According to his August 30 “Obama Needs to Relearn Politicking” column, E.J. Dionne thinks all Obama needs to acquire the legendary cult status of an FDR or a Ronald Reagan is to get in touch with his inner salesman. In a refreshing (and rare) moment of liberal candor, Dionne concedes the President’s failure to sell his vision to the American people:
Obama and his party are also in a hole because the president has chosen not to engage the nation in an extended dialogue about what holds all his achievements together, or why his attitude toward government makes more sense than the scattershot conservative attacks on everything Washington might do to improve the nation’s lot.
Leaving aside the appropriateness of Dionne’s “scattershot” qualifier (some might argue those conservative attacks display, on the contrary, pinpoint accuracy), Dionne faults Obama not for what he has accomplished but merely for his inability to “to persuade free citizens of the merits of a set of ideas, policies and decisions [to] put what they are doing in a compelling context.” Seems like an odd complaint to make about a man purported by his supporters to be a gifted orator, and who never seems to shut up.
Regardless, Dionne seems to hunger for some sort of Apple Store for Obama’s programs–a friendly place where, now that we own Obamacare (and its stealth take-over of the student loan program), Cash for Clunkers, GM, etc., we could have all these new-fangled Statist gizmos explained to us by an all-knowing, confidence-inspiring political geek squad.
Unfortunately for us, the Obama administration’s programs were not voluntarily purchased the way an iPhone or iPad is. They were thrust upon us by unilateral Congressional fiat. Case in point, Obamacare, which was foisted upon an unwilling electorate, a majority of which would love to see it repealed. Furthermore, unlike those nifty Steve Jobs gadgets, Obamacare is the opposite of sleek–a clumsy, massive, hydra-headed piece of legislation that an army of Apple support staff couldn’t explain in a year of daily classes.
House Speaker Pelosi gave us her own version of an Apple tutorial with her scintillating May 9th reassurance: “So we have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it.” Comforting.
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Dionne correctly observes, “Citizens can endure setbacks as long as they believe the overall direction of the government’s approach is right.”
That’s exactly the point. The problem, Mr. Dionne, is that, as poll after poll shows, the majority of the American public–that citizenry you speak of–believes the government’s approach is dead wrong. A society as addicted to pop culture as ours is too familiar with con artists like Mr. Haney from Green Acres not to realize when we’re being taken for suckers. Dionne forgets that the American public is more like Mr. Douglas (Eddie Albert) than his gullible wife Lisa (Eva Gabor). In the New Media Age, it takes more than a back-of-the-pickup Hooterville huckster to pull the wool over our eyes.
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Need proof? How about the “Recovery Summer” angle pitched back in mid-June? Since then, neither the number of unemployed persons, at 14.6 million, nor the unemployment rate, at 9.5 percent, has changed.
How about Christina Romer trumpeting in her July 14, 2010 White House Council of Economic Advisors’ fourth report that the stimulus “created or saved” 3.6 million jobs–and then, instead of basking in the glory of that faux accomplishment, resigning from Obama’s administration a scant three weeks later? Hey, did somebody close the Apple Store? Who’s going to explain the “created or saved” concept to us now?
How about Obama himself, making a handful of half-hearted attempts to sell Obamacare to the public at town halls this summer? Meanwhile, the most recent Rasmussen poll shows that 56% of U.S. voters continue to favor repeal of the health care bill, with 43% strongly supporting repeal–a number that has held steady since the ill-begotten bill slithered into law.
The moral of the story is that enough of the public has seen enough episodes of Green Acres not to throw away its hard-earned political capital on this cheap unwanted gimcrack, no matter how hard Obama and his dutiful team of network marketers attempt to peddle it. The American emptor is skeptical by nature and knows how to caveat all too well.
So watch carefully, Mr. Dionne. Come sun-up on November 2, Mr. Haney and his rickety jalopy will be seen scurrying out of Hooterville in a big trail of dust–long before the mid-term votes are tallied.
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