So here’s E.J. Dionne Jr.—a good guy, a reliable liberal—writing in this morning’s Washington Post: “The Obama administration keeps having to learn that bland centrism is not pragmatic, that it’s not helpful in resolving a big crisis and that it certainly doesn’t buy you any love.’’ And here’s David Ignatius, as smart a columnist as there is, and pretty liberal, writing yesterday in the Post: “President Barack Obama could use a little of that Clint Eastwood-style bravura now as he bargains with Republicans over the stimulus package. . . .Obama needs to make Washington politicians fear that if they cross him, they’ll pay a penalty. That’s the essence of political power.” And here is Harold Meyerson, another liberal, also in the Post: “Faced with a financial system that has rendered itself all but insolvent, a credit system that’s frozen, galloping unemployment and a swoon in consumer purchasing, the Republicans . . . . either refuse to acknowledge the crisis or insist on the economic equivalent of unilateral disarmament in responding to it.”
Now some of you youngsters out there may not remember this, but back in 2003 we had a president named George W. Bush, who used fear tactics and strong-arm politics to persuade us that America should invade a cat-box of a country called Iraq because its leader possessed weapons of mass destruction that he was going to give to a gang of super terrorists who were going to explode them on our kids’ teeter-totter. (As part of the package, we would also give up certain civil liberties and torture people we thought it profitable to torture.) Some of you may remember that this did not turn out well.
Now, just because the position of one president turned into a catastrophe doesn’t mean that the position of the next guy will as well. And just because we misapprehended the danger one occasion doesn’t mean that we’re misapprehending the danger now. And just because quick action wasn’t called for before doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be super-speedy now. But it is strange that the people who were rolled by these tactics five years ago want to brandish them now.
What I want is communication. Former GE chairman Jack Welch was on TV a few weeks ago, and he offered the view that the first step to take in responding to a crisis is an excess of communication. I don’t want a lot of gauzy bipartisanship, and I don’t want Barack Obama to get all Eastwoody. I want him to talk, every day—to teach, really—and tell us what he thinks is happening, and what he and his team is doing about it. If the president gives us information, details, and explanation, and gives them to us everyday, the country will follow.
I’ve been noticing the same thing and come to the same conclusion. I just don’t get it. Did liberals just not believe Obama when he said he wanted to bring a new kind of leadership to Washington? Did they just say (to themselves), “That’s great that he’s saying that… That will get him elected, and when he gets to Washington he can really stick it to those Republicans.”
As a Republican who voted for Obama, I’m glad Obama is not listening to those guys and doing what he said he was going to do.