The Amateur (9 page)
Authors: Edward Klein
“Obama does little to disguise his disdain for Washington and the conventions of modern politics,” writes the
New York Times
’ Peter Baker, the author of a book on the impeachment of Bill Clinton. “When he emerges from the Oval Office during the day, aides say, he sometimes pauses before the split-screen television in the outer reception area, soaks in the cable chatter, then shakes his head and walks away. ‘He’s still never gotten comfortable here,’ a top White House official told me. He has little patience for what Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser, calls ‘the inevitable theatrics of Washington.’ ... He has yet to fully decide whether he is of Washington or apart from it.”
New York Times
’ Peter Baker, the author of a book on the impeachment of Bill Clinton. “When he emerges from the Oval Office during the day, aides say, he sometimes pauses before the split-screen television in the outer reception area, soaks in the cable chatter, then shakes his head and walks away. ‘He’s still never gotten comfortable here,’ a top White House official told me. He has little patience for what Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser, calls ‘the inevitable theatrics of Washington.’ ... He has yet to fully decide whether he is of Washington or apart from it.”
Obama’s consigliere, Valerie Jarrett, is even blunter about it. She told
New Yorker
editor David Remnick that Obama was “just too talented to do what ordinary people do.”
New Yorker
editor David Remnick that Obama was “just too talented to do what ordinary people do.”
All of this helps explain why Obama bungled last year’s deliberations by the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, otherwise known as the Supercommittee. “A Ronald Reagan or a Bill Clinton would have been much more effectively engaged in twisting arms and, where necessary, dispensing favors,” wrote
The Economist
. Obama’s detachment from the political battle, the British magazine went on to say, “should not have been surprising, given his lamentable failure a year ago to endorse the effective and brave conclusions of the Bowles-Simpson deficit commission that he personally appointed.”
The Economist
. Obama’s detachment from the political battle, the British magazine went on to say, “should not have been surprising, given his lamentable failure a year ago to endorse the effective and brave conclusions of the Bowles-Simpson deficit commission that he personally appointed.”
Obama’s arrogance, his sense of superiority, and his air of haughtiness—but above all, his
amateurism
—are responsible for his record of political fiascos. Two days after his inauguration, he overruled his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, and signed orders saying that the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay would be closed within a year. At the time of the signing, he didn’t have the faintest idea where he would put the terrorists. It turned out that nobody in America wanted terrorists in their backyard, and so nearly four years later most of them are still there in Gitmo.
amateurism
—are responsible for his record of political fiascos. Two days after his inauguration, he overruled his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, and signed orders saying that the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay would be closed within a year. At the time of the signing, he didn’t have the faintest idea where he would put the terrorists. It turned out that nobody in America wanted terrorists in their backyard, and so nearly four years later most of them are still there in Gitmo.
Again against the advice of Rahm Emanuel, Obama supported Attorney General Eric Holder’s harebrained scheme to send Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the September 11 terrorist attacks, to New York City to stand trial in a civilian court not far from the site of the ruins of the World Trade Center. Ultimately, Obama had to abandon the notion of trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as a civilian.
Democratic political strategist James Carville, a native of Louisiana, lambasted Obama for the “political stupidity” of his response to the calamitous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. “The president doesn’t get down here in the middle of this,” Carville said. “ ... I have no idea of why they [the White House] didn’t seize this thing. I have no idea of why their attitude was so hands off here. The president of the United States could’ve come down here, he could’ve been involved with the families of these eleven people [who died in the explosion]. He could’ve demanded a plan in anticipation of this.... It just looks like he’s not involved in this. Man, you got to get down here and take control of this.”
Obama’s view of himself as a superior human being who isn’t bound by the same rules as other politicians has frequently gotten him into hot water. While campaigning for the presidency, he refused to wear a flag pin, as though he agreed with Samuel Johnson’s supercilious remark that “patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” When his missing flag pin became an issue in the campaign, he started wearing one. After he won the White House, his failure to attend church services resurrected old questions about whether he was a Christian. To tamp down the criticism, he started showing up at church services near the White House, making sure there were photographers on hand to record his pious devotions.
