Obama, all over the map

Jan 29, 2010 — Washington Post

Howard Kurtz

Quick: In one sentence, what was Barack Obama's State of the Union about?

That's the problem.

The president was, by turns, humble and confrontational. Uplifting and pedestrian. Bipartisan and partisan. Not wanting to litigate the past and blaming the Bush years. Rolling out new initiatives but freezing spending. Ready to cooperate and ready to fight.

People loved the speech, if the insta-polls are to be believed. Some 83 percent approved in a CBS poll. In a CNN survey, 48 percent had a very positive reaction, 30 percent somewhat positive and 21 percent negative. But the SOTU bump is usually rather ephemeral.

I think the president helped himself because he's an engaging personality. Most people like the guy. The question for many voters is whether he, and his party, can get things done.

If Obama is able to find common ground with the GOP on some items, the speech might be recalled as a turning point. But the Republicans wouldn't even applaud tax cuts! Obama alternated between extending an olive branch and calling them the party of no. It's hard to imagine the dynamic changing any time soon. And will the public really hold Mitch McConnell accountable because he's now got a 41st senator? The Dems still run everything in Washington and are going to be blamed if gridlock continues.

Take health care, for instance. Obama devoted his rhetorical gifts to underlining its importance but offered no path to passing the stalled legislation. Harry Reid now says he's in no hurry. So it's going nowhere fast. And Nancy Pelosi is cool to the spending freeze that is supposed to demonstrate that Obama cares about out-of-control spending. If the president can't whip his own party leaders into line, he will look impotent.

The State of the Union is one night when a president has the country's undivided attention (even if he was competing with the iPad). But the real test for Obama will come with an audience of 535.

On that point, the president talked about breaking the gridlock, "but Mr. Obama quickly got a taste on Thursday of how difficult breaking that logjam would be," the NYT reports.

"One day after the president upbraided Congress in his State of the Union address for excessive partisanship, Senate Republicans voted en masse against a plan to require that new spending not add to the deficit (it passed anyway, as all 60 members of the Democratic caucus hung together). And some Republicans peremptorily dismissed Mr. Obama's main job-creating proposal, expressing no interest in using $30 billion in bank bailout money for business tax credits."

Politico Editor-in-Chief John Harris examines the many faces of Barack:

"President Barack Obama on Wednesday night tacked to the right with appeals for tax cuts for small business and new investments in off-shore oil drilling and nuclear power. He tacked to the left with renewed vows to let gays serve in the military and to get U.S. troops out of Iraq.

"He sounded at times like a Bill Clinton-style centrist, at others like a bank-bashing populist. He taunted Republicans, and also presented himself as a lonely tribune of cooperation and bipartisan civility in Washington. . . .

"Less charitably, the address could be interpreted as the work of a president who is desperately improvising by touching every political erogenous zone he and his advisers can think of.

"Under either judgment, however, it was inescapable that his 69-minute speech -- for all the rush of words and policy ideas -- was a document of downsized ambitions for a downsized moment in his presidency."

Which might, in retrospect, seem like a good thing.

At the New Republic, Jonathan Chait liked the speech but found it uneven:

"The dropoff between rhetoric penned by Obama and that by his staff, always noticeable, was especially so tonight. When he declared, 'health care experts who know our system best consider this approach a vast improvement over the status quo,' I wondered if his budget freeze had already claimed the entire White House speechwriting staff. . . .

"Obama effectively projected his personality, often to the detriment of the opposition. He gently laughed at the GOP's refusal to applaud his tax cuts. He had a winning moment when he explained his motivation for embracing health care reform: 'By now it should be clear I didn't take on health care because it was good politics.'

"Obama's closing flourish served a double purpose. Putatively, he was urging America to remember its greatness and press on in the face of adversity. The message seemed also to be aimed at his fellow Democrats, who have succumbed to utter panic in the last week."

They're all up in November, unlike Obama.

Some on the left aren't thrilled. Arianna Huffington found the address overly cautious:

"Judging from the speech, he also spent a lot of time going over the results of focus groups and polls. Indeed, the speech, despite its charm, humor, and occasionally impassioned rhetoric, had the feel of being focus-grouped within an inch of its life. There was a decidedly paint-by-poll-numbers air about it.

