How Barack Obama Lost America

1) 11:54 AM, September 20

“I’m exhausted of defending you,” the woman told President Barack Obama. And with that Obama lost America. Not on the House floor. Or in a prime-time Oval Office address to the nation. But at a town-hall meeting in a dingy Washington D.C. auditorium.

Obama laughed at first at the gall of the statement. He bought some time with his trademark “Well…” opener. He hemmed and hawed before rattling off his litany of presidential achievements: student loans, health insurance companies can’t drop you, and on and on.

But all this meant nothing to Velma Hart. They were mere fancy words from a well-spoken man. She was a veteran, a laid-off mother of two. Neither student loans nor health care reform would put food on her kitchen table. She was headed back to “the hot dogs-and-beans era”. She just wanted the president to admit it.

He wouldn’t. Obama could only empathize, instead. He said he knew it was tough “treading water”. But that “we’re going in the right direction”. And then he took the next question.

News pundits called Velma Hart 2010’s Joe the Plumber. A plain-speaking regular, American whose pain was so raw, so visceral, that she left even Obama speechless. She was the frustrated clarion call of an American Middle Class tired of waiting. She said what every frustrated liberal was thinking: You aren’t the One we were waiting for. Why don’t you fight, Obama? Why don’t you get mad?

One of the great mysteries of the two-year old Obama Presidency has been the president’s failure to communicate. Obama The Candidate inspired a nation and the world. His speech on race in the wake of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright imbroglio was the first frank conversation our nation had heard in decades. There was a nary a dry eye when he said “enough” to Republicans’ games under the clear Denver sky at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

Obama The President still speaks well. Magnificently, even. But the content is muddled. True, “stimulus Package” and “public option” don’t roll off the tongue as easily. And it’s easier to attack by speech than to defend.

But Obama lost something when he assumed office. He changed. He lost the vim and vigor that inspired Americans in the first place. He teased liberals with the old swagger every so often. Obama shushed Republicans with a simple “I won” in the early weeks of his presidency. Or when he rammed healthcare reform through this March. But those were rare outbursts in an otherwise cerebral presidency.

It’s as though Obama thought he could stop campaigning when he became president. As though the David Axelrod-David Plouffe 2008 Election Dream Team could just cool their heels till 2012. And the White House lost the national debate—not to the Republican party but three TV personalities: Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Sarah Palin. The former governor of Alaska turned TLC reality star muddied the healthcare debate by making up “death panels” in a Facebook status update.

Less than 1/10 Americans know they received a tax cut under President Obama, according to a New York Times/CBS News Poll. 1/3 thought their taxes rose. 1/5 Americans (and climbing) believe Obama is a Muslim. Ironically, it takes a obscenity-laced website Whatthef—hasobamadonesofar.com to best trumpet the 44th President’s accomplishments.

“Democrats don’t know how to celebrate,” quipped Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd. Indeed, President Obama’s achievements to date may be the most productive first two years of a presidency in modern American history: healthcare reform, the Stimulus Package, improved global image, credit card consumer rights, tobacco regulation, Wall Street regulation, and winding down the Iraq War.

But each time the volume was dialed down. The achievements were met not with fervent applause but relieved sighs. The bills were usually the water-downed, wonkish thousand pagers after months of Washington grind-it-out gridlock. Obama solemnly “turned the page” on the Iraq War, the third longest war in American history this August. Finally, an America public grumbled, weary after years of economic malaise and war. An America public that really only cared about jobs.

2) 10:47 AM, November 26

The President of the United States just took an elbow to the face. Rey Decerega of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute was the culprit. He turned to take the shot and whacked the defender/44th President in the upper lip. He would need 12 stitches.

Obama’s presidential injury still fares well against his predecessors. The oafish President Gerald Ford fell down the Air Force One steps repeatedly. President George W. Bush passed out choking on a pretzel and “grazed his cheek” watching an NFL playoff game. He must have inherited his food woes from his father. President George H. W. Bush once vomited in the lap of the Japanese prime minister at dinner.

“What a month,” Obama could only be thinking as he dabbed at his lip with gauze walking to the Escalade outside the gym. He had taken a self-dubbed “shellacking” in the Midterm elections to kick off this November. Bipartisan bickering had slowed Washington to a halt over extending Bush’s tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans. Even the usually non-political NEW START deal with Russia was held up by a single Arizona Senator with a grudge.

