In the end, politics is a matter of focus. As Ronald Reagan said: "There is no substitute for repetition." Even Jerry Brown, who notoriously hates repeating himself, finds new ways to say the same things.
But not, at least so far and unfortunately for him, President Barack Obama.
Obama got a major economic stimulus bill passed and took other steps, but did not sustain his public focus on the economy. For nearly a year, we heard that Obama was at last about to pivot back to the economy. This said, ironically, in the midst of a slow recovery from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.
President Barack Obama, speaking at the Millennium Development Goals Summit at the annual United Nations General Assembly meeting this past September in New York, never really pivoted back to the economy after taking steps last year.
If ever "It's the economy, stupid" was a true truism, it's been since 2008 in American politics.
But precious time, energy, and capital, i.e., focus has constantly been allocated elsewhere. Not the least of it on a health care bill that took far too long to pass, allowing a firestorm to be kindled that still hasn't burned out.
Obama has pursued a wide bandwidth presidency in a narrow bandwidth, and quite shallow, media culture. But it's too easy to imagine that his problems -- and he can certainly recover and win re-election, incidentally, especially looking at that collection of Republican candidates -- is simply due to our dysfunctional and toxic media culture.
Now, I find all the things other than the economy that Obama has focused his attentions upon to be quite fascinating. Every day on my New West Notes blog, I lay out what he's doing (that we know of) along with some thoughts of what it might mean.
But whatever he's doing in geopolitics -- and Obama is certainly giving that Columbia IR degree of his a very extensive workout -- doesn't matter very much to voters. Even though most of it, with the notable exception of the Afghanistan adventure, is sensible and perhaps even visionary.
A great politician, and Obama can and should be a great politician, adapts to changing circumstances.
Just over a year ago, I took some heat when I wrote that Obama did not deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. Yet.
That was a very different time, so different that Obama figured prominently in a key subplot of the annual Doctor Who Christmas special, giving a speech to announce a solution to the global economic crisis.
No one's going to be conjuring that sort of fantasy this Christmas.
The seemingly endless process around the passage of the national health care reform bill grabbed focus from the economy and left Obama scrambling in September to try to reintroduce the positive effects of the legislation.
In an historical irony, this election takes place 50 years after the election of President John F. Kennedy. And a few days after the death of Ted Sorensen, Kennedy's intellectual alter ego, counselor, and speechwriter, whom I got to know when he served as national co-chair of Senator Gary Hart's presidential campaigns.
Sorensen gave Obama a critical early endorsement, and quite evidently loved the younger man's felicitous and frequently muscular use of the English language.
But it's hard to imagine that Sorensen, much less Kennedy, would fail to adjust to changing circumstances.
With the absence of public focus from this very gifted communicator in the White House, corrosive myths have taken hold.
For one, that the massive deficits are principally the result of increased government spending. Rather than the reality, which is that they are the largely the result of the collapse in tax receipts brought on by the recession.
That's clear enough to anyone who looks at state budgets in this era. In California, for example, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has cut spending sharply, yet deficits are high. (Though a very tiny fraction of the state's massive gross domestic product.) Why? Revenues are down.
Do most voters understand this with regard to Obama's federal budget? Probably not. And in the absence of presidential focus, in the midst of a shallow, ADD media culture, phony rhetoric carries the day.
"What we've got here is, failure to communicate."
In fact, what they think they know is wrong.
Two-thirds of likely voters believe that the U.S. economy has contracted, that taxes have gone up, and the money lent to the banks in the controversial Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) can never been recovered.
In reality, the U.S. economy, after nearly falling off a cliff to the bottom of a very deep pit at the tail end of the Bush/Cheney Administration, has been growing for the last four quarters in a row.
But only 33% of likely voters know that. A whopping 61% think that the economy has shrunk.
Taxes, rather than going up, have been cut for the middle class by Obama.
Obama belatedly tried to make the case that he has delivered on his campaign promises in a September speech to the Congressional Black Caucus dinner in Washington.
And banks are paying back their TARP funds.
Obama has cut taxes by $240 billion. Most of that, and it was mostly for the middle class, was in the much maligned stimulus bill.
But likely voters don't get it. In fact, 52% think that federal income taxes increased for the middle class over the past two years, with only 19% disagreeing.
Tellingly, 50% of independent voters, in many ways the key to Obama's sweeping 2008 election victory over John McCain, believe this canard.
It may be that people will never feel good about the economy until the unemployment figure comes down, sharply.
It may be that Obama should have done things very differently in terms of policy.
It may be that Obama doesn't have enough of a warm and fuzzy side, or hasn't the ability to project enough of a Clintonesque "I feel your pain" performance, to win people over.
But when you command the bully pulpit of the presidency, and your own supporters don't know the facts about what you've done on the central issue of the era, that is a very serious problem.
You can check things during the day on my site, New West Notes ... www.newwestnotes.com.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-bradley/jerry-brown-and-the-calif_b_787049.html
Every minute of the president's day is taken and scheduled. Should he take precious time to spoon-feed Americans the same information they can learn at the click of a mouse; spend precious time dispelling conservative lies and competing with the bleating of Fox, Limbaugh and fellow demagogues, when a major function of MSM is to do just that? Perhaps.
Many folks have spent hours upon hours daily/weekly, especially recently, communicating that which should run routinely in the daily newspaper and nightly news: myriad historic accomplishments of the Obama-Biden Administration, then dispelling conservative falsehoods and highlighting the utter and sheer foolishness of detractors. It’s not difficult getting through. The voters? They say they do not see or hear the good or the truth in the news…they hear only negative or nothing.
