Turns out, the progressive base wasn't the first -- or foremost -- array of Democratic loyalists "disgruntled," even abused by this insular, "fortress" White House mentality. Pushing 800 days, the Obama administration has battled a fiercely regimented opposition handcuffed not only with its own unfocused vision but, we now verify, something just as bad: a frustrated, executive home team full of "frayed relationships."
Detailed by the Washington Post [1], this news clarifies a variety of infamous Obama surrenders in advance and campaign betrayals, producing leadership gaps that wound the left (certainly public unions) plus explain the midterm "shellacking." Didn't Democratic Party exposure and caving on principles buoy the GOP's resurgence from the dead?
Because the neophyte Obama banked on "bipartisanship," even brinksmanship with shrill belligerents, how could his Job One and Two and Three not be to shore up his own unimpeachable team against an incredibly unified foe? Mystifying in its magnitude and two-year duration, this self-induced, team-dividing negligence represents the rare recent fiasco caused solely by Democrats.
Revenge of Rahm
Like foul-mouthed Rahm Emanuel. Indeed, for me Obama's wobbly standing today epitomizes the implicit Revenge of Rahm and the Remnants of Summers -- the triumph of arrogant, establishment aides whose "fortress" White House remains out of touch with centrists, Congress, and loyalists. What else explains so many successful GOP reigns of terror, verbal and political? And is not Obama liable for these picks?
Interesting is how long it took the mass media to disclose this dysfunctional, intramural schism. Whatever, as veteran Anne Kornblut details a smug, know-it-all Obama administration disconnected from its own demoralized and disempowered cabinet (except for stars at State, Defense, Education and Justice). Though her soft-pedaled language is impersonal, Kornblut doesn't shy away from implying serious discord, even a broken marriage. The White House now openly admits a "troubled," "badly frayed" relationship between two "deeply disgruntled" sides.
Incoherence, the Enemy of Leadership
For the left, this huge split helps explains extensive policy incoherence, plus appalling follow-up and dreadful framing. I think it's why Obama appears all over the map on his big five challenges: endless wars, rampant corporatism (and now, union-busting), mastery of finances (taxation-budgets-jobs creations), foreign affairs/anti-terrorism, and the ongoing, desperate need to re-Constitutionalize America.
In fact, where's much policy coherence on other major issues, whether gay marriage-DOMA, gun control, Wall Street bonuses (and bad fixes), health care passage-rollout, environmental protection (no blueprint, mixed cues), or energy policy (no plan, more deepwater wells)? All too visible are garbled responses to overseas upheavals (the bigger the street protest, the more unsure the Obama steps), plus tragic regression on Gitmo, Bush military tribunals, and unending incarcerations, even punishing Bradley Manning in advance.
Three months into this presidency, I challenged readers to identify when, if ever, this president risked political capital, honored genuinely progressive values, and delivered one definitive win for the left. I wait in vain on slow war withdrawals (vs. surges), predatory taxation, control of the Pentagon, even ending mistreatment of prisoners. A few marginal gains do not equal one systemic, progressive win into the third year.
A Bust on Union-busting
Take Wisconsin -- where despite overt local requests this White House refuses to let VP Biden or Labor Sec'y Solis show up, let alone defend collective bargaining rights -- another campaign betrayal. As the Huff Post reports, the head of the nation's largest nurses union, Rose Ann DeMoro, dismissed Obama as largely a bystander: "we're feeling a sense of betrayal from him and not liking it much."
Obama cultists can dish out excuses galore, forever invoking inherited economic and military messes from W. Okay for one year, but not three or four. What "anti-war" candidate inevitably trusts the warrior Bush pick at Defense, Robert Gates? What "economic reformer" stands by Tim "no jobs, no relief" Geithner or re-appoints inept Ben Bernanke. None of these challenge any status quo, predict accurately, or reveal special gifts other than political status.
Eventually, Kornblut falls back on a Democratic insider and Emanuel ally: Rahm not only didn't "set priorities but instead only called to complain when things went wrong. 'Rahm was always moving too fast, thought the Cabinet was useless, didn't have time for it.'" Who wants this guy as boss, let alone the nation's chief of staff? For me, the Obama administration stalled from this moment forward.
The Buck Stops at the Top
All in all, we now have context for what I call Obama's alienation of affections -- it's all about the staffing, stupid, then failure to stand by, delegate and deliver. Everyone, from Sarah Palin's speechwriter on down, points up Obama's inexperience, having run nothing larger than a Senate office. But who guessed he'd pick so many top advisers so good at campaigning and so lousy at governance, even two+ years later?
What Kornblut summarizes as "badly frayed relations between the White House and the Cabinet" mirrors the incredible divisiveness poisoning national politics, greater than before Obama. Has the right ever been more patronizing, more in love with its ideological insanity, since the Great Depression? "Frayed" only begins to capture the undeclared, widening uncivil war across social, political, geographic, religious, class, ethnic and civil rights battlegrounds.
Obama won't rise above mediocrity until 1) he establishes coherence in arenas he controls, like regulation, foreign affairs and imperialism; and 2) he stops trying to be everything to everyone, which backfires bigtime, signaled by returning this week to 48-46% disapproval ratings. The midterm -- and GOP state insurgency -- reveal Obama's no shoe-in for re-election, weak across many key border-crossover states (VA, NV, IN, FL, NC, WI, OH and NH), some he must win.
Bipartisanship with Democrats First
Any dream that "bipartisanship" ever informs the Obama legacy disappears without a unified vision reinforced by visible policy coherence. How many observers, even fonder of Obama than I, see either? What the new chief of staff must pull off is nothing short of a miracle -- heal divisions with his cabinet plus the Democratic base while fending off the frenzied, empowered fringe. Good luck.
Certainly, time to expand writ large Benjamin Wittes' insight about Obama's disgraceful detention policy: this "president has now institutionalized a process that a lot of his political base imagined he was going to get rid of." True on taxes, war-making, Gitmo, banking, mortgages, and the entire, inter-related resource-environment-energy realm.
Perhaps to win again this political greenhorn feels he must veer rightward but, like that dishonest Wisconsin governor, that's not what got him to the dance. By allowing advisers (without seeming challenge) to misuse his own cabinet, Obama showed he doesn't yet understand the presidency. Arguably, his re-election now depends less on what he can or will do than whether Repugs find an appealing dark-horse who, unlike today's self-destructive losers, won't shoot him/herself in the foot. OMG.
_______
Robert S. Becker
[2] | 
[3] | 
[4] | 
[5] | 
[6] | 
[7] | 
[8]