There’s sense among some that Obama has not stepped up to bat the way he should in promoting his administration’s agenda. Is this a fair criticism? Has he been too reserved and detached in the use of the bully pulpit of the Presidency to properly motivate people and push his agenda forward?
There definitely seems to be a big difference between Obama the candidate and Obama the president. While a lot of that is probably to be expected given the freedoms of campaigning versus the competing demands and constituencies of governance, for someone who entitled one of their books “The Audacity of Hope,” he hasn’t been that audacious.
And that’s both in demeanor and content. He has rarely gotten “fired up” in speeches, and those times when he has tend to be after there is already some public and media outrage at an incident, such as bonuses at AIG or other bailed out companies. Regarding many of his promises during the campaign, other than a few such as signing the order to close Guantanamo, he has left quite a few of them to Congress to draft their own solution for, namely health care and gays in the military.
Obama the candidate was focused on trying to be inspirational and hopeful. He presented the impression that he was going to get down and dirty with some of these issues and work to see that his proposed solutions are achieved. Obama the president, however, both in everyday rhetoric and in action, seems much more hands-off and thus less effective.
He was pretty good at speaking to the Republicans the other day. So good that Fox cut away. I’d like to see him call out the conservatives on all the lies. Call them lies, and ask voters why people would need to lie if they had the facts on their side. He can do the same to the Democrats too for that matter.
I think he does an excellent job when he’s in professor mode. I know they say that in politics it plays as “out of touch” and he doesn’t “tell a story”, but right now people think smart is fucking cool, and they’re more than happy to see Dr. Manhattan run the show, even if he can’t bowl. We saw this most recently when he took on the Republicans (as DanBlather mentioned above), and he was showered with support from disillusioned supporters who think he’s moved too far to the middle, or reached out to the conservatives too much.
Obama giving straight talk is what people like. No hokey ESPN bullshit, no interviews with Vanity Fair, just Obama explaining exactly why what he wants to do is the smartest thing to do. It’s easy to feed into the mythology of a man acting by ideology rather than education when all of yourspeechmaking focuses entirely on “stories” and buzzwords.
He’s coming across to me as somewhat detached, dispassionate (except for when he’s trying to be forceful, where he can begin to sound somewhat petulant), slightly superior and with a touch of arrogance – even such a notorious leftie as Angelina Jolie has said the same – and, increasingly, monotonous: same timbre, same cadence, same rhythm, etc.
His manner and way of speaking seemed pleasant and refreshing during the run-up to the election but they seem to be increasingly off-putting the more I listen to him. Combine this with his rather lackluster performance in office so far and, to me anyway, I’m afraid he’s coming across more and more as dull, repetitive and ineffective. And that’s been something of a surprise; I wouldn’t have expected it fifteen months ago.
Obama seems desperate for everyone to get along. Also, he seems to think we are a nation of rational adults and if he just explains policy to us, we will follow. The reality is most people barely pay attention and whatever opinions we do have are based heavily on emotions and low information or misinformation.
In the 2008 primaries many people on the left were saying ‘Obama doesn’t have the fight in him to be president’. And they were right. Obama is more the guy who ‘wants to have a beer’ with his enemies than the guy who wants to twist their arms and threaten them.
Even his confrontation with the GOP was just him saying ‘why don’t you guys stop lying and being dishonest radicals, and try to cooperate’. He was basically pleading with them to stop being dishonest and undemocratic. Good luck. He should be threatening the GOP, not pleading with them to stop lying and act like adults.
I think at this point if he even tried to talk people into supporting XYZ, it would backfire. Many of us have grown weary of the disconnect between the pretty speeches vs being slapped around by Lieberman and the republicans. Actions speak louder than words when the 2 are contradictory. Any more speeches would probably just make people more cynical.
He can start by slowing down all Federal spending in Alabama until that senator releases his hold on Obama’s nominees.
How does he effectively mobilise the nation when 1 in 4 Americans thinks he’s a Muslim terrorist? If he does get more in peoples’ faces he’ll just be getting accused of pushing his radical agenda etc. It looks like the White House has decided that if he does try and push things it’ll backfire, although that calculus may have now changed after the GOP recently achieved their 41-59 Senate majority.