"Focus group participants say they are concerned about the deficit? Then let's throw in a 3-year spending freeze, delivered with a populist spin. . . .

"Sure, the freeze will actually have little impact on the multi-trillion dollar deficit, exempts budget-bloating defense spending, and, as Steve Clemons puts it, 'will essentially forfeit America's growth future to China.' But 'spending freeze' moved the test dials -- so spending freeze it is!

"Remember when serious health care reform was going to be the main path to long-term budget deficits? Not anymore. Now we're going to freeze spending -- except, of course, on the wars of choice we are fighting, at a cost of $250 billion a year, in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Apparently it all depends on whose ox is frozen.

Time's Joe Klein is among the most enthusiastic:

"It was a terrific performance. He almost seemed to be having fun up there; he delivered the speech in a free, almost informal manner. It was easily digestible, user-friendly . . . but it was also a fighting speech. Certainly, he stuck the needle time and again into the hides of the recalcitrant elephants in the room. . . .

"This was Obama at his best. He wasn't cuddly, but who cares? He was smart and he was funny--and he was drop-dead serious about the country."

Most on the right are giving the speech a thumbs-down, unmoved even by the conservative outreach. The Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes practically yawns:

"Haven't we heard that speech before, practically every word of it? Maybe it was a year ago when President Obama first addressed Congress. Maybe it was during the campaign. Maybe it was at one of those town halls? Maybe Obama can't help himself. His speeches just insist on sounding the same.

"In any case, Obama delivered the least fresh State of the Union address I've ever heard, and I've heard more than 30 of them. It was filled with old ideas, campaign cliches, and frequent use of personal pronoun, 'I.' That's the Obama pattern.

"The chief takeaway from 70 minutes of presidential oratory was that Obama doesn't intend to move to the center. Should we have been surprised? Not at all. Obama is no Bill Clinton. He's an ideologically committed liberal."

Obama is no Bill Clinton? Fred didn't like Bill Clinton either.

National Review's Victor Davis Hanson accuses the president of pretzel logic:

"Cap and trade, statist health care, and an end to 'don't ask, don't tell' for thee.

"And for thou, Obama the tax cutter, Obama the gas-and-oil driller, Obama the budget freezer, Obama the anti-lobbyist reformer, Obama the bipartisan healer?

"This half-hearted pivoting was quite transparent: Obama made these about-faces without acknowledging that the Obama of 2010 is now and then rejecting the Obama of 2009, much less that the partisanship and bickering of the past year stemmed largely from the hubris of having both houses of Congress and an obsequious press. Instead, Obama seemed miffed that after Scott Brown's victory he had to offer half-hearted sops."

At Powerline, Paul Mirengoff says action will mean more to the electorate than words.

"I believe that the critical mass of independent voters will put little stock in Obama's speech. They will be focused instead on his deeds and, above all, the economy. But if tonight was an opportunity for Obama to regain favor with independents, I don't think he seized it. . . .

"In terms of tone, I thought Obama got it right for a while, but then drifted into the kind of borderline nastiness, rank hypocricy, and excessive self-references that have started to grate on those who once viewed him as post-partisan."

But some on the conservative side found elements to like. Former Bush adviser Mark McKinnon says the GOP shouldn't Just Say No:

"It was good to hear Obama embrace some conservative ideas like a spending freeze, a commission on deficit reduction, tax cuts for businesses who hire new employees, pay-as-you-go and earmark reform. And Republicans would be wise to endorse, embrace and work with the president on these issues. Republicans must pick a few issues and prove that they are not simply going to reject the president on every issue for purely partisan reasons. It was embarrassing to see Republican leadership sit on their hands even when Obama went through a litany of tax cuts he has supported.

"It was reassuring to see Obama avoid resorting to overheated populist rhetoric. It doesn't come naturally to him and while attacking big business and banks may generate easy applause lines, it is not responsible leadership. Obama continues to come across as serious, sober, and thoughtful. While much of his agenda may appeal to the liberal Democrats, this speech was more evidence that Obama is more of a pragmatist than an ideologue."

