What went wrong? A year ago, he was king of the world. Now President Obama's
approval rating, according to CBS, has dropped to 46 percent -- and his
disapproval rating is the highest ever recorded by Gallup at the beginning
of an (elected) president's second year.
A year ago, he was leader of a liberal ascendancy that would last 40 years
(James Carville). A year ago, conservatism was dead (Sam Tanenhaus). Now the
race to fill Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in bluest of blue Massachusetts is
surprisingly close, with a virtually unknown state senator bursting on the
scene by turning the election into a mini-referendum on Obama and his
agenda, most particularly health care reform.
A year ago, Obama was the most charismatic politician on earth. Today the
thrill is gone, the doubts growing -- even among erstwhile believers.
Liberals try to attribute Obama's political decline to matters of style.
He's too cool, detached, uninvolved. He's not tough, angry or aggressive
enough with opponents. He's contracted out too much of his agenda to
Congress.
These stylistic and tactical complaints may be true, but they miss the major
point: The reason for today's vast discontent, presaged by spontaneous
national Tea Party opposition, is not that Obama is too cool or compliant
but that he's too left.
It's not about style; it's about substance. About which Obama has been
admirably candid. This out-of-nowhere, least-known of presidents dropped the
veil most dramatically in the single most important political event of 2009,
his Feb. 24 first address to Congress. With remarkable political honesty and
courage, Obama unveiled the most radical (in American terms) ideological
agenda since the New Deal: the fundamental restructuring of three pillars of
American society -- health care, education and energy.
Then began the descent -- when, more amazingly still, Obama devoted himself
to turning these statist visions into legislative reality. First energy,
with cap-and-trade, an unprecedented federal intrusion into American
industry and commerce. It got through the House, with its Democratic
majority and Supreme Soviet-style rules. But it will never get out of the
Senate.
Then, the keystone: a health care revolution in which the federal government
will regulate in crushing detail one-sixth of the U.S. economy. By
essentially abolishing medical underwriting (actuarially based risk
assessment) and replacing it with government fiat, Obamacare turns the
health insurance companies into utilities, their every significant move
dictated by government regulators. The public option was a sideshow. As many
on the right have long been arguing, and as the more astute on the left
(such as The New Yorker's James Surowiecki) understand, Obamacare is
government health care by proxy, single-payer through a facade of nominally
"private" insurers.
At first, health care reform was sustained politically by Obama's own
popularity. But then gravity took hold, and Obamacare's profound
unpopularity dragged him down with it. After 29 speeches and a fortune in
squandered political capital, it still will not sell.
The health care drive is the most important reason Obama has sunk to 46
percent. But this reflects something larger. In the end, what matters is not
the persona but the agenda. In a country where politics is fought between
the 40-yard lines, Obama has insisted on pushing hard for the 30. And the
American people -- disorganized and unled but nonetheless agitated and
mobilized -- have put up a stout defense somewhere just left of midfield.
Ideas matter. Legislative proposals matter. Slick campaigns and dazzling
speeches can work for a while, but the magic always wears off.
It's inherently risky for any charismatic politician to legislate. To act is
to choose and to choose is to disappoint the expectations of many who had
poured their hopes into the empty vessel -- of which candidate Obama was the
greatest representative in recent American political history.
Obama did not just act, however. He acted ideologically. To his credit,
Obama didn't just come to Washington to be someone. Like Reagan, he came to
Washington to do something -- to introduce a powerful social democratic
stream into America's deeply and historically individualist polity.
Perhaps Obama thought he'd been sent to the White House to do just that. If
so, he vastly over-read his mandate. His own electoral success -- twinned
with handy victories and large majorities in both houses of Congress -- was
a referendum on his predecessor's governance and the post-Lehman financial
collapse. It was not an endorsement of European-style social democracy.
Hence the resistance. Hence the fall. The system may not always work, but it
does take its revenge.