Obama could really only blame himself. He should have taken care of the tax cuts and START months earlier. But he dithered. He drove White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel crazy pacing back and forth in the Oval Office. The President spent months dwelling over the NEW START treaty. Just sign it, Emmanuel would urge, its boilerplate stuff. But Obama had been obsessed with nuclear proliferation since his Columbia college days. He wanted to make it a legacy piece. And the weeks dragged on.

Emmanuel tried to lecture Obama in the class of hard-knocks politics every day. His 7:45 AM White House screaming sessions were the stuff of legend. But it grew old. Emmanuel was too polarizing for Obama. Obama, too idealistic for Emmanuel. And eventually, Rahm Emmanuel couldn’t take it anymore. He had enough of the Professor-In-Chief, switched his cell-phone area code back to 312, and bolted for the hard-knuckled Chicago mayoral race.

It’s been said you can chart a presidency in chapters by the Chief of Staff. Chapter 1 of the Obama Presidency, then, was a brusque, no-holds-barred, very prolific 20 months. Chapter 2 will be tamer, have more schmoozing, and star new Chief of Staff Pete Rouse. Rouse is a soft-spoken political consultant who keeps a low profile. It is Rouse and Vice President Joe Biden who will wheel and deal with the reinvigorated Republican party. Biden was a leading voice in the Bush tax cut compromise. He has also been regularly spotted at the Congressional gym for the treadmill, Congressional sauna gossip.

3)4:16 PM, December 10

President Clinton and President Obama had the run of the place. They cruised the deserted West Wing hallway. Most of the White House aides were at Christmas parties. The past and present leaders of the free world had spent an hour and a half chatting and had an idea. President Obama reached for the press room door. Locked.

“Do you know how to open up the briefing room?” President Obama asked a stunned staffer nearby.

“Yeah,” President Clinton said, “can you help us unlock it?”

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs poked his head out from behind the door, “What are you guys up to?”

“We’re looking for some reporters,” Obama said.

Gibbs was suspicious, but he gave them five minutes. The 42nd and 44th Presidents took nearly hour.

The irony was palpable in the press room. Two Democrat presidents defending the Bush tax-cuts. The symbolism, even starker. The Democrats’ kingmaker stood by President Obama when the party wanted to leave him. Democrats were incensed at Obama’s “cave-in” to Republicans over the Bush tax-cuts. There was even talk of a Democratic presidential primary for Obama in 2012.

Obama had spent the last week trying to win back the base. Yes, he broke a campaign promise in extending tax-cuts to the wealthiest Americans. But he had to, he argued. He wasn’t about to let middle class families pay more taxes in times like these. Washington doesn’t do symbolic wins, Obama tried to tell Democrats. Washington does extending unemployment benefits. I know the deal isn’t perfect, Obama admitted. But it’s the best we can get, President Clinton followed.

With that Obama excused himself to help Michelle prepare for another holiday party and handed it over to an overjoyed Bill Clinton. Clinton felt right at home again, fielding questions from North Korea to the economy off the cuff.

Sixteen years earlier, a younger, more subdued President Clinton stood in the same press room after he lost 53 seats and the House in his first midterm. He suffered his lumps before outflanking Republicans to take back the center and became one of the most popular presidents in modern American history.

It will be harder this time. The unemployment rate was 6.5% in 1994. And Republicans learned their lesson after shutting down the government. They went too far and let the President move to the middle. They won’t make the same mistake again. Bill Clinton was also more of a charmer. He would call up Newt Gingrich at one in the morning if he had an idea.

Obama is more cerebral and sometimes prickly. He will have to grit his teeth through 18 holes with Speaker of the House-to be John Boehner. He will have to swallow his pride and pass piece-meal bills that leave both sides underwhelmed. He faces two grating years of playing nice with the opposition while alienating his own party in the name of creating jobs.

But Obama the Candidate will have to emerge again, too. He will have to get mad in Indiana and Pennsylvania auditoriums when Congress jams up. He will have to reawaken the snoozing college voter. Obama will have to show he is the president fighting for the nation’s Velma Harts above the fray of Congressional fracas.

If Obama fails, he will be dismissed as a more productive Jimmy Carter. But if Obama succeeds, he will have a second term for high speed rail and the climate change bill he always wanted. He could become the Democrats’ titan. A Clinton-mentored, Franklin D. Roosevelt-lite who brought the most sweeping social programs since the Great Society in the face of two wars, the Great Recession, and a paralyzed Congress.

And maybe someday he will ham it up in the White House press room. Just like old times.

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