The Audacity to Change

What a long, strange year it's been since Election Night 2008. Whatever this administration has represented so far, it has not yet delivered change we can believe in.

We need a radical break with Wall Street, and we got the politics of prop up and bail out -- with the result that most Americans don't think the program is benefiting them.

We needed President Obama to focus like a laser on economic recovery, and instead we got the distraction of a barely-worth-it health insurance patch. We needed the president to go to the country and win support for fundamental health reform, and instead we got Rahm Emanuel's deal with the drug and insurance industries that won House support by the barest of majorities and managed to frighten senior citizens -- the most satisfied customers of our one public option -- Medicare.

We needed a recovery program that held down unemployment, and instead we got a stimulus that even the Obama team considered too small at the time of its enactment, according to the reporting of The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza.

And now we are on the verge of Barack Obama's very own Vietnam, in an escalating Afghanistan entanglement.

The 2009 off-year elections were a repudiation of incumbents -- only now the incumbent party is the Democrats. Popular cynicism about government representing the interests of insiders and economic elites is even more extreme now than in November 2008, when the desire for drastic change thrust Obama into the White House. If present economic trends continue, the Democrats could lose control of the House in 2010, setting up a repeat of Bill Clinton's period of "triangulation," but with an even more lunatic-fringe obstructionist Republican Party.

Yet, as a friend points out, if you had evaluated John F. Kennedy in November 1961, a year after his election, you would have adjudged him pretty much a failure. His administration began with the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion. Kennedy did not have firm control over his nominally Democratic majority in Congress (despite almost identical partisan margins as Obama's). He did not make an effective impression on Nikita Khrushchev at their Vienna Summit, and the Soviet Cuban Missile offensive followed. But by late 1963, Kennedy had begun the turn to détente, and he managed to lay the groundwork for the civil rights and antipoverty revolution that his successor, Lyndon Johnson, delivered.

So, can Barack Obama recoup, and can he recoup in time?

If you look at what most historians regard as Kennedy's finest hour, his leadership of the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962, you appreciate that Kennedy above all had to face down most of his own advisers. Most wanted a military confrontation with the Soviets. But the brothers Kennedy found an alternative to either war or surrender.

Obama, like Kennedy, needs to overcome the dubious counsel of his own advisers, this time both economic and military. With unemployment still rising to levels the administration did not anticipate, Messrs Summers and company are still opposed to a second stimulus, and the White House is mainly concerned with appeasing the budget hawks.

The president needs to listen to other voices, including his own. He needs to go to the country with a much stronger jobs program, to show people that his administration is on their side. He could take the TARP money that has been repaid by the banks and put it directly into mortgage foreclosure relief, as well as insisting that sub-prime bondholders take the same kind of write-down as auto-company bondholders. He could ask Congress for additional fiscal relief to the states, whose budget collapse is still worsening, undercutting the existing federal stimulus. Deficit reduction can come once the economy is back on track.

On Afghanistan, instead of the seemingly inevitable troop escalation that will please nobody and fail to alter events, he could pursue a policy of pressing the Karzai regime harder for reforms while helping Karzai keep the Taliban from taking control of Kabul and northern provinces -- and using a small troop presence of 20,000 or less to keep al Qaeda off balance. He could firmly reject getting dragged piecemeal into a war that will only be a quagmire. The Republicans would rattle sabers but most Americans would cheer.

Some of what Obama has faced was beyond his control. Nobody said digging out from the financial catastrophe would be easy, or that fashioning a viable policy for Afghanistan would be a cakewalk. Taming a Democratic majority that included Blue Dogs obsessed with fiscal balance and New Dems in bed with Wall Street was not exactly child's play either. But events did not require him to appoint an economic team headed by Larry Summers and Tim Geithner, or to reappoint Ben Bernanke as chairman of the Fed, or Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff, or to favor the escalation faction in his Afghanistan advisers. Events did not require him to play an inside game with powerful industries instead of taking a case for radical reform directly to the people and offering a Rooseveltian program too popular to oppose.

From the day he declared for the presidency -- indeed, from the day he declared for the Illinois state senate -- Obama has displayed an audacity, a decency, an idealism, and an eloquence that gave us hope that here was a great president. But as chief executive, he has seemed buttoned up and damped down while a great crisis threatens to envelop the country and his presidency. He had the audacity to run and to win. Now, will he have the audacity to learn and to lead?

Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect and a senior fellow at Demos. He is author of Obama's Challenge: America's Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency.

