The Unbearable Lightness of Obama

I’m still working on what may be my great composition, a set of theses explaining Barack Obama and all the mysteries surrounding him. Is he a hard-line progressive or a closet centrist? Does he really dream of a new post-partisan commitment to consensus or is this just a ruse to sneal behiud the city gates a legion of standard left-liberal politics?

Tony Blankley examines Obama’s early blunders and sets out their possible causes. Obama took the fall for the inept vetting of Cabinet nominees, saying that he “screwed up”.

But from a management perspective, the unanswered question is: How did he "screw up"? Did he actively design the failed vetting process and actively assess the various negative pieces of information and fail to see their significance? Or did he "screw up" by letting others design the failed system and assess the data inflow? The former would show poor substantive judgment. The latter would show he wasn't paying sufficient attention to a presumably vital matter.

Then we have the preening display of signing an executive order closing Gitmo -- not now, but within one year. And what is to be done with those present inhabitants too dangerous or unwanted by other countries to be released, but not susceptible to conviction through the mechanism of the criminal law, which is designed to regulate offenses between members of the same community who have committed themselves to upholding the same set of social values?

Thus, it was breathtaking that at the signing ceremony, President Obama didn't know how -- or even whether -- his executive order was dealing with this central quandary.
President Obama: "And we then provide, uh, the process whereby Guantanamo will be closed, uh, no later than one year from now. We will be, uh. ... Is there a separate, uh, executive order, Greg, with respect to how we're going to dispose of the detainees? Is that, uh, written?"
White House counsel Greg Craig: "We'll set up a process."
To be at the signing ceremony and not know what he was ordering done with the terrorist inmates is a level of ignorance about equivalent to being a groom at the altar in a wedding ceremony and asking who it is you are marrying.

But the critical clues must be found in Obama's handling of his stimulus package. Here is a mystery packed with satifactorily intriguing puzzles. Was Obama's desire to reach a genuine consensus with a substantial number of Republicans real or charade? Was the decision to delegate preparation of the package to Speaker Pelosi and her minions an inevitable byproduct of Obama's newness to office, a sign of irresolution and weakness, or a clever ploy to ensure that his fingerprints would not appear on a package full of social liberalism and plain silliness that was desired by Obama but known by him to be unacceptable to Republicans? FWIW, I believe that Obama's desire for post-partisan consensus, if arrogant and ill-considered, is sincere. It's arrogant because Obama's belief is that everyone should abandon their petty grievances, outworn notions and unthinking allegiances. Republucans and Democrats should sit down and think things through practically, whereupon they will come to the same conclusions that Obama does, which also happen to be the conclusions of standard fossilized progressive ideology 98.7% of the time. Republicans accepting the conclusions in principle are welcome to toss in a few ideas -- for example if they had had a few ludicrous projects for which they desired excessive government funding, those ideas would have been welcome. Everyone then votes for what Obama wants; that's what's called "postpartisan consensus".

Blankley:

I can think of four possible explanations for this almost unprecedented presidential detachment from the decision making of policies the president publicly declared to be vital to the country and his presidency:
1) He is a very, very big-picture man, and he delegates decisions even on the central points of vital issues.
2) For tactical reasons, he decided these matters were not worth using up political chits.
3) He is either hesitant or unskilled at management, and he let matters drift until it seemed too late to intervene personally.
4) Or his personality type leaves him surprisingly uninterested in things that aren't personally about him.

I'll eliminate #2. Tactically this was the perfect time both to make it clear to congressional Democrats that he would be doing the producing and directing on matters important to him, and to make cooperation with him as attractive as possible to Republicans .
There's no doubt truth in #1, but it doesn't explain Obama's non-decisions on the stimulus package. The necessity of insisting on absolute unity of purpose in items in a bipartisan emergency stimulus package is big-picture enough for the most visionary leader to isolate and insist on.
#4 can't be discounted wholly. A man who writes two memoirs and compares himself favourably to Lincoln has an very healthy sense of self-esteem even for a politician. It is this type of personality also which sees itself as rising above the pettiness and self-interest that afflict everyone else.
But I say #3 is the winner. Obama was quite skilful or lucky in selecting a campaign team and setting a campaign tone, but the quantity, urgency and importance of the policy and personnel decisions to be made now overwhelm him.
This should ensure for Americans a very entertaining if perhaps somewhat painful presidency. The President's stated goals of civility, practicality and bipartisanship will be subverted and sabotaged at every stage not only by congressional Democrats but by his own appointees. Obama's rhetoric and style will ensure that his approval rating remains high despite an unending series of unpopular and disastrous policy ventures. Public anger will be continually directed not at the king, but at his counsellors, whose heads will roll regularly in response to repeated failures of judgment, achievement and ethics.