Pete Souza/White House
Obama in oval office signing Budget Control Act of 2011.
Article Highlights
- #Obama needs to make a new first impression @JonahNRO
- Can #Obama reinvent himself to save his presidency? @JonahNRO
- Barring some tragic event outside of his control, #Obama is out of options @JonahNRO
After Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidency changed. As he put it in 1943, "Dr. New Deal" had to be replaced by "Dr. Win the War." It was a colossal policy switch, but it wasn't an extreme makeover politically. He was still the same FDR, and the public understood the need for change.
And it saved his presidency. As President Obama's former economic advisor Larry Summers said recently, "Never forget … that if Hitler had not come along, Franklin Roosevelt would have left office in 1941 with an unemployment rate in excess of 15% and an economic recovery strategy that had basically failed."
Many economic historians, such as Robert Higgs, disagree with Summers on the substantive point about World War II being good for the economy. But Summers was absolutely right politically about the New Deal and about the fact that the war saved FDR's bacon.
"It's very hard to see what the man can do. He's got no place he can go, but he can't stay where he is."
President Obama desperately needs to make a similar change but, thank goodness, providence isn't offering any Pearl Harbors these days.
It's very hard to make a new first impression, particularly for presidents seeking another term. Of course, if things are going well, you don't need to reinvent yourself. Dwight Eisenhower stayed the same reassuring duffer-in-chief throughout the relatively tranquil 1950s.
In 1972, Richard Nixon rode a (seemingly) good economy and foreign policy success to a landslide reelection victory--60% of the popular vote. Ronald Reagan stayed Reagan in 1984 amid a surging economy.
George W. Bush made a switch, from Mr. Compassionate Conservative to President Dead-or-Alive. But, like FDR with Pearl Harbor, his political task was the result of an unprovoked attack and the war(s) that followed.
A major strain of conventional wisdom in Washington these days is that Obama can win reelection by "tacking to the center." Bill Clinton, who famously "triangulated" his way into a second term, is the model. Theoretically, Obama can do the same thing by leveraging a "centrist" debt-limit deal against his base, winning back the independents and moderates who delivered his decisive victory in 2008.
The problem, as many have pointed out, is that Obama can't borrow the Clinton or Reagan playbooks because the economy is just too rotten. A rising economic tide gives presidents room to reinvent themselves. By the spring of 1995, the U.S. economy was averaging 200,000 new jobs per month.
But the bad economy isn't the only hurdle. Clinton's race to the center was a return to form. He beat George H.W. Bush by running as a centrist Southern Democrat who supported the death penalty, wanted to "end welfare as we know it" and was eager to zing his own base if it would earn him a second look from Reagan Democrats and others disillusioned with the party of McGovern, Mondale and Dukakis. His was a restoration, not a transformation.
I'm writing this before the final votes on the debt-limit deal, and I have no desire to tempt fate. But it seems that no matter how Obama gets out of this he's left in a double bind. He desperately needs to make a new first impression because he cannot successfully run on a terrible economy, an unpopular healthcare plan and a very confusing foreign policy at a time when most Americans are burned out on foreign policy.
But absent external events he cannot plan on, there's no way to credibly reinvent himself or even reintroduce himself as the guy who ran in 2008.
He can't revive his claim to be a post-partisan bridge-builder, can he? His first two years were as partisan as any we've seen in a generation. He certainly can't run on "Yes We Can!" optimism, particularly not after he's shown his willingness to force a "sugar-coated-Satan-sandwich," in the words of Congressional Black Caucus Chair Emanuel Cleaver II, down the throats of his base. He cannot run as a gung-ho fiscal hawk, not when he contributed so much to the deficit. And he will never outbid the GOP nominee on shrinking government. If he tries, his base stays home.
Barring some tragic event outside his control, it's very hard to see what the man can do. He's got no place he can go, but he can't stay where he is.
Jonah Goldberg is a visiting fellow at AEI.
A bestselling author and columnist, Jonah Goldberg's nationally syndicated column appears regularly in scores of newspapers across the United States. He is also a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, a member of the board of contributors to USA Today, a contributor to Fox News, a contributing editor to National Review, and the founding editor of National Review Online. He was named by the Atlantic magazine as one of the top 50 political commentators in America. In 2011 he was named the Robert J. Novak Journalist of the Year at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). He has written on politics, media, and culture for a wide variety of publications and has appeared on numerous television and radio programs. Prior to joining National Review, he was a founding producer for Think Tank with Ben Wattenberg on PBS and wrote and produced several other PBS documentaries. He is the recipient of the prestigious Lowell Thomas Award. He is the author of two New York Times bestsellers, The Tyranny of Clichés (Sentinel HC, 2012) and Liberal Fascism (Doubleday, 2008). At AEI, Mr. Goldberg writes about political and cultural issues for American.com and the Enterprise Blog.
