's lives and livelihoods are at stake. And it means looking backward at the past so you don't make the same mistakes, looking sideways at alternatives so you know your options, and using that vision to move the nation forward.

Leadership is a quality Barack Obama showed on the campaign trail. It is a quality he has failed to show as president.

Before readers start generating caveats and apologies, let me be clear. What he has done is to set a national agenda, and an ambitious one at that. He inherited an economy in tatters and a world doubting our commitment to values we have always embodied imperfectly but earnestly. He made it his first priority to pass a stimulus package and his second to take on health care reform. He signed some executive orders and bills into law that had languished on the desk of a conservative ideologue for years. And he has spoken to the world in a way that has restored their faith in America, at least for now.

But with the exception of his unique capacity to speak to people on the street in every corner of the globe (not an inconsequential skill in a global village), we need to evaluate his leadership not primarily in comparison to George W. Bush, who historians are already putting in the league of Ulysses S. Grant while inebriated, or even John McCain, but against the other Democrats who would have beaten McCain after the stock market crashed and the economy collapsed in mid September if Obama had not won the nomination. And that is where we start to get a picture of Obama as a leader.

The reality is that any Democrat would have followed the basic dictates of Keynesian economics in January 2009 and passed a large stimulus bill with the help of a heavily Democratic Congress -- but no one else would have traded 200 billion in infrastructure and jobs for the chimera of bipartisanship that Obama oddly continues to pursue even while he remains unable to get a Republican vote on anything, no matter what concessions he offers. Every Democrat would have signed the Children's Health bill ("S-CHIP") and ended the immoral policy of denying children health care. And every other Democrat would have gone after Wall Street with a vigor we have not seen from this president, who prefers to place past and future crimes off limits under the banner of "look forward, not back," and give out credit like candy to the banks at zero percent interest while allowing them to quadruple the interest on the credit cards of people who would still be employed and able to make their original payments had it not been for the malfeasance of the same banks that are now throwing them out of their homes.

We can argue policy specifics, but my point here is about process, not substance. Leadership is not about saying, "me, too." It is not about waiting until Congress finally passes a hate crimes bill that makes slaughtering a gay kid a real crime, or waiting for Congress to end don't-ask/don't tell -- when even the vast majority of the public is for it -- and then pulling out your special "me, too" pen for the signing ceremony. Leadership is not making public pronouncements that simultaneously support and undercut the goal of requiring the health insurance industry to compete with at least one plan they don't control.

The health care debate is a prototypical example. Obama could have told members of Congress when the health care fight began, "If the average American doesn't have the same quality and range of options at the end of this process that you do, I will not sign any appropriations bill for next year that includes health insurance for federal employees, your family and mine included, because if it's good enough for us, it's good enough for the people we serve." Had the president done that, he would have had populist sentiment at his back, not with its back up against Democrats over "death panels." Blue Dogs and conservative Democrats would have been champions of populist reform, both because it would have been in the interest of their own family's health and because it would have struck a resonant chord with their constituents. All it would have taken was a sharp condemnation of the health insurance industry -- something he ultimately ended up having to do anyway after they decided his plan was no longer in their interest -- and what has led to a recent shift in the Democrats' favor on health care reform.

Am I sure that he could have mobilized populist sentiment to mobilize support for health care reform, or is that armchair, 20-20 hindsight punditry? Yes. I polled it 18 months ago, and the idea of the public getting the same quality of care as their elected representatives was wildly popular with everyone, right, left, and center.

It would be nice to see from the president a little less Rodney King -- "Why can't we all get along?" -- and a little more Martin Luther King, who wasn't interested in compromising on 3/5 of a man or 3/5 of a vote -- and who wouldn't have sat on the sidelines waiting to declare victory upon insuring 3/5 of the people who can't afford health insurance. When the Senate sent its fifth and final health care bill out committee, the president lavished praise on one person -- Republican Senator Olympia Snow, apparently for failing to obstruct the process -- who promptly noted that her support was only temporary. The president's highest-level surrogates then fanned out on the Sunday morning shows to demonstrate his staunch commitment to equivocation on whether the health insurance industry needs some healthy competition to bring costs down and guarantee high quality, affordable care.

This, in microcosm, is the essence of the President's approach to leadership -- Obamaprise -- the art of compromising when you don't have to. The goal is not to get the best possible bill, to fulfill his campaign pledges to the people who elected him, or to fulfill values to which he is deeply committed, whatever they seem to be when the dust settles on his latest moving speech. The goal is to find someone with whom to compromise, whether it's the pharmaceutical industry, the health insurance industry, or Senate Republicans on health care; the energy industry and the "clean coal" lobby on climate change; or the banks lavishing their latest set of outrageous bonuses on their executives for another Heckuva-Job-Bernanke year.