But to a remarkable degree, Obama has compounded his amateurism by failing to learn from his mistakes and correct them. Case in point: When the president campaigned for the 2009 stimulus package at the start of his presidency, he promised that large chunks of the money would go to “shovel-ready projects.” Two years after he signed the $800 billion package, a shamefaced Obama acknowledged, “There’s no such thing as shovel-ready projects.” Yet, though the initial “stimulus” was a flop, that didn’t stop Obama from going back to Congress to ask for more money: a budget-busting $450 billion.
Another case in point: In September 2011, Obama decided he wanted to address a joint session of Congress in order to lay out his agenda on job creation. Trouble was, no one in the clueless Obama White House realized that Congress wasn’t in session, and that the president’s choice of date fell on the same evening as a planned Republican presidential debate. The president was forced to accept another date and time, which turned out to be just as embarrassing, because it conflicted with the regular NFL season opener between the Green Bay Packers and the New Orleans Saints.
Obama’s most glaring political error was to make a massive overhaul of the nation’s healthcare system his first priority instead of concentrating, as he should have, on the economy and jobs. “Early on, Emanuel argued for a smaller bill with popular items, such as expanding health coverage for children and young adults, that could win some Republican support,” noted
Washington Post
columnist Dana Milbank. “He opposed the public option as a needless distraction. The president disregarded that strategy and sided with Capitol Hill liberals who hoped to ram a larger, less popular bill through Congress with Democratic votes only. The result was, as the world now knows, disastrous.”
2
Washington Post
columnist Dana Milbank. “He opposed the public option as a needless distraction. The president disregarded that strategy and sided with Capitol Hill liberals who hoped to ram a larger, less popular bill through Congress with Democratic votes only. The result was, as the world now knows, disastrous.”
2
What’s more, even after Obama got his signature healthcare bill passed by Congress, he never found a way to sell it to the American people. It was as if he was more interested in having a signing ceremony than in what he signed.
“To me,” said a former staff director of a major Senate committee, “that signals inexperience, because as president Obama has not managed to get any benefit from the major piece of legislation that he’s passed. It’s almost as though he doesn’t want to talk about it. He’s not out there touting these things because he’s not sure how he really feels about them. From my experience dealing with the White House, I’m not convinced that Obama’s wedded to these programs. Leaving aside the campaign rhetoric—give hope a chance and all that stuff—what will Obama bleed for? What will he go to the mat for? What does this guy believe in his core?”
At the beginning of 2012, just as the limping American economy started to show some signs of movement and Obama’s poll ratings began to stir, he stepped in deep doo-doo again. This time, he announced that all religious-affiliated institutions would be required to pay for insurance that covered birth control, including contraception. As could have been predicted, there was an instant backlash from the hierarchy of the Catholic Church as well as from both conservative- and liberal-leaning Catholics. Even Obama’s true believers found it hard to comprehend the president’s amateurish decision, which stomped on the religious liberty clause of the First Amendment.
Hardball
’s liberal chatterbox, Chris Matthews, called it “frightening,” and
Washington Post
columnist E. J. Dionne, an ardent Obama loyalist, wrote that Obama had “utterly botched” the issue.
Hardball
’s liberal chatterbox, Chris Matthews, called it “frightening,” and
Washington Post
columnist E. J. Dionne, an ardent Obama loyalist, wrote that Obama had “utterly botched” the issue.
That Obama could so completely misread the public mood was nothing new. It recalled the time during the 2008 presidential campaign when he criticized white working-class voters in Pennsylvania and the Midwest for clinging to “guns or religion.” After Hillary Clinton jumped on him for those comments, saying, “The people of faith I know don’t cling to religion because they are materially poor, but because they are spiritually rich,” Obama was forced to apologize and eat crow.
And that’s exactly what happened with his regulation requiring religious-affiliated institutions to provide birth control insurance. In the midst of the firestorm of criticism, he called a press conference and, looking glum and sounding resentful, announced a policy to quiet his critics. Under the new policy, health insurance companies—not religious employers—would pay for contraceptives.
