Today In Green Lanternism
By Via Chait, who engages in some entertaining mockery of the embarrassing bad faith summit between Frank and West, we can see a somewhat more measured argument in the same vein from Michael Kazin. To be clear, it’s not nearly as bad as Frank’s Salon hackwork. Nonetheless, my jaw remained on the floor for some time after reading this:
Why has Barack Obama—one of the most eloquent and thoughtful of recent presidents—become such a terrible politician? Midway through his sixth year in office, his ineptitude is pretty clear. He frustrated and demobilized the huge base he built during his campaigns and, unless the polls turn around quickly, will be watching from the White House as the GOP takes full control of Congress this fall. On Tuesday, the Times offered some new evidence in an article about his frosty relationship with Senate Democrats.
[…]
But it also helped him win the 2008 Democratic primary, and then boosted minority and young voter turnout to give him an easy victory in the general election. And if Obama is indeed as arrogant some say he is, then so were some of the more consequential chief executives who preceded him—Andrew Jackson, Woodrow Wilson, Lyndon Johnson, and Ronald Reagan.
Each of those four presidents—as well as greater ones like Lincoln and FDR—built loyal followings and retained them for nearly their entire time in office.
Yes, I’m afraid that as an example of someone who was (unlike Barack Obama) able to retain the strong support of his party, Kazin is citing…Lyndon Johnson. You know, the sitting president presiding over a party so united he did not seek a nomination for which he was eligible. If only Barack Obama had that kind of unifying force. (That “nearly” is sure doing a lot of work.)
In addition, it’s worth noting that in the 1938 midterm elections, the Democrats lost 7 seats in the Senate and 72 seats in the House. And, perhaps even more to the point, these elections marked a point at which Congress was controlled not so much by the nominal Democratic majorities as by a coalition of Republicans and conservative Democrats. If FDR had some kind of magic formula that allowed Democrats to maintain support in midterm congressional elections, he apparently declined to use it.
Midterm elections tend to be bad for the party that controls the White House, and this is a particular problem for Democrats, whose less affluent constituencies generally have lower vote turnout. This isn’t a trend caused by Barack Obama being a “terrible politician.”
For a comic conclusion, Maureen Dowd has still “learned” far too much about politics from Aaron Sorkin. And is she in on the ultra-hacky “Obama, unlike any other president ever, plays golf!” trend? I think you know the answer to that.