The Diminished President

Ross Douthat

For months, he’s positioned himself near the center of public opinion, leaving Republicans to occupy the rightward flank [..] Yet the president’s approval ratings have been sinking steadily for weeks, hitting a George W. Bush-esque low of 40 percent [..] The administration would no doubt blame this judgment on the steady stream of miserable economic news. But it should save some of the blame for its own political approach. Ever since the midterms, the White House’s tactics have consistently maximized President Obama’s short-term advantage while diminishing his overall authority. Call it the “too clever by half” presidency: the administration’s maneuvering keeps working out as planned, but Obama’s position keeps eroding.

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We mentioned before that Obama is a Hesitant Creator (like Tony Blair from UK, and Erdogan from Turkey) and this type is very scared of losing, or to appear to be losing; this fear can push them to be overtly accomodating on one hand, or unnecessarily competitive on the other, and they tend to prefer small tactical moves to “save the day” [1]. HC’s have a massive chip on their shoulder for some reason which, by the way they look and act, feels entirely out-of-place, but it’s there nevertheless.

On the other hand, let’s not forget, Obama was elected to be anti-Bush who was “the decider”, the big-action, big-plan, bold-actin’, straight-shootin’ hombre. Avoidance of the big, bad, bold could somewhat be related to this. Public’s perception might be playing a role, the culture code for a US president is MOSES, according to this code presidents should have a big direction, divide the sea, lead their people to the “promised land”. This is all bunch of cultural stupidity of course, it has no intellectual value or connection to what needs to be done. It simply has to do with manipulating voters, effecting mindless morons, but can also partly explain Obama’s decline in poll numbers.

On Libya, I do not agree; noone wanted to see US attacking another country on her own, so NATO involvement after an UN agreement for protecting the rebels worked out for the better.

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[1] The negatives of this type are least visible on Blair.