"How Can Obama Rebound?"
The question posed by The New York Times to a wide variety of political observers, 15 in all, was simple, and perhaps a bit plaintive: "How can Obama rebound?"
The answers, in the form of mini-op-eds, mostly fell into two categories: First, liberals who think the President should continue to be liberal, but sell it better; and second, conservatives who think Obama should be, well, more conservative. Speaking for myself, as someone to the right of Obama and who did not vote for him in 2008, I can still concede that the best advice to any politician is to start with who he or she is. And in Obama's case, that means starting on the left and working back over to the middle. Because it's in the middle that national elections are won.
So that's why I thought that two of the op-ed "mcnuggets" offered Obama a genuine ray of hope. That is to say, they offered advice that the 44th President could plausibly follow, advice that would move him to the center in a constructive way, without fracturing his lefty base. Not surprisingly, those two op-eds came from two authors with experience winning red states. The first was a top adviser to Bill "Triangulator" Clinton's 1996 presidential campaign, which the Democrat won in a landslide, making him the first Democrat to win re-election since FDR. And the second was from the wife of a then-populist Democrat who won an upset victory in a Southern state back in 1998. I am speaking, therefore, of Mark Penn and Elizabeth Edwards, who campaigned alongside her husband, John, when he pitched himself as a moderate to defeat a Republican incumbent.
One needn't agree with all that Penn and Edwards have to say, or what they stand for, to nonetheless recognize that they are offering shrewd advice to any candidate--in either party--who wishes to win over the swing voters in the middle.
First, Penn suggested a mix of policies, all aimed, as he put it, "retak[ing] ownership of the center." And that means some spending cuts, but also some spending increases: As the veteran Democratic pollster wrote, if Obama wants to make a comeback, he should start by "making a real down payment on the deficit, revamping the health care act to address the cost issue."
OK, that's budget-cutting and deficit reduction, always sensible in a time of trillion-dollar deficits. But at the same time, we must remember that government overspending was not the proximate cause of the recession--it was the mortgage bubble, along with the even larger financial bubble. Therefore it follows, to any Democrat--and to many independents and even some conservatives--that America needs a plan for moving America back toward physical production, as opposed to real estate speculation and financial "innovation." And we might further observe that simply chopping at healthcare spending is a guaranteed political loser. As we shall see--and as I have been arguing at my blog, Serious Medicine Strategy, the smart approach to health-savings is by helping people to be healthier, and therefore less needful of medical help, as well as more productive in the workforce.
But those ideas were at least alluded to in Penn's prescription. As he wrote, Obama should also dedicate himself to "opening up new markets overseas and creating jobs by promoting innovation through spending on basic research."
And Penn goes further:
Rather than cut the space program, he should double its size. He should make sure that every American with a broadband connection has access to online education. He should offer research grants and tax incentives to promote investment in our coal, natural gas and biofuel resources, as well as wind and solar energy.
Bravo! Yes, it's entirely appropriate to cut spending where necessary. But it's also appropriate to spend where spending is needed--on projects such as energy independence. And yes, the space program should be doubled, just as Penn says, because space exploration provide larger benefits to our economic well-being and national security. (One might add, of course, that to make NASA credible again in the eyes of ordinary Americans, perhaps it needs a new administrator, committed to space and rocketry, as opposed to Muslim outreach and global social work.)
Next up, Elizabeth Edwards, the estranged wife of former Sen. John Edwards. John Edwards, of course, has shamed everyone who ever knew him, while Elizabeth Edwards has created a dignified new life for herself as a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, a left-of-center DC think tank. But what she wrote about in her Times piece transcends partisanship and ideology:
Before Ted Kennedy died, he and his fellow senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas proposed a renewed war on cancer. President Obama should take up that proposal.
Cancer touches nearly every American family, creating emotional, physical and financial hardship. Each of those families would be cheerleaders in this fight, rooting for earlier detection, improved treatments and — dare we dream — cures. And unlike the debates over health care and financial reform, there are no cheerleaders on the other side, no monied interests hoping to retain the status quo, no lobbying groups working to mute every victory with so many concessions that it seems like a loss.
With a renewed war on cancer, the president could change — there is that word again — the lives of millions of Americans and their families. And a nation would cheer him on again.
We could add that not only would a real war against cancer be popular, but it would also be good economics. An increasingly affluent world is suffering from the same medical maladies as the US and the West--including more cancer. So the country that comes up with the cure will be the medicine chest to the world. And that's a lucrative place to be.
Conservative, libertarians, and tea partiers all have their own ideas on the national agenda. But in the meantime, with Obama in office, and gearing up for a re-election campaign, groups on the right should factor in Obama's plans, not just their own plans. If the President were to listen to Penn and Edwards, and make himself over into a pro-technology, pro-cure centrist, he would be a formidable foe in 2012. If he doesn't do so, if he doesn't move to the center, then he will likely lose.
In which case, the next president will face the challenge of reviving the economy and saving money on healthcare, without hurting old people. And so even then, elements of the Penn/Edwards platform will look mighty attractive.
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Comments:
May '10
Re: "How Can Obama Rebound?"
Any version of ObamCare, however modified, will be the death of American experiment in constitutional democracy. The law cannot be modified; cannot be tweaked. It must be killed, because represents to end to liberty; the complete dominion of the political class over our lives. Let's worry a bit more about saving America than about saving Obama.
