Out-Foxed and Out-Flanked: The Incredible Shrinking Obama Presidency

With each passing day, President Barack Obama’s once bright and shining star grows dimmer and dimmer as winter — and unemployment — casts its long shadow of discontent across America.  The recent loss of 63 Democratic seats in the House of Representatives last month, shrinking the Democrats’ hold on Washington and flipping the House to new Republican leadership in January and the stunning Wikileaks debacle, landed more body blows to the White House, which seems to be reeling from their political misfortunes.

Elected under the rubric of “change” and  a new politics in 2008 that reflected the “no drama Obama” rationality and insistence upon respectful political discourse (it takes two to have a conversation,) Obama soon found out just how disinterested the Grand Old Party was about respecting his mandate.  They didn’t care that he was victorious by winning with 53 percent of the popular vote and by garnering a whopping 365 electoral college votes.

Nor did they respect him, as they promptly set out with vengeance to show him just how little regard they had for the first black president of the United States.

There was no honeymoon for Obama, just as there was none for Bill Clinton, the last Democrat to be president.

From the beginning of Obama’s presidency, the Republicans and their allies have worked assiduously to undermine his credibility and have achieved significant success in casting doubt among the American public about whether he was born in Honolulu, Hawaii (even former Republican Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle verified Obama was born in Honolulu’s Kapiolani Women and Children’s hospital,) and have convinced a substantial number of Americans, nearly one in five people, or 18 percent, said they wrongly think Obama is Muslim, up from the 11 percent reported in March 2009, according to a recent Pew poll  taken last summer.  The White House was so concerned about the polling results that it was forced to issue a statement reasserting that the president is a self-professed Christian.

A political maxim taught from time immemorial, that every blow landed by one’s opponent should be immediately returned, was haughtily dismissed as “old politics” (i.e. Clintonian like, thus the “old politics”) by the Obama White House, to their great detriment.  The relentless media-pounding applied by Republican surrogates went un-returned by Obama’s “new politics,” driving down his polling numbers.  Coupled with a protracted legislative health care reform fight that went curiously undefended by the White House during the summer of 2009, Obama miraculously pulled victory from the jaws of defeat when he signed the health care reform bill into law, only to maddeningly run away from this incredible achievement during the recent elections.

Since Bill Clinton’s election to the presidency in 1992 the Republicans have been on a hell-bent destructive path of no holds barred and scorched earth approach to governance as participants in our two-party system via their tactics of obstruction, denigration, defamation, blocking, filibustering and lying repeatedly about the aims and intentions of Democrats elected to the White House and on the Hill.  The cumulative effect of these strategies has resulted in fewer Americans trusting government, and now in the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression, more and more feel that America’s best days are behind us.

In this environment with Democratic blood on the water, the president looks more naive and politically incompetent with each passing day.  As Howard Fineman reported yesterday at the Huffington Post, he does not seem to enjoy the rough and tumble of legislative battle and continues to underestimate the Republican appetite to drive his White House into further retreat.

His lack of experience as a legislator was betrayed this week when Obama announced the White House had had a good meeting with the GOP leadership about issues they could “work together on.”  Obama’s understanding was put into stark relief in less than 24 hours as the Republicans reflected their “good will” by informing Senator Harry Reid they would filibuster all issues, including unemployment compensation, before the Senate in the remaining days of the lame duck session, until the Bush tax cuts are extended to all Americans, regardless of income.

Official unemployment figures hover at nearly 10 percent across America and that does not include thousands of unemployed who have not worked in over two years.  Many parts of the country have slid into depression-like circumstances:  food pantry demands continue to rise; homeless families numbers are up; food stamp demands continue to rise and the underemployed have lost their health insurance and other benefits as demands for public assistance fall to local and state governments, who are also cash strapped as revenues have dried up.  Many educated workers in their 50s and 60s have lost their homes, wiped out their IRAs and 401ks just to survive, believing they will never return full-time to the work force with previous levels of income and compensation.

This is the situation that faces President Obama and the Democratic Party.  If this president is unable to persuasively address the basic needs of a battered middle class and convince them that he will lead us out of this terrible morass, he will be a one-term president and deservedly so.

In the aftermath of the midterm elections, Obama has not demonstrated he is up to the task.  He needs to roll up his sleeves and get engaged in this political fight for the country and his presidency.  We are waiting, but time is running out on Barack Obama and his once believed great promise.

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