And Christopher Buckley, who famously defected to Obama during the campaign, was practically grooving:

"Mr. Obama proved -- once again -- that he hears the American music and can play it like a maestro. As well as Ronald Reagan. Both presidents had -- have -- have music in their souls. The other people in the room where I watched the speech were in tears by the end--the kind that stream down the face. I managed to hold those back. But I could not hold back my admiration at the performance, in particular of Mr. Obama's deep humanity, as evinced by his profound, almost Lincolnesque humor. Oh dear, are tears streaming down my face, one way or the other?"

By the way, for all the talk about the need for more fact-checking on TV, the PBS NewsHour annotates the speech text with plenty of analysis of its claims.

Matthews's mouth

Chris Matthews has a talent for saying things in a way that tick people off. After the SOTU, he declared on MSNBC: "I was watching and I said, wait a minute, he's an African American guy in front of a bunch of other white people and there he is, president of the United States, and we've completely forgotten that tonight -- completely forgotten it."

How much does he usually think about it?

Washington Monthly's Steve Benen tries to follow the Hardballer's reasoning:

"I want to give Matthews the benefit of the doubt, and I'm trying to understand his observation. After watching it a couple of times, I think Matthews is effectively trying to say how nice it is that the color of the president's skin is no longer relevant when evaluating his performance in office.

"But it's hard not to notice that Matthews stepped on his own observation in a strikingly clumsy way. He's impressed by how irrelevant race is in evaluating Obama. . . . which leads him to immediately talk about race in evaluating Obama."

Shuster vs. O'Keefe

In the wake of James O'Keefe's arrest in Mary Landrieu's office, MSNBC's David Shuster addressed him in a tweet: "a) you are not a journalist b) the truth is you intended to tap her phones c) it's a felony d) you will go to prison."

The conservative activist is not charged with wiretapping, and "a spokesperson for the network told Politico Thursday that the tweet was 'inappropriate.' "

Going public

Washington Post education reporter criticizes Washington Post editorial board -- and the City Paper has the story about how the blog post was taken down and an edited version later put back up. I saw absolutely nothing wrong with Bill Turque's original post.

Cornyn vs. Politico

Ben Smith blows the whistle on Sen. John Cornyn sending out a release critiquing Obama's delivery before the SOTU, and the Texas Republican didn't like that:

"I'm a little offended by the lack of journalistic ethics. This is really a matter for convenience of reporters and others," Cornyn said.

Smith says "he also rebuked me: 'I thought that the reporter was blatantly unethical. In fact, we try to do this in a way that accommodates people's schedules and gets information out. I thought it was bad form.'

"I understand why Cornyn and his office are unhappy about the item and that they intended the early release as a convenience. I respectfully disagree on both the news value and the ethics. . . . And traditional ground rules, which I've been clear about in the past, are that you can't put something off the record or under embargo without a reporter's consent."

Smith is right; Cornyn was asking the press to play along with a little deception.

Jay does Oprah

He didn't cry, but Leno revealed a great deal with Winfrey, who was impressive in the way she pressed him. He was "devastated" at losing "The Tonight Show," but he doesn't think he was selfish.

"I mean, I had a show. My show got canceled. They weren't happy with the other guy's show. They said, 'We want you to go back,' and I said, okay. And this seemed to make a lot of people really upset. And I go, 'Well, who wouldn't take that job, though? Who wouldn't do that?' "

Time's James Poniewozik weighs in:

"This is as close as Jay has come to owning up to the obvious and simple (and perfectly understandable) truth: I never wanted to leave the show, and I took it back because I wanted it. What's wrong with that? He didn't quite, and he doesn't seem comfortable with being seen as that guy: his story is still that he had to take the show to save the jobs of his staff. But it's fascinating to hear him approach it. How could I not do this? Why wouldn't people be happy for me?

"Another interesting bit, to someone who's covered and interviewed Leno, was his saying that losing the Tonight Show 'broke my heart.' Leno is famously guarded, not a guy given to 'carry his emotions on his sleeve,' as he says. And even though he always made plain he didn't think he should have lost Tonight, he pointedly never put it in emotional terms when promoting The Jay Leno Show. I don't doubt it did break his heart, mind you, but it seems to be no accident that he chose to say that now, looking for sympathy from Oprah's viewers."

But isn't that what everyone does? Didn't Conan seek sympathy for losing out, despite his awful ratings?

Howard Kurtz also works for CNN and hosts its weekly media program, "Reliable Sources."