Should Obama Be More Positive?
By Alan Stewart Carl | Related entries in Barack, Economy
This morning on “Good Morning America,†Bill Clinton said he thinks President Obama should assure Americans that we will surmount our economic problems. The gist was that Clinton thinks Obama has been too negative, although the former president did praise Obama for not coming in with a bunch of “happy talk.â€
The attitude a president adopts during a crisis is one of those intangibles of leadership that does not become clear until after the president takes office. Many of us who voted for Obama did so out of a sense that, whatever his deficiencies in experience, he was the better man to handle hard situations. I, for one, expected him to be the kind of president who treats Americans like adults. Bush was full of false reassurances and loved to pat us on our heads and tell us everything was going to be o.k. I hoped Obama would avoid such drivel.
So far, I’ve been pleased with Obama’s attitude. While I disagree with the substance of the stimulus bill and think Obama could have worked harder to ensure a more bipartisan plan, I like that he hasn’t said the bill will magically lift us out of recession and we can all go back to buying flat-screen TVs now. He may have veered a little too much towards alarmism while pushing for Congress to wrap things up, but he didn’t have the deer-in-the-headlights panic that Bush had during the passage of TARP.
I’m not sure how much presidential attitude matters, but I know it counts for something. Obama, I think, has struck the right tone: serious and steady. Whether he has also been wise will be determined once we know the effect of the stimulus package.
This entry was posted on Friday, February 20th, 2009 and is filed under Barack, Economy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
February 20th, 2009 at 11:06 am
I saw some of this interview.I always enjoy hearing what BC has to say, and IMO it invariably seems useful.
I do think that lots of folks try to read more into what he says based on various prejudices, and that’s too bad. People are always saying former Presidents shouldn’t do this or shouldn’t say that, and sometimes they go too far. Much of it boils down to folks interpreting comments that are meant to be explanatory as being too critical. For example, Clinton at one point talked about how he thought that they should have kept the electric car tax credit higher. But his point wasn’t that Obama was wrong on this point or effed it up. His point was that you do what you can with a big bill, and at some point you get what you get. You have to be flexible and make compromises.As Clinton was speaking about this, I was thinking about how important a point it was, and that it was geared towards telling folks not to blame the President for every detail. But I knew that some folks would say that BC was trying to make Obama look bad etc etc.
Obama’s demeanor will evolve as he grows into the job. I agree with Clinton in that one very important job of the President is to to be a source of hope, strength, reassurance, and so on. But it can’t veer too far from reality or folks will reject it as patronizing kindergarten cheerleading.
So far, I think Obama’s demeanor is largely on target. If it has seemed overly sober, well, that makes a lot of sense under the circumstances, right? Everyone’s mileage varies on this stuff. But I for one am not all that interested in following the lead of a smiling moron with a pitcher full of “everything is fine, go to the mall.”
February 20th, 2009 at 9:59 pm
Who cares if Obama doesn’t smile and assure us that everything will be okay? As you said, I’d rather see the president treat us Americans like adults, not fill us up with false platitudes and reassurances that “everything will be okay.” I think that the previous commenter also made a good point that people can’t blame the President for every detail that doesn’t go as planned.