The Homa Files

Excerpted from Weekly Standard: Obamaland – Squandering hope, channeling Nixon, 10/29/2009

The transition from campaigning to governing has not been kind to President Obama.

As a candidate he spoke of hope, change and ending the polarization of the past; he promised to bring people together; he pledged a new style of civil political engagement; he sought to lift us as a people above surly partisan warfare.

As president, he sucked the veracity from these hopes.

Maybe this was the plan all along. Politicians often say one thing and do another.

Or perhaps, he succumbed to inexorable forces and patterns that swallow every idealistic elected official trying to navigate the Washington swamp.

Whatever the reason, Obama has fallen short of those lofty aspirations.

After ten months in office a clear pattern has emerged. Instead of hope and change, it’s blame and attack.

Obama rarely gives a speech about a pressing national problem–the economy, health care, the budget deficit–without blaming Republicans or former president George W. Bush.

For many Americans it’s getting old. It makes the president look small and petty. Does he want America’s respect or its pity?

Attack is the other side of this strategy.

Playing Chicago-style politics comes naturally to this White House, populated with a cadre of former Obama for president staffers and others steeped in the tactics of the permanent campaign. And they don’t merely assault an enemies list. “We routinely hear about phone calls from the president’s staff to congressional Democrats expressing White House dissatisfaction if someone says anything out of line with Obama’s policies,” a senior congressional aide told me.

The gap between the president’s campaign rhetoric compared to his governing style creates a harsh cognitive dissonance and a toll in the polls.

And the slide will likely persist as the White House continues to force its vision of change on a country that lacks consensus in many areas.

Full article:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/017/132koltj.asp?pg=2

This entry was posted on October 30, 2009 at 7:30 am and is filed under Obama Administration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.