O’s surprise flop--Prez reprises failed themes

 

John Podhoretz

On the sixth day of the two conventions, their sole subject finally stood before us and said . . . well, pretty much what he’s been saying with little effect for two years now.

President Obama said it in the 2011 State of the Union. He said it in his “pass this jobs bill now” speech in that September. He said it in Owasatomie, Kan., in December, and again in the State of the Union in 2012.

He said he’s here to save the middle class, and he’s going to use government programs to do it, and we can best understand the nation’s generosity and greatness by making reference to the greatness of the government programs of the past.

Reuters

 

Same old, same old: President Obama last night repeated arguments he’s been making for two years — to absolutely no effect.Meanwhile, Republicans want tax cuts for the rich, and they don’t care about people, and how about those teachers — and of course, there’s that careful clause that Democrats “should remember that not every problem can be remedied with another government program or dictate from Washington.”

 

Not every problem. Just most.

We can argue the merits of the case Obama has been making; indeed, the national discussion has been nothing but an argument on the merits of the Obama presidency and its efforts to change the country.

What I found perplexing about the speech was that Obama chose to return to the same old themes and tropes and motifs — when they have all proved spectacularly ineffective for him.

For the key fact about this supposedly great rhetorician’s speeches over the past couple of years is this: They haven’t helped him one whit.

What do I mean? Just this: He delivers national addresses, and his poll numbers don’t change. He asks the public to put pressure on Congress to do what he wants, and the public doesn’t do it. He tries to frame the discussion in a manner that will help him — and the discussion remains right where it was.

Now, a president’s speeches aren’t merely political acts. They are also important statements of policy and can subtly indicate changes in position that will change the direction of policy. So even if they don’t deliver a pop in Gallup, they have an independent purpose.

But not last night.

Last night he had to give a purely political speech. Its purpose is to help get him reelected. This was the case Barack Obama got to make, uninterrupted and in prime time two months before Election Day, for a second term. Its only purpose is to move the needle, to give him that pop in Gallup.

So why on earth would he resort to material that’s been field-tested for two years and hasn’t done the job for him so far? Why would he dedicate the middle section to a State of the Union laundry list of his supposed accomplishments that seem like relatively small beer?

Three possibilities suggest themselves.

1) He has decided the secret to winning the election is just to do whatever he can to gin up his base, reinforce the ideas of his 2008 victory to draw the same coalition of young people and African-Americans and see if he can get enough of those voters to the polls in 2012 to pull him across the finish line in first place.

2) He understands that engaging the basic realities of the election — the fact that the economy slowed rather than sped up in 2012, that two-thirds of Americans think the country is on the wrong track, that he’s spent trillions of dollars to get us nowhere fast — is a trap from which he could not escape. And so he wisely chooses to reframe the discussion around a definition of optimism in which things are better because of isolated successes rather than the overall condition of the country.

3) It’s what he truly believes, and, after an exhausting four years that haven’t gone as he would have wished, it’s all he has left.

He concluded the speech in an odd fashion, by explaining how the American people give him hope for the future the way he sought to give them hope in 2008. It’s doubtful he’ll feel quite so hopeful if the American people respond to this speech and his campaign going forward the way they responded to its predecessors.

Because if they do, he’s certainly going to lose.
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