The president is fortunate that Martin Luther King did not share his conflict-averse approach to leadership, or Obama himself would be sitting in the middle of a bus somewhere, not on Air Force One, waiting for the day when someone would forcefully take a stand to repeal a Solomonic compromise between those who demanded that blacks sit on the back of the bus and those who demanded that they sit, like whites, wherever they want, and someone came up with the perfect Obamaprise: let them sit in the middle.

Leadership is not searching for the golden mean between what's right and what's wrong, what's true and what's false, what the Democratic majority in both Houses of Congress and the people who elected them to run the country believe after eight dismal years of Bush Republicanism and what Chuck Grassley or Olympia Snowe finds aesthetically or financially appealing.

We were lucky Abraham Lincoln did not invite Jefferson Davis into his cabinet to insure that he had a "team of rivals."

We were lucky FDR famously "welcomed the hatred" of those who had plunged the nation into the Great Depression because that freed him to regulate them.

We were lucky Lyndon Johnson did not let the knowledge that he was handing the South to the Republicans for at least a generation by signing the Civil Rights Acts deter him from the dictates of his uncompromised conscience.

President Obama needs to reflect on whatever is driving his compromised approach to leadership. He will no doubt accomplish many good things in his four or eight years in office, in part because there is so much damage from the preceding administration to undo, and with a Republican Party in complete disarray, he will no doubt accomplish incremental change we can believe in if that's really what he wants to take to the voters in 2012.

But if he does not change course, he is on the path to being known as the first black president -- nothing more, nothing less -- a solid caretaker on the order of Dwight Eisenhower, who tinkered around the edges of the ideology of the last visionary president, FDR, the way Obama is tinkering around the edges of the last game-changing president, Ronald Reagan.

With his extraordinary intellect and his ability to speak to people's hopes and aspirations, this president has the capacity to be the transformative leader we all thought we were electing. But if he wants to be known for giving eloquent speeches followed up by field goals where he could have had touchdowns, he is well on his way to the thirty yard line.

Drew Westen, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at Emory University, founder of Westen Strategies, and author of The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation.

 

 

Comments

[dlo2]

We are in search of the alleviation from darkness and the embrace of enlightenment. Obama has the undoubtably precarious journey of finding a foothold on this slippery slope out of the chasm. Carefully and slowly should be the journey but the present social, economic, political, ecologic pressures are phenomenally enormous with every voice from every sector crying out for attention. The cacaphony is deafening and it would truly take a saint or a savant to even begin to map out the trail. President Obama is a keenly intelligent human being...but he is only a human being, not superman with wings. We need every analyst, every wise man, every contemporary historian, every new paradigm embracing economist (Keynesian thought might just be passe for this era), international statesmen of some unusual integrity, and most of all, we need to prioritize what will allow us to exist, to prosper, to nurture and inspire hope, to reduce helplessness and increase American empowerment...most of all to provide jobs and then healthcare...and then reestablish the accessibility for all classes to higher education and professional training...insure that liberal democracy and history is taught to our young..principles of integrity become part of the true grit of every America's training...and intercultural education so that we as a people are one among all diversity. America, the beautiful.

[Elle Bach]

The Hero Myth

Obama squandered his opportunity to delegitimize the Republican Party. He has his foot on the beast’s neck, but instead of breaking it he chose the hero’s path. Instead of vanquishing the beasts, he granted it clemency, believing his generosity would be rewarded with cooperation. In the end, he only empowered a heinous, vicious beast, made it more dangerous.

It’s an unforgivable blunder.

Obama's a good and decent man, but I fear his flaw was his mistaken belief he could make them love him. I wonder if, even today, he’s finally realized the truth: that Republicans have not undertaken public service with the intent of doing “good” for the country. They don’t care about “the people.” The only “good” they’re interested in is what’s good for them, amassing power, power to control the federal purse strings - the authority to easily dupe ‘the people” with lies and distortions (more Bush/Cheney “you’re either with me or you’re unpatriotic Americans”), the power to shape legislation that will impoverish the land but enrich themselves and their cronies. They don’t want to share; they want it ALL. And it’s the “stone wall” they erected to deny Americans some much needed healthcare reform that’s exposed their true colors. (Hint: It’s not red, white and blue.)

The only way it will stop is when the people of this country finally stand up to the whole “Republica­n-industri­al-complex­” and say “STOP! We know what you are and just stop. NO MORE!”

[Manchesterian]

It may be an unfortunate blunder but not an unforgivable one. One of the POTUS' heros is Jesus Christ -remember he pardoned a thief on the cross while being crucified right along side him?

