We are seeing baffled admirers and anguished dissidents analyze President Obama's behaviour at a furious pace, like the fate of the country depends on reading him right. Camps are forming around two seemingly disparate opinions. The two most common conclusions are that Obama is overwhelmed or just doing what he prefers. What if both of these are correct?
President Obama is certainly up against it, like few others before him. There are relentless international and national troubles, just as domestic tranquility is looking more and more like a thing of an institutionally homogenized past. Much of this was foreseeable.
Still, who among us would have guessed in 2008 that domestic hostility to Barack Obama's presidency would become such fevered dementia that a viable contender for the Republican Party's 2012 nomination would sign an oath committing her, in part, to the notion that the children of African-Americans were better off born into slavery than they are born "after the election of the USA’s first African-American President"? It's appalling, not that you would know it from an inured public's reaction. But it really is so socially offensive, viciously partisan and demonstrably false that it only warrants calls for Michele Bachmann to suspend her campaign for the presidency and resign her House seat.
Meanwhile, that example of noxious opposition--just one of many--serves as a strong indicator of the immense unpleasantness that opponents of social progressives and Democrats are prepared to put the country through to enforce conformity to their ideals.
No analysis of President Obama, the country and our future can be complete without factoring in that kind of grotesque angling for public power. Nor can analysis be complete without the realization that American voters may care about policy but they gravitate to persona.
What is the essence of Barack Obama's persona? Why did he appeal to a majority of our polity? If others are like me, they were attempting to revive America's image of intelligence, casual charm and even-tempered security when they elected our president. As a bonus, the nature of Obama's success seemed to point the way forward for a country mired in one intractable problem after another. Thus we approach the finding that Obama may also be doing what he prefers.
For when faced with an extremely stressful presidency, as this one must surely be, what would Obama do to find strength and stability? I suspect he is doing what he has always done: digging in and playing by the rules as they are. It makes sense for him to draw on his experience. It's what we hired him for and it worked well for him--until he became the most powerful person in he country and could, ironically, be torn apart from every conceivable direction. Because Americans gravitate to persona, and savvy politicians understand that, he's also playing the majority's hunch that his instincts will find the best way to pull up and away from our myriad troubles.
I know in my heart that this is not Barack Obama's dream presidency. Most progressive and liberal critics among his supporters know it too. Obama could have become a Republican at any point along his way to the top and shot up even faster because that party needs his image so badly. Still, others have given themselves over to grave doubts about Obama's Democratic convictions. Some are even nosing around for alternatives. But those people should know that no decent progressive or liberal politician will oppose Obama's re-election with national party support. That is as it should be. The reasons for a presumed sidetracking of Obama's "ideal presidency" are all too clear, and too numerous.
So where does that leave the coalition that supported Obama's initial bid? By design, it leaves us where we were the first time we elected him.
While it may not sit well with Obama's activist base, polls keep indicating that Americans want to tack this way or that and they approve of Obama's conciliatory approach. Nobody in this country is foolish enough to believe that Obama can compromise his way into most of the majority's preferred policies. So what else can the polity's dichotomous message mean? It could mean that they are giving policy guidance but will not hold Obama's utterly disagreeable opposition against him. Right or wrong, doable or not, they seem to want the country to outlast this ugliness and prevail in the style of Obama.
It puts our president in a difficult position, along with his party and his activist base. After all, most people become politicians and activists because they are passionate about policy. So while I don't think the voting majority's perspective should ever quell legitimate policy criticisms, I do think a full appreciation of it should hold the coalition of support for his re-election together.
The President is overwhelmed by legitimate crises. And the only crisis that will disappear by putting someone else in the Oval Office is the epic scale of manufactured social and political discord. President Obama is also doing what he prefers, namely returning to his experience in hopes of creating success for the country through his presidency. Truth is, the majority of Americans are either getting what they expected under the circumstances or they are not sufficiently exasperated by circumstances to give Obama and his party the go-ahead to take a more aggressive approach.
There are ways for Obama's coalition of support to pursue a more Democratic policy agenda in the style of Obama. We should adhere to them and Obama's administration should greet the development with open arms. Likewise, voters who tend to agree with progressive policy prescriptions should indicate stronger support for President Obama and his party to move toward those goals and the defense of existing programs with renewed purpose.
Democratic, progressive and liberal politicians should remember that constantly allowing their coalitions to be the biggest losers for vaunted compromise does not just affect morale, it may also produce damaging physiological consequences associated with chronic stress for their strongest supporters. How ever much they need to appeal to true Independents, which has comprised 10% of voters for roughly three decades, they need their base support to be competitive at all.
There are lessons to be learned by all as we head into another campaign season. It is better for us to learn these lessons than to keep rewarding modern conservative opposition with power for grossly distorting political discourse and reacting with hostility to the polity's use of legitimate democratic mechanisms to change course or defend popular programs.