 

Comments

[CAPTAINSKIPPY]

Afraid of change? Then start small, with symbolic change, perhaps an invitation to the White House sent to the "Dixie Chicks" to sing Toby Keith's "How do you like me now?"!

[PATina]

Mr. Kuttner... just the other day I was looking at your book, "Obama's Challenges" on my shelf and wondering if he ever read it. It doesn't seem like... but it would do him a world of good.

[PaiaGirl]

How can someone make a 180 degree turn from what he was?

Are the corporations (both war profiteers and financial) so powerful that they have some kind of hold on him?

[RTIII]

"Now, will he have the audacity to learn and to lead?"

This sentence - the conclusion of our article - should have read: "Now, will he have the audacity to lead?"

What's this _learn_ thing? Trying to be better received by the POTUS himself? Perhaps. I think he's smart enough and learns well enough, he just hasn't yet figured out he's alienating himself from his base.

Today's decision to put 40K more troops into Afghanistan marks his true ownership of that war and is far and away his worst move to date. The _last_ thing we need to be doing is putting this kind of coin into another unwinable war. WHAT DOES "WINNING" LOOK LIKE, MR. PRESIDENT? When he answers that with something that's understandable AND when he articulates a plan that has even a remote chance at getting there, THEN maybe - MAYBE - we might be understanding. But this move has no connection to getting our economy going and has no connection to fiscal responsibility either.
.
.

[NeldaDee]

So, I suppose you're not criticizing him today, then...

[MrBadger]

"Obama, like Kennedy, needs to overcome the dubious counsel of his own advisers, this time both economic and military."

Yes! I think that's exactly the problem. He has surrounded himself with "old school" advisors. Of course he has to take responsibility for doing that. But If he can find the courage to jettison them and go with his own judgement there is still a chance he can be the GREAT president that he has the potential to be.

[Parthenolide]

What turned a Chicago street smart, cocky Senator from Illinois into a meek, impotent President? Operations from the military, industrial, financial, intelligence complex immediately spring to mind. Obama doesn't want to be another Kennedy.

[Qunamngdogs]

Isn't this obvious? The minute he chose Hillary Clinton as his Secretary of State and Rahm Emmanuel as his Chief of Staff, it became worrying that this would be DLC politics-as-usual. (Isn't that WHY so many Democrats DIDN'T chose HRC in the primaries?) Bit by bit, that has been playing out. Is anyone surprised that backroom deals have been cut with Wall Street, Big PhRma & the insurance companies- really?
Further, look at the story on Afghanistan. Hillary wants more blood and Rahm wants to save the troops for attacking Iran. I guess to each, their own (literally).

This cruel joke will only lead to greater anger than Bush/ Cheney. (It's only been a year) I hope we've learned something. And I hope we GET another chance to start repairing the country in 2010. (& I don't mean with Republicans)

[Oldtimer]

Mr Kuttner,
Obama showed his true colors by appointing money changers to his cabinet,
the kind of money changers that Jesus drove from the temple.
Of course, I'm talking about Timothy Geithner, Larry Summers and Rahm Emanuel.
FDR would NEVER have appointed these Wall Street banksters to any position in his
administration. FDR did appoint Joseph Kennedy to the SEC because FDR wisely
understood Kennedy knew how crooks operated.
Obama should have appointed Prefessor Black as his point man on the bailouts
and financial reform proposals. Instead Rahm Emanuel is taking Wall Street money
and putting it in Democratic war chest. It's all about money, something two Chicago
pols like Obama and Emanuel understand.

[froidytoidy]

I've wondered many times if Obama was being held hostage by the trend of economics in this country - The Federal Reserve was on an economic trend with Bush where the rich are catered to and protected. I can't help but think former Pres. Clinton is a part of this trend - so why is Obama on board?

[dogface]

RK wrote: "Obama, like Kennedy, needs to overcome the dubious counsel of his own advisers, this time both economic and military. With unemployment still rising to levels the administration did not anticipate . . ." - only a willfully blind fool would have NOT anticipated this economic debacle would rival, and probably exceed that of the Great Depression, including the unemployment. Competent economist are estimating it may hit 13% (even using the happy measurements of the current era).

Similarly only a willfully blind fool would NOT anticipate that the Afghanistan & Iraq invasions and occupations were fools errands - no more likely to "defeat" Al Qaeda than would invading and occupying a Hamburg apartment.