Jun '10
Re: "How Can Obama Rebound?"
It's Obama's success that's destroying him. He's getting legislation passed, but it's legislation that either doesn't solve our economic problems, or just makes them worse. If Obama and the congressional Democrats were focused on the same issues as the Public--jobs and growth--and were just making honest mistakes, that would be one thing, but they're making irrelevant mistakes, costly mistakes. They're not even on the same page as the Public. The best thing that could happen to Obama in 2011 is gridlock.
May '10
Re: "How Can Obama Rebound?"
Do I understand Jim that you are advocating the President take a larger role in directing the economy as the best means to pulling ourselves out of recession?
It is the romance behind grand dreams like curing cancer and funding the lost dreams of Trekkie Boomers that surely got the President elected. But it is grim reality of the federal government in action that has alienated the left and disheartened those in the center. It makes fun reading in the New York Times, but it was Clinton's declaration that big government was dead after the 96 election that persuaded voters he could be trusted for a second term.
Obama's relentless faith in big government has put him on a collision course with what people fundamentally believe. I don't think the path to reelection comes from giant new programs -- but I'm not sure he knows any other way to campaign.
Re: "How Can Obama Rebound?"
I think James is onto something. Think of what might happen if the president combined his Green Jobs and Global Warming initiatives into a JFK-esque call for 100 new nuclear power reactors and associated grid upgrades online before the end of Obama's second term. First off, the president could constitutionally justify a large federal subsidy on national security grounds just as Ike sold the interstate highway system. The sales pitch would include high-end construction jobs today and cheaper carbon-free power fueling future unionized manufacturing jobs. Brighter electric vehicle prospects and a reduced risk of mideast oil blackmail would be icing on the cake. And all this would be driven by a bigger, more energetic federal government, which would confound the Republicans in the runup to 2012.
But the president isn't flexible enough to go for this because he is all about his ideology, and his ideology is all about less.
Re: "How Can Obama Rebound?"
George, I agree with you and Jim -- although my cold Republican heart likes Trace's no-Big-Gummint credo.
But that's what I find so odd about this president, and about the Left in general these days. There's no sense of bigness, of an expanding pie, of possibility. Obama is that weird, rare thing: he's a Gloomy Liberal. (It comes from all of those faculty meetings, I think....) The left doesn't believe we can cure cancer, or upgrade the electric grid. They think we're in slow, inexorable decline. Obama, in his heart of hearts, thinks we need a Death Panel for American Greatness.
Re: "How Can Obama Rebound?"
I'm not entirely sure, Jim, what it would mean for the President to ensure that every American with broadband "has access to online education." But it's clear that more than a few Dems are wondering whether they should have taken the pill marked Hillary!. If they don't get some results from Obama, this kind of pressure we're seeing from Clintonite Penn and others will increase. Yes, I am shamelessly flogging, yet again, the Will She Run? story.
Re: "How Can Obama Rebound?"
A few reaxes to these comments:
First off, I agree with Brian that Obamacare should be repealed. But I am extremely interested in the question of what to replace it with.
Second, I agree with Star of the North -- sorry, mon frere, we speak English here -- that Obama is incapable of doing what Penn suggests.
Third, Trace, you wise guy, I 'fess up to being an aging Trekkie boomer, but will note that energetic Greatest Generationeers put America on the moon, one of the great feats of human history.
Fourth, George, you are right. You should run for president.
Fifth, Rob, Obama is absolutely a gloomy liberal. The word I use for those who inherited the political tradition of Jimmy Carter is "scarcitarian." As in scarcity is good, especially if it means that nobody can afford to build a house that blocks your view of the ocean.
Sixth, James, there could well be a Hillary for President effort going on--I said the same thing on "Fox News Watch" last Saturday. I am not for that, but I am for curing cancer and other similarly ambitious projects. More on how to do it in future posts.
May '10
Re: "How Can Obama Rebound?"
War on Cancer is unbelievably cheap compared with any other program element that could be proposed- just add one or two billion to the NCI research budget. Compared with the other expenditures these days, that is not a lot. (disclaimer: I work for an institution that does a lot of cancer research under NIH grants, so I either know what I am talking about or I am hopelessly compromised. Probably both....). There are many avenues that could be explored, especially in immunology, early detection, and combined therapies that currently fall below the funding line. And some resources should be explicitly reserved- by Congressional edict- for blue sky ideas that aren't in someone's program already. Breakthroughs come from the places you don't expect, but those ideas usually fall below program priority lists because gov't program managers have their own agendae ("The consensus of science is..."!- Kuhn beware).
Regarding energy, I still don't see why no one listens to Robert Zubrin-Jim Woolsey, plus Patrick Moore/Christie Todd Whitman.
Jul '10
Re: "How Can Obama Rebound?"
Nothing Obama can do will bring him reelection. A recent poll contained the interesting information that 36% said they couldn't remember who they voted for president in 2008. These would be the independents who have gone south on Obama. There is not enough good news that could happen between now and 2012 to bring them back, and if this administration has some bad news up its sleeve the Chicago crowd is going to have a tough time persuading people it can handle whatever it is better than the other side.