WHY OBAMA SHOULD PLAY TO POPULISM / THE FINANCIAL TIMES COMMENTARY & ANALYSIS ( VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED READING )

Why Obama should play to populism

By Simon Schama

Published: January 19 2010 22:36

We are about to find out what Barack Obama is really made of. In all likelihood he will wake up on the first anniversary of his young presidency with headlines howling its obituary. With the defeat of Martha Coakley, the Democratic candidate anointed to succeed Edward Kennedy as senator for Massachusetts, by Republican Scott Brown looking probable last night, Mr Obama’s filibuster-proof majority in the Senate will have evaporated. With its demise the healthcare reform on which the president spent the lion’s share of his political capital during his first year will be imperilled, perhaps mortally. All the compromises he was forced to make, some involving precisely the shameless horse trading Candidate Obama swore to eschew; all the bets that his presidency would be seen as one of accomplishment not promise, now look like a busted flush. That this ignominious slap in the face should happen in a state conventionally classified as a temple of liberalism only makes the humbling more shocking. Even if Ms Coakley should squeak through to the Senate, last year’s elated swoon has been replaced by a dyspeptic snarl.

So, is all that is left of those moments a year ago on the Capitol steps – when nothing less than the rebirth of American governance seemed in the offing – just the presidential grandiloquence, to which the word “empty” is now being habitually attached? Have the Democrats displayed, yet again, their unmatched talent for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory?

You heard it here first. The correct answer, counter to the new conventional wisdom, is no. The 44th president is on the mat, but anyone counting him out has not taken his measure. It is just that he may actually need to respond to the unrelenting pressure from zombie conservatism, ravenously flesh-eating and never quite dead, not by turning on more consensual charm, but by taking the gloves off. With his bank levy – “We want our money back,” he said – Mr Obama has belatedly begun to fight. Whether he can trade enough punches with the right before the November mid-term elections remains to be seen, but my hunch is that President Composure is up for a brawl.

In any event, reports of the death of the Obama presidency may turn out to be premature. If the Democrats are starting to panic they need to get over it fast. A Republican opposition committed to nothing more than congressional paralysis during a time of national crisis risks being stigmatised by polemically skilful presidents as the party of obstruction. Ronald Reagan used that tactic against a Democratic Congress to powerful effect. If Mr Obama has what it takes politically – which remains the great question hanging over his White House – he can make Republican crowing its own worst enemy, type-casting the opposition as selfishly unpatriotic. It has happened before. Following a Republican triumph in the mid-terms of 1994, the party over-reached in its campaign against Bill Clinton’s presidency, shutting down the federal government. The result was a decisive re-election for Mr Clinton just a year later. But whichever way the election in Massachusetts goes there can be no doubt that a battle for allegiance will have to be joined if Mr Obama is to recover his freedom of action.

Narratives feed on themselves. The three-act Obama soap opera from innocence through infatuation to disenchantment has unmistakable appeal for echo-chamber journalism. This is the tale of the credulous masses, taken in by the cool guy in the sharp threads who could weave a spell of words – but when it came down to it was a rank amateur in the arts of power. Outside America especially, you can already hear the gleeful chortling. Although, for a brief moment, the election of a black president suggested the US had leaped ahead of Europe in political intelligence, it turned out, after all, to have been a mere fairy-tale.

To which one needs to reply: whatever the state of the Obama presidency now, this story is not over by a long shot. Other administrations that would make their mark on history got off to rocky starts. Abraham Lincoln’s appeal in his first inaugural speech for national reconciliation was contemptuously blown away by Confederate cannon firing on Fort Sumter, and the first year of the war that ensued went badly for the Union. The first round of John F. Kennedy’s administration was most memorable for the Bay of Pigs debacle in Cuba. Mr Clinton’s 1993 ended with his healthcare reform biting congressional dust. The exception was Franklin Roosevelt’s spectacular first year of the New Deal, but FDR enjoyed massive filibuster-proof majorities on Capitol Hill.

In comparably urgent times Mr Obama has yet to make the case for responsible government; his failure of persuasion may cost him dear. If he wants to motivate his own supporters, never mind independent voters, he needs to mark the lines of battle and give the rank and file something to cheer. Black supporters I spoke to during filming for a BBC documentary in his south Chicago home town want him to take it to the foe. “If you’re going to go down,” said the feisty Rev Don Sharp, “at least let them know they’ve been in a fight.” But Mr Obama assumes the support of people like him. It is how he will pull in the voters in Indiana, Ohio and Virginia who a year ago voted Democrat for the first time – when he cannot even hold Massachusetts – that is the nub of the matter.

His current bunch of advisers and his own consensual instincts have counselled moderation and sweet reason. But if defeat in Massachusetts does not provoke a rethink, starting with a few salutary firings, nothing will. Maybe Mr Obama should start the new season by unapologetically beating his presidential chest. For there is nothing in his first year record to make him hang his head. My bet is that should healthcare reform be scuppered by filibuster, the obstruction will come back to bite the Republicans in the autumn election. In any event, the list of first year accomplishments is impressive.

Mr Obama has been a non-stop legislator, signing acts to curb the abusive practices of credit card companies and insure equal pay for equal work by women; reverse the ban on human stem cell research; and stabilise the US auto industry. Then there is the $787bn economic stimulus package, which did exactly what it was supposed to: kickstart a recovery. Unemployment remains unacceptably high, but its growth has slowed. Factory orders are rising and the widening trade gap is evidence of stirring consumer demand. The stock market is high as a kite, but more importantly for the real economy, lending is restarting. None of this may be reason to break out the Bollinger yet, but it has belied the Cassandra prophesy that 2010 would see the economy mired in ever-deeper recession.

His foreign policy to date has yielded only slight dividends, but no disasters either – except at Copenhagen, where the world got a taste of what it might expect from the new Chinese imperium: planetary death. Engagement with Iran proved short-lived but Mr Obama’s openness can only look good beside the brutality of the tyranny in Tehran. In Afghanistan it is too soon to declare a verdict on his troop surge, and the suicide bombings – as in Iraq – ought not to be taken as evidence of failure.

So what on earth is going wrong? Where Mr Obama has fallen short is in the exercise of the talent that those of us who have watched him a long time assumed he had mastery: taking control of the American narrative. The switch from punchy candidate to remote administrator began, exactly a year ago, when he declined to give the crowd lines on which to cheer themselves hoarse. It was as though he was saying “I know you want to holler but you should see my in-tray.” As the year has gone on, this refusal to descend to the tomfoolery of public polemics has become more marked. But it has left a vacuum of passion into which the hard right has roared with infectiously histrionic rage.

Mr Obama’s distaste for getting down and dirty with the demagogues is a fatal misunderstanding of American politics, which seldom moves in the rarefied air of legislative achievement. It feeds instead on sound and fury; it is Mr Obama’s job to make it signify something. If he so chooses, financial regulatory reform is the perfect theatre for him to reclaim the populism he needs if his presidency is to survive in any form worth having. Take it to the bad guys, Barack. Remind the country where it was when Republicans were still in the White House. Otherwise, your government will expire from its own noble fastidiousness.

The writer is an FT contributing editor

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010.