Undoing some of Mr. Obama's Bush-dumped challenges are easy, merely requiring audacity to change. Ike went to Korea and -poof- the war ended. We left Iraq within days the first time and can do it again. Gitmo was established in days and can be shut down in days. Don't ask was birthed in weeks and civil rights can reinstated within days. Volcker's advice can actually be followed - dumping that of Summers & Geithner.

On the current glide path Obama will find himself back in Illinois in 2012, the republicants will be running DC, and we'll all be worse off.

[henryberry]

You say Obama needs to listen to others voices, including his own. This last part of your counsel may be what the problem is. A postmodern individual, Obama may not have a voice of his own; or a firm identity, is another way to see it. Postmodern individuals--as psychologists and others note--have multiple identities. They behave chameleon-like depending on what circumstances they are in and whom they are trying to impress or influence. They take on different roles.

But one needn't get into postmodern theory to understand Obama. As a marginal character with a strong desire (and related ambition) to join the mainstream, he had to adopt a personality or manner which would allow him entry into it and enable him to succeed in it. In earlier posts, I've thought that as the ultimate striver, overachiever, careerist (whatever you want to call it), Obama may have put all his energies and focus into achieving the presidency--the ultimate career position--and now he and the country are finding that there's not so much in the way of leadership skills or guiding values. His choice of law as a profession which depends so much on process and contingent arguments and reasoning also has to be taken into consideration.

[PATina]

Wow... you bring up a really good point. One of the "mental games" I like playing w/ people at work is "Guess what tv shows they watch". It's really stupid... but I've found that a lot of people will emulate their favorite television character... especially women.. and many times they morph or change characters based on different situations they find themselves in. I had no idea it was a "postmodern" theory I was "watching".

I also know that it is pretty difficult for alot of African Americans to find a place in the mainstream... particuarly some of the more ambitious ones... and often they find themselves playing different roles (one to fit in w/ mainstream society... another one to fit in w/ family and friends). that, too may have an effect on his character flaws.

[ECBA88]

I said since January 2008 that Obama was America's first postmodern presidential candidate--citing his ability to shift position, see grey areas and look at a problem from multiple angles simulatneously, all of which were refreshing changes from W--but I never approached it in exactly this way. That is Obama's reputation among those who know him well, from what I've read.

[hu.man]

Obama is a pragmatic and not an ideologue. If he were to follow the path proposed here, he runs a high probability of getting into trouble with the center and having his agenda derailed for some time to come.

Obama strategy revolves around getting the center firmly into his corner and then going after problems that have been sorely neglected for the past 30 years such as urban decay and educational inequality. Rest assured that the Obamas have not forgotten their roots.

The folks occupying the White House today are as real as they come in our largely contrived society.

[Bardmess]

A Rooseveltian program too popular to ignore...yes, please.

[Overtone]

Unemployment can be dramatically reduced by passage of a Human Investment Tax Credit Program.

It aims at generating up to 6 million jobs and 4 million new small business firms.

Download it free at: http://www.aesopinstitute.com

The Employment Tax Credit of 1977 included very few of the suggested incentives. Yet, according to Business Week 18 months later, it produced almost a million jobs, 20% of all new jobs.

Revolutionary new energy technologies can revitalize the auto industry and profoundly boost the economy, thereby generating millions of well-paid jobs and putting many auto workers back to work.

See the article: 5 Steps to Revive the Auto Industry and the Economy on the same Aesop website.

The technologies will be hard to believe, but Rowan University has validated experiments that produce more heat than can be explained by textbook science. Those experiments need to be reproduced at other laboratories without delay.

That may open the door to recognition that one barrel of water can equal 200 barrels of oil.

This will change the entire energy landscape.

The challenge is how best to accelerate the process!

[Brian Adler]

I totally agree, and like others, it makes me long for a true multi party system.

[smpj]

Presidential eloquence is beautiful to behold but is only truly remembered when found in conjunction with success. More governmental spending is only a short term prop. The printing and borrowing that follows will prove to be a serious drag on, if not ruinous to, the economy. I think moving farther to the left will only make matters worse economically but that's where Obama's comfort level seems to reside. Be hopeful but prepare yourselves for an even bumpier ride.

[ECBA88]

"I think [moving to the left] is where Obama's comfort level seems to reside."

Could you please explain what gave you this idea? It seems to me that, when pressed, Obama is most comfortable compromising from his original goals and drifting to the center--see stimulus, energy, health care, detention...