Barack Obama returns; liberals still in trouble

The man is amazing—and his relationship with America is amazing as well. He’s never managed a profit center. However, does any other politician today have his experience, and competence, in managing himself?

Last night, Obama had to restore his fragile core business—his off-again-on-again rapport with voters. He again had to say: “I’m here.”

Mitt Romney never once needed to say that. His life story, his guileless insistence that he knows what he needs to know about people and business, his wife, and his five Stepford sons all shout out: “I don’t stray. I’ve played my whole life by the house rules.” Everyone can see it: he clowns around tactically and likes practical jokes; spiritually, however, he’s utterly bound to the Republican Party, Bain’s business mission, and the faith of his father’s side of his family. 

Obama arrived on the national scene as an exotic outsider and spent his presidency not being wayward in any way. Then, in the 90 minutes of the first debate, he put it all at risk. The likeable and admirable Obama appeared to not have worked very hard in preparing for the game and, yes, he looked like he’d rather talk to himself than Mitt Romney and Jim Lehrer.

Devastating. Despite already being the most productive Democrat president since Lyndon Johnson, Obama might not be likeable enough to be a success.

In what will probably be one of a series of purple convolutions leading up to an endorsement of Romney, David Brooks offered this hilarious take on the imperatives of competent governance:

“Seventh, the craftsman has to be socially promiscuous. Deal-making is about friendship. The craftsman has to work on relationships all day every day. It’s not enough to talk to your adversaries in negotiations. You have to talk to them when nothing is happening. You have to talk to them when they are up, when they are down. You have to celebrate their anniversaries and birthdays.”

After the second debate, the alienation of David Brooks and a handful of billionaires who want more face time in the White House won’t count for much.

By being a better debater than American politics’ most obsessive striver for popular approval, Obama has probably restored his own appeal. Certainly, that appeal, rather than the appeal of his liberal surrogates, will decide the election for the Democrats.

Frank Rich's grim piece “The Tea Party Will Win in the End” should be read and re-read by Democrats who thought for a moment this month that Obama was their problem. He offered the following data on the power of their traditional liberal philosophy, without Obama:

“And while polls found Obama ahead of or even with Romney in every policy category, conservative ideology in the abstract fared far better. In the late-September Quinnipiac University–New York Times–CBS News survey of the swing states Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania, for instance, the view that government is “doing too many things” easily beat the alternative that government “should do more.” The Pew American Values Survey from June is even starker in charting an intrinsic national alienation from a government that has been gridlocked since the turn of the century: By margins that approach or exceed two to one, a majority of Americans believe that government regulation of business “does more harm than good”; that the federal government should only run things “that cannot be run at the local level”; and that the “federal government controls too much of our daily lives.”

Obama may get re-elected, in large part, for his past efforts and his moderate strategy to restore the American economy. However, that will not be a mandate to restore the past glory of his party—and its preference for federal action over all other sources of amelioration and renewal in the American union. 

Next American melodrama—2012 Presidential election

In changing times, when there is no plot or sure outcome, and compromise is exhausted, American politics have taken on the appearance of an awful melodrama—a presidential election that becomes a canvas for immense simple choices, exaggerated characters, and paranoid connections. Complexity and respect for the evidence are set aside.

A country that prides itself on its amateurish politics turns its leading politicians into demigods and devils in a Greek drama. The stakes for America become unbearably high.

Back in 2009, Republicans started preparing for exactly this kind of showdown and now look a little snug in their battle dress. They always want a candidate to really believe in but will probably settle for irresolute Mitt Romney.

Conversely, the Democrats are working up a truly dramatic proposition—vote Obama for the survival of America’s social union and activist federal leadership at home as well as abroad. However, a two-great-choices election led by no-drama Obama against weather-vain Romney will require strenuous pre-game work-ups. 

Getting liberals into the spirit of this kind of Manichaean politics, however, is moving along quite nicely. In New York Magazine, Frank Rich, possibly print’s most astute liberal observer, penned an extraordinary piece entitled “What Killed JFK. The hate that ended his presidency stalks us still.”   

“At least in 1963, polling showed that only 5 percent of the country—a fringe—subscribed to the radical anti-government views championed by the John Birch Society and other militants of the right. These days, that fringe, whether in the form of birthers or the tea party or the hosts of Fox & Friends, gives marching orders to a major political party.”

Rich acknowledges that Kennedy was not the victim of a criminal conspiracy and that a climate of violence didn’t literally pull the trigger. 

However:

“On the other hand, read Manchester or 11/22/63 (Stephen King’s latest novel) or any other account of that time, and the vitriol that was aimed at Kennedy in life seems as immediate as today. It’s as startling as that “You lie!” piercing the solemnity of a presidential address like a gunshot—or the actual gunshots fired at the White House last week by another wretched waif. In the end, that political backdrop is what our 44th and 35th presidents may have most in common. The tragedy of the Kennedy cult is that even as it fades, the hothouse brand of American malice that stalked its hero stalks our country still.”

Click on: http://nymag.com/news/frank-rich/jfk-2011-11/index2.html

Historian and author James Piereson’s article “Revisiting the Kennedy Assassination: Frank Rich and the Paranoid Style” smartly chides Rich for relying on a novelist to prop up the idea that right-wing nuts and their theories inspired Kennedy’s assassin.

Click on: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/11/22/revisiting_the_kennedy_assassination_frank_rich_and_the_paranoid_style_112154.html

Associating the tragedy of Jack Kennedy and the vulnerability of Barack Obama, nevertheless, can’t be undone. An urbane liberal president stood up to hatred and extremism and was assassinated. Liberals, as passionately as conservatives, have their narrative of the 60s.  

Obama Democrats would look silly trying to sell optimism by re-inventing the innocence and arrogance of Kennedy’s Camelot. In truth, the tragedy of those divisive years is infinitely more affecting. Obama will more likely evoke passion in Democrats not by pretending to be Harry Truman but by being himself—a civil thinker, easily as articulate and as attractive as Jack Kennedy.