If the stories are to be believed; then the redemption of man kind is said to have happened as a direct result.

The POTUS' approach on this particular issue may not show immediate returns, but it might just be his saving grace.

I think such a move on the POTUS' part might just be exactly what will cause him to live to a ripe old age.

[Elle Bach]

I’m one disillusioned American.

Sometimes I feel like it was just a wonderful dream, and long to go back to sleep and continue dreaming. Or, maybe America really is Camelot, and we witnessed the miracle re-appearance of the fabled King Arthur… only to discover that the only thing the legendary Once and Future King is really good at is basketball.

[Manchesterian]

Nah, he is good at more than that - I do not think Harvard award a J.D. solely on the basis of a good jump shot.

America is a beautiful dream that did not manifest without overcoming insurmountable hardships.

Courage my friend; the star spangled banner still waves and these moments of hardships and disappointments too will pass.

[lucylou]

Bush got into office with 300+ votes and governed like he had a vast sweeping majority.
Obama wins by 9 million + votes and governs like he just squeaked by the GOP...

This is not CHANGE we can BELIEVE IN.

[dbailey]

wasn't tjhat Bill clinton's approach to health care? very forcefully- this is what I want and if I don't get it, I won't sign. what did we get? - nothing. I'm a manager at a company and when something isn't going the way I think it should be, I call people in for a one on one. I don't go out on the floor and make a big scene so that everyone knows I'm the leader! That kind of behavior has the opposite effect. It is not motivating. I like Obama's style and the stomp your feet theatrics are best left to the Pelosi's and weiner's and grayson's. We need more of them because they are the actual legislators. It makes me sick when i see "dems left on their own to push health care" . That's your job! You haven't had anything to push in eight years! they're always fighting over chairmanships and leadership positions, then get it done! If they'll get it done, Obama will sign it. He laid out what he wanted, now do it! I'm going to take a quote from pat buchanan. take those blue dogs to the river and "hold their heads under until they stop kicking!"

[TheMadBlacksmith]

OhBummer!

I have to give the President credit for trying hard. But as the author says, he's too interested in , essentially, petting everyone's sacred cows. Whether it is the insurance co's or "the gays". To please them, he just did something that could -quite literally- kill more Americans than Al Queada ever dreamed of.

He signed an order allowing HIV patients for other countries to enter the US. The problem with that is there are nine major sub-types or "clades" of HIV, and many of them are much more contagious and much more lethal than the US strain. Large parts of Africa have been nearly de-populated by a hot strain of HIV. It spreads efficiently from man to woman and woman to man, and can kill in a year from the time of exposure. There are also virulent strains from places like Thailand and Russia. The American strain, is of course, eventually fatal. But it only affects those who use needle drugs or indulge in a particular sex act. Therefore it is no threat to the population as a whole.

Letting carriers of a contagious, fatal disease into the country is so awesomely stupid even GW Bush wouldn't do it! But Obama did-politics over leadership again.

We should all contact our representatives and tell them to tell the President to undo this mistake-and start showing leadership instead of kissing up to this groupand that one.

[billw8017]

Candidate Obama was never so eloquent, but only seemed to tell the truth. He was never so liberal but seemed to connect with the voters. He did not do it all but hired the best people. Leadership is like that. You might think he should clean the toilets as a model of sanitation, but he seems content to be on 24 hour call and to present the great issues. He does not yet have his team fully in place.

Though he made a great start, the Republicans have put Congressional approval on hold to the utmost extent. We are stuck with several holdovers and temporary heads of departments or staff people. This will limit what he can accomplish and suffer little acts of sabotage as in the bonus controversy in his early months.

One of the major factors in great leadership is great followership. To offer advice and promote your beliefs are things you can do. But more than ideology, making do with what you have and putting the best face on it are how you improve the world from day to day. Seriously, do you suppose that a world war and millions dead is a good thing? Even in victory, WWII was a human disaster. F D Roosevelt was a great President because Americans rallied with him and brought off the victory.

[nyomino]

Being low keyed does not mean giving opportunity to those who are hell-bent on defeating you to do so. The Republicans and those blue dogs are not interested in Obama's presidency. They want to call all the shots favoring themselves and their friends, the corporations who are paying for their maitanance in Congress!