To many conservatives, it was a distinction without a difference. Obama had only made matters worse. “Insurance companies won’t be making donations,” editorialized the
Wall Street Journal
. “Drug makers will still charge for the pill. Doctors will still bill for reproductive treatment. The reality, as with all mandated benefits, is that these costs will be borne eventually via higher premiums. The balloon may be squeezed differently over time, and insurers may amortize the cost differently over time, but eventually prices will find an equilibrium. Notre Dame will still pay for birth control, even if it is nominally carried by a third-party corporation.”
Wall Street Journal
. “Drug makers will still charge for the pill. Doctors will still bill for reproductive treatment. The reality, as with all mandated benefits, is that these costs will be borne eventually via higher premiums. The balloon may be squeezed differently over time, and insurers may amortize the cost differently over time, but eventually prices will find an equilibrium. Notre Dame will still pay for birth control, even if it is nominally carried by a third-party corporation.”
CHAPTER 8
CLARK KENT
With all of Obama’s rhetorical brilliance
and flash, he went into the phone booth as
Superman and came out as Clark Kent.
T
o put all this in perspective, I asked former Secretary of State
o put all this in perspective, I asked former Secretary of State
James Baker, who served as chief of staff in President Reagan’s first administration, how he would rate Obama’s performance.
“The conditions under which Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan came to power are startlingly similar,” said Baker, who is widely regarded as the most effective chief of staff in modern presidential history. “Both inherited a terrible economic situation. But Reagan set about focusing with laser-like intensity on economic issues. [Then Secretary of State] Al Haig wanted to take some action in the Caribbean while we were trying to focus entirely on the economy, and we shut him down. By contrast, Obama didn’t focus on the big problem of the economy. He didn’t even draft his own stimulus package; he subcontracted it out to the Democrats in Congress.
“Immediately after the drubbing Obama took in the 2010 midterm elections,” Baker continued, “I was asked to come to Washington to meet with him. His secretary called my office to set up a time. Then I got a call from [chief of staff] Bill Daley. ‘I understand you’re going to meet with the president,’ Daley told me. ‘Would you stop by and meet with me afterward?’ Then I got another call, this one from [national security adviser] Tom Donilon, who said the same thing as Daley. In the Reagan administration, we would never have scheduled a meeting with the president that the chief of staff and the national security adviser found out about later.
“All this comes from the fact that, before he became president, Obama never had the responsibility for running anything. He’s a policy wonk; he’s very smart, very knowledgeable. But he was a community organizer, and a community organizer doesn’t have the lines of authority that you have when you’re running an organization.”
Obama’s handling of the 2009 fiscal crisis showed an alarming lack of experience and a complete ignorance of how Washington works. For instance, during the presidential race, Obama campaigned against earmarks—the notorious legislative gimmick used by congressmen and senators to allocate funds for favorite projects in their home districts. Yet, when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid sent an omnibus spending bill with $8 billion worth of earmarks to the White House, Obama naïvely believed Pelosi and Reid, who told him that that was the only way he could get his $800 billion stimulus bill passed. Obama signed the omnibus spending bill with all the earmarks intact, signaling that the barons of Capitol Hill could roll the amateurish president.
For a long time, some people—especially those in the liberal mainstream media—thought that Obama would somehow make up for what he lacked in experience with his oratorical skills. Liberals considered Obama to be a great communicator—right up there with such masters as Franklin Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton.
Not anymore.
Most of his recent speeches have fallen flat. Americans have tuned him out. His 2012 State of the Union address was seen by 37.8 million television viewers—down from the 52.3 million people who tuned in to his first address to Congress in 2009. As
Maureen Dowd noted in the
New York Times
: “[Bill] Clinton will often forcefully—and feelingly—frame the argument for Obama policies... in a way that Obama himself, once hailed as a master communicator, can’t seem to muster.”
New York Times
: “[Bill] Clinton will often forcefully—and feelingly—frame the argument for Obama policies... in a way that Obama himself, once hailed as a master communicator, can’t seem to muster.”
Other presidents have entered the White House as amateurs. John F. Kennedy immediately comes to mind. JFK stumbled badly during his first year in office; the Bay of Pigs calamity was only the most notable of his many mistakes. But he grew in the job and was well on his way to becoming an effective chief executive when he was cut down by an assassin’s bullet in Dallas.
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