President Obama's Campaign Mode versus Aloof Professorial Mode

Dear Friends,

I was struck by an article in The New York Times today entitled "Obama Turns Up the Volume in Health Care Bid" by Helene Cooper and David M. Herszenhorn (here).  Here are just a few paragraphs from the article:

In a high-octane appearance that harked back to his “yes we can” campaign days, Mr. Obama jettisoned the professorial demeanor that has cloaked many of his public pronouncements on the issue, instead making an emotional pitch for public support as he tries to push the legislation through a final series of votes in Congress in the next several weeks.
With the fate of his signature initiative on the line, and Republicans eager to portray Democrats as out of step with the country and incapable of governing, Mr. Obama seemed to relish the opportunity to cut loose and make his case on his terms, as he often has at pivotal moments.
And, with his back to the wall, the president appeared intent on reassuring his party that he was as confident as ever in his powers to explain, persuade and capture the politics of the moment...

President Obama struck a populist tone, setting up the health insurance industry as his main target.
“We can’t have a system that works better for the insurance companies than it does for the American people,” he said.

So where has candidate Obama been?  As President he seems to wax and wane between campaign mode and aloof professorial mode.  He gets nowhere with anybody with the professorial mode.  He is capable of motivating people to support his positions and act when he is in campaign mode.  The real problem is his complete lack of consistency.  Campaign mode today and professor tomorrow fails to get any momentum. 

President Obama inherited an unbelievably bad situation with an incredible scope of problems that needed to be addressed and needed to be addressed quickly.  He made some really good moves.  We needed to continue the policy of preventing major bank failures, and he did that although he should have put real strings on the money.  He needed to get a stimulus passed, and he did that although it was too small and there were too many tax breaks and not enough infrastructure spending.

President Obama wanted to reform the health insurance industry, and it is badly in need of reform.  But instead of leading the way the candidate Obama would have with great inspiring rhetoric, lofty principles and real reform that he sold the American people on so that Congress would have to act.  He let Congress take the lead, he never made it clear what his plan was, he wanted bipartisanship so badly he threw his base under the bus and never really pushed single payer or a real public option.  He blew it big time.  If President Obama had gone on the campaign trail railing against the insurance companies and assuring people every day that if they liked their insurance, they would be able to keep it, we would have meaningful health care reform already.  But he didn't.  He would do go into campaign mode sporadically but not consistently.  At the same time the right wing lie machine was at work loudly every day.  It is no wonder we are where we are now on health care reform.

He is making the same mistake on financial regulatory reform.  The big banks and Wall Street institutions are about the only targets that are easier to hate than the health insurance companies.  They are arrogant, and they have no grass roots support.  All they have going for them is the huge amounts of money that they contribute to the political campaigns of both major parties.  An article in The New York Times on January 22, 2010 (here) includes the following paragraph:

Mr. Obama has signaled that he intends to take a more populist stance on financial regulation legislation in Congress, seeking to position Democrats as defenders of the people against Wall Street, and to cast Republicans as defenders of bonus-laden bankers. To that end, he proposed legislation on Jan. 21 to limit the scope and size of large financial institutions, declaring that huge banks had nearly brought down the economy by taking "huge, reckless risks in pursuit of profits...

So did he do that?  I have not seen President Obama out campaigning for financial regulatory reform.  We need this reform and with every passing day it is more likely that there will be little or no meaningful reform.  The House passed a bill in January but of course the Senate has not acted.  President Obama is once again trying to attract some Republican votes by negotiating against himself and watering down the bill to nothingness.  What he should be doing is going around the country demanding that the Senate act and that true financial regulatory reform be passed.  It should be an easy sell, but President Obama isn't even trying. 

I do not want to believe that he is not trying because of all the money that he and other Democrats get from Wall Street and the financial industry.  Nor do I want to believe that President Obama is not smart enough to learn from his mistakes on the health care bill.  But what is the reason?

As long as I am on financial and economic issues,  President Obama is failing to truly stimulate the economy with infrastructure spending.  It creates good jobs quickly, and those jobs create other jobs.  Of course, the conservatives in his own party and the Republicans have suddenly become deficit hawks at just the wrong moment in time.  But again, what could be an easier sell for President Obama than to go around the country pointing to the specific jobs that have been restored and created by the first stimulus and saying we can put more of you to work in good jobs and then people will have money to spend on going out for dinner or buying something at the local store.  With Presient Obama's skills, he could get the country to force even the Republicans to pass a strong stimulus bill. 

Where is candidate Obama when we need him?  We need him to be on the campaign trail every day.  I hope the event described in the first article I mentioned above is the start of a consistent push by President Obama to sell his policies and programs to the American people. He can do it.

Thanks for reading and please comment,

The Unabashed Liberal