[nyomino]

You do not invite the addicts who have lost every bet at the gambling tables to fix the debt they created! They will start by recovering the losses they and their close friends incurred before thinking about the average Americans they have screwed.
The brainy economists from the Clinton’s era surrounding President Obama have engaged in writing off the gambling debts their Wall Street friends created on the backs of Americans!
These gambling addicts do not care about anyone else except themselves. Tim Geithner, Rahm Emanuel and those carefully appointed staff at the White House and in Congressional are engaged in, ardent protection of their Wall Street gambling friends. The extension of unemployment benefits and financing the soup kitchens are merely methods to hoodwink Americans who are hanging on threads that someone cares. They do not! The Administration is surrounded by con artists from the Wall Street who view average working Americans as hosts to be burdened with debts and sucked dry.
The talents they claim bonuses for are their ability to devise sucking methods used on Americans and others workers around the world, sticking people with huge credit card, farm, college or mortgage debts so that their preys have no choice orher than working on low wages until they take their last breath! Their survival is based on controlling the government and struggling hard working people. Their proboscises are planted on these people because without them, their survival would be impossible! These people are preditors!

[HarlanGreen]

I agree with the comment that Obama doesn't have trusted circle of advisors, rather a coterie of Chicago friends that surround him...He can't trust Geithner for sure not to cave to Wall Street (he already has). But let's not forget what made FDR so great. He was Assist. Sec. of the Navy in 1913, then New York Governor in the 1920s. It was his polio that made him so compassionate, according to the biographers. Before that, he was like JFK, a rich and spoiled son of an entitled family. Pres. Johnson was many years a leader in the Senate, etc. They were seasoned leaders, in other words, who learned how to lead, whereas we have elected a totally unseasoned leader who doesn't know to remain loyal to those who elected him! In many ways he resembles our other too young presidents­--Clinton, in particular, who was also a compromiser.

[billw8017]

There will be a generational turnover, and those to benefit will have less experience than somebody who might have lived forever. You always have to hope to strike it lucky or that the greatest crises will only strike, as in Kennedy's Cuban missile affair, when you are prepared. Going with youth and developing your team is one way to end with the best team. Even in football, team doctors and medicine can only do so much with veterans.

Clinton was a great compromiser. He took the Congress that George W Bush would inherit and brought the country to the greatest prosperity since the Kennedy/Johnson years. It didn't come easy or happen in a day. To destroy is always easier than to build.

[nyomino]

Yes, things are falling apart! That why you do not invite the addicts who lost every bets at the gambling tables they created for themselves to offer any idea as to how to fix their mess!
They will start by recovering the money they lost for themselves and ftheir close friends before think about the average Americans they have been screwed. Gambling addicts do not think of anyone else but themselves. This is what Tim Geithner, Rahm Emanuel and those carefully appointed Congressional staff are doing. They are calling both financial and political shots in protection of their Wall Street gambling friends. The extension of unemployment benefits and financing soup kitchens are merely methods to hoodwink the unemployed Americans while interest rates are going sky high und the very noses of Abama's Administration. The new Administration is surrounded by con artists from the Clinton era!

[ovologo]

I should add. Please don't make excuses for him. This is not this kind of position to have excuses. Everything depends on him and good and bad. Every little mistake he makes will end as a big trouble for the whole country. He is the President of the USA! Clinton and Bush get gray hair after this job. What he was thinking when he decided to run for presidency? This job is not fun, but hard work.

[ovologo]

He is just talking. When he is going to govern? He let the Congress to do dirty job because he is busy with the other things. What are the other things he is doing? Can you name one for me. Please!

[Mikyung Lim]

I disagree with your statement, "But with the exception of his unique capacity to speak to people ... we need to evaluate his leadership not primarily in comparison to George W. Bush,....or even John McCain, but against the other Democrats who would have beaten McCain after the stock market crashed and the economy collapsed in mid September if Obama had not won the nomination. And that is where we start to get a picture of Obama as a leader."

I don't understand how you came up with the above reasoning.

If other democratic candidates hadn't been able to defeat Mr. Obama during the presidential campaign, which seemed to have been far less challenging than those political challenges experienced after the inauguration, where do you get the confidence that the other democratic candidates may have done better job if they had become President. They already failed at lesser challenges !

[Mikyung Lim]

Regarding your statement, “This, in microcosm, is the essence of the President's approach to leadership -- Obamaprise -- the art of compromising when you don't have to.…. The goal is to find someone with whom to compromise, whether it's the pharmaceutical industry, the health insurance industry, …energy industry... “

As you mention something economics like Keynesian economics, have you ever thought about Pres. Obama’s political strategies in comparison to “game theory”?

Adjusting, refining his every move in response to other players’ / opponents’ moves / reactions in order to achieve the best solutions / maximum outcomes tailored to, contingent upon each different situations? In the meantime, taking extreme patience, time and listening to let other players roll their balls to get ready for the next steps. Isn’t this higher level of political skill, rather than simply declaring “My way is highway! All other ways are ditches !”, which had been done by his predecessors and failed?