{"id":5394,"date":"2009-09-11T09:47:14","date_gmt":"2009-09-11T14:47:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=5394"},"modified":"2009-09-11T09:47:14","modified_gmt":"2009-09-11T14:47:14","slug":"sweet-nothings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=5394","title":{"rendered":"Sweet Nothings"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the wake (or afterglow<\/em>, if you work for MSNBC) of Obama’s latest prime-time grabbing foofarah, I’m noticing a telling disconnect between those who examine what comes next in concrete terms from those who just want to bask in how awesomely terrific our dreamy president appeared. Let’s start by examining the latter, and what better example could there be than noted pant-crease<\/a> fetishist David Brooks<\/a>…<\/p>\n

On Wednesday night, Barack Obama delivered the finest speech of his presidency. The exposition of his health care views was clear and lively. The invocation of Teddy Kennedy was moving and effective. The rumination at the end about the American character and the role of government was the clearest summary of Obama\u2019s political philosophy that he has yet given us.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s not often you can summarize an ostensibly conservative columnist’s opening paragraph about a Democratic president’s call to socialize medicine as, “Squeeeee!!!” But this is hardly the first time Brooks has been enraptured by Obama. The telling part begins to show next, but Brooks doesn’t seem to register the significance even as he makes note of it.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Best of all for those of us who admire the political craft was the speech\u2019s seductive nature and careful ambiguity. Obama threw out enough rhetorical chum to keep the liberals happy, yet he subtly staked out ground in the center on nearly every substantive issue in order to win over the moderates needed to get anything passed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Umm… quite. The speech was indeed seductively ambiguous, but I’m not so sure that’s a good thing. In fact that may be it’s central, and perhaps fatal, flaw. There sure was a lot of meaty “rhetorical chum,” but is that the same as real substance? Is being all over the map, staking out possibly self-contradictory positions in a fit of rhetorical flourish, actually a good thing at this point? I don’t think so.<\/p>\n

But don’t take my word for it. Ceci Connolly of the Washington Post tries<\/a> to chase down the actual result of the speech upon Congress, and her findings don’t quite gel with Brooks’ superlative assessment…<\/p>\n

One day after President Obama pitched his plan for comprehensive health-care reform to a joint session of Congress, administration officials struggled Thursday to detail how he would achieve his goal of extending coverage to tens of millions of uninsured Americans without increasing the deficit.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wait, weren’t they struggling with the same thing before<\/em> Obama’s “reseizing command” of this issue that the speech supposedly signaled? Wasn’t that the central problem hindering effective compromise even among Democrats before today? Surely the president was paying attention well enough to let that much inform his words on the matter.<\/p>\n

Well, yes, but perhaps not quite so effectively…<\/p>\n

Although virtually every Democrat found something to like in the president’s 47-minute address, the interpretations of what he meant varied widely, suggesting more difficult negotiations ahead.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is the central problem of the Obama presidency – whether the issue is health care or anything else. Obama’s rhetorical “brilliance” amounts to making many contrary and mutually exclusive audiences believe they heard just what they wanted to hear. Brooks, for whatever reason, is especially susceptible to this particular charm and makes a perfectly illustrative example.<\/p>\n

Brooks uses his column to walk down an impressive list of what he thinks <\/em>he heard Obama promise in his speech. But as Connolly finds in talking to Congress – Brooks isn’t the only one who thinks he knows what he heard. And some of the others seem to think they heard exactly the opposite from Brooks on identical issues.<\/p>\n

On the controversial question of whether to form a new public insurance option, many liberals characterized what was widely interpreted as Obama’s neutral stance to be unwavering support for the idea.<\/p>\n

“We were pleased you explicitly expressed your support for a public option as a central piece of achieving true reform,” leaders of the House Progressive Caucus wrote in a letter to Obama.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Compare to Brooks’ version of what he heard the president say about this is…<\/p>\n

[T]he president introduced the public option to its own exclusive Death Panel. As Max Baucus has said, the public option cannot pass the Senate. On Wednesday, the president praised it, then effectively buried it. White House officials no longer mask their exasperation with the liberal obsession on this issue.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What this whole thing amounts to looks a lot more like more of the same problem than any kind of breakthrough or solution. It’s becoming ever more clear that Obama’s soaring speeches just aren’t very good at actually getting anything done. At some point even Brooks will be forced to recognize that the airy kind of speechifying good for the campaign trail isn’t much use for the hard work of actual governance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the wake (or afterglow, if you work for MSNBC) of Obama’s latest prime-time grabbing foofarah, I’m noticing a telling disconnect between those who examine what comes next in concrete terms from those who just want to bask in how awesomely terrific our dreamy president appeared. Let’s start by examining the latter, and what better […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":212,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-care","category-president-obama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/212"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5394\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}