My opinion: Most Americans won't change and MSM has crapped out. If Obama has little time for the communication thing he should put his vice president on it….utilize him frequently, weekly with an anticipated message, positioned very publicly for MSM...Biden speaks honestly and passionately and reaches an audience. I’d listen to him all day.
The most fiscally and morally responsible approach - extending the tax cuts for the middle class for a period of time while the economy recovers and allowing the tax cuts for the wealthiest 2-3% of Americans to expire as scheduled under the previous administration - will test the president's ability to sell what is an essentially common sense policy and to successfully counter the Republican position which is based on a corrosive mythology and failed policies of the recent past.
If Obama fails this fundamental test of leadership and compromises all the way to adopting the Republican strategy on this issue - making all of the Bush tax cuts permanent - then there will be a strong argument to put forward that this president is not capable of leading.
http://www.truth-out.org/bill-moyers-money-fights-hard-and-it-fights-dirty64766
So much for laser-beam focus and working tirelessly to turn the economy around in the aftermath of the most damaging financial crisis since the Great Depression - all on behalf of a largely ungrateful nation.
I wonder what lessons the president can take from that about pivoting ( I have come to hate that word, I must say), messaging, communicating, and the like.
How come so little has come down to us normal people?
Unfortunately, rescuing Wall Street was never going to be a pretty picture. This devastating and unprecedented financial crisis made sure of that.
It is patently unfair that Wall Street leaders were allowed to act in such obscene ways, even by Wall Street standards ... ahem. And, we have every right to direct our anger towards these leaders who were essentially 'rewarded' for their bad behavior. Just so long as we don't lose focus and understand why this rescue was absolutely necessary and that there were no good choices available to government with respect to how it was structured.
Your question seems to imply that Geithner acted to save Wall Street and its leaders at the expense of Main Street when nothing could be further from the truth. The motivation behind the rescue of Wall Street was decidedly not to reward its leaders who were responsible for orchestrating this mess in the first place but to SAVE Main Street from an extended fate that would have made the last two years look like the proverbial walk in the park with candy floss.
But lending is very limited nonetheless.
I love it.
Barack can take some lessons from JB.
Big win for Barbara Boxer, too, over Carly Failorina...
An absurd amount of GOP "secret" money, Whitman & Fiorina, Rove's disgusting ads...a firewall was needed and requested.
Trust me...the president and vice president were both very much aware and needed no lessons from Brown.
On the other hand, the delusional pig-headedness of the Republicans coming to power is, if anything, even greater with this class than Newt's '94 cohort, so the chances they'll make Obama look appealing by contrast by '12 are high. But it really is "the economy stupid": if it hasn't come back strongly within another 12-18 months, Obama is toast. And the odds are not good because the structural issues are so much more difficult than they were in '94-'96.
2 years ago, layoffs.
Now: hiring 3rd-shift machinists.
I mean we knew he would but YAY!
And Boxer, too! YAY!
I will get to Obama's mistakes tomorrow.
My guess is that with the House, the Republicans will probably get most of what they want passed into law. The Democrats certainly behaved as if the Republicans were in the majority anyway.
God knows where we'd be today without Geithner's leadership in arresting the financial crisis and in shepherding a strong financial regulatory regime through Congress. While there is much more yet to be done, his record so far has been impressive.
I just thought I'd stop by and share a "yee haw" with you or a "YES!" or whatever the celebration song is in California. (Never been there.)
But her $666 kazillion pieces of silver were for naught (and I'm sure the rich old user won't miss it more's the pity) and California will not have to say Gov. Whitman. Congratulations.
What happens to you and your family when you get sick is very much an economic issue.
I know that if the GOP is allowed to stop or curtail spending by the government the economy will crash again. Will he get blamed for that or will they? It depends on if he communicates what is going on and why.
The president's own supporters, fellow Democrats - as fair-weather friends as they both appear to be - and the bulk of the media/blogosphere/punditocracy, of all political persuasions, have engaged in a campaign of incessant and misguided criticism in the absence of any real effort by President Obama and his top advisors to publically set the record straight.
This failure to communicate will have to be addressed, post haste and with lazer beam focus.
I am so disheartened to think about Obama's conciliatory nature in light of the GOP all out war against him. Obama needs to fight back. He would be smart to have more press conferences to point out the consequences of the GOP obstruction. If he does not they will crash us back into recession and blame him for it.
If you don't understand anything, call your Congressman, Senator, governer for more info. Go to whitehouse.gov, google, etc. If we had stayed more inforned and less of watching DWTS, American Idol, Glee, etc, the mid-term debacle could have been avioded.
Yes, sorry folks, we have to blame ourselves too.
Quite the contrary.
The Dems, from this point on, need to be in fight mode ALL the time and be laser focus on opposing the Repubs and prevent another disaster like this Tuesday's. It's bad but not the end of the world, Obama can still win big time in 2012.
I love your bottom line which is bang on. Mercifully, though, this was one of your shorter pieces.
And, one might be excused for thinking that this is a problem that is easily overcome, given a modicum of effort emanating from the White House. Though, the road ahead for the second half of Obama's first term will now be even more difficult than the first.
This was as long as would not be lost in the jetwash immediately surrounding the election.
However, some pieces are difficult to read, no matter the length. This was one such piece. And, besides, I’m fully confident that you will more than make up for any shortfall of words here with your next highly anticipated full-length essay.
Speaking of which, I think we can safely assume that Governor-elect Jerry Brown won't be making any big mistakes like this nor, in fact, will he tolerate such serious problems in his midst.