The Whirlwind of Obama's Ambiguity

But Rorschach tests were meant to measure a negative condition. And after nearly one year in office the Rorschach politician is, as president, facing the whirlwind of his ambiguity.

We still don't know this president's core. His guiding maxims are elusive. He has refused to draw principled redlines on the big fights or invest himself deeply in those fights. We have yet to see the grit in the man.

As liberal New York Rep. Anthony Weiner put it to Politico, Obama failed to express "at the outset" his "values" on some of the "important issues" of the times, like health care. Consequentially, "most people in the country don't know what you want and don't feel they should rally to your side."

Candidate Obama did not need to define those values. He won the presidency as the disciplined surfer on a wave of discontent. But that wave has shifted against him. And without a clear sense of Obama's core principles, he is nearly rudderless to push on against the tide.

The enigmatic politician was once a magnet for nebulous emotions like "change" and "unity." Obama is now a president complicated by competing senses of "disappointment" and "division." Obama has struggled to consummate the very themes that rocketed him from a state legislator to president in four years. And that failure has shifted many voters to the polar view. It's often this way with unfulfilled expectations. So goes the modern political sausage grinder. But Obama's team insisted he was different. He was "change you can believe in."

Leaders from almost every bloc of Obama's base--black, gay, labor, Hispanic and liberal constituencies--now increasingly accuse Obama of failing to fully champion the change they most want: from gay rights to immigration reform to Obama's refusal to fight for a more progressive health care bill.

Obama began 2009 hoping to emulate the giants of reform. "Not since Lyndon B. Johnson and Franklin D. Roosevelt has a president moved to expand the role of government so much on so many fronts," led one February Los Angeles Times article.

But Obama is without the big first-year legislative feats of LBJ (Civil Rights Act) and FDR (financial/New Deal reforms). Meanwhile, the big health care legislation crawls exhaustively nearer to law -- ailing, piecemeal and flawed, struggling to be worthy and hold 60-vote proof.

Rank-and-file liberals have stuck with Obama. But disillusion is visible among activist leaders like Howard Dean, who called the bill not "real reform." Andrew Stern, Service Employees International Union president, wrote his membership in December that Obama "must fight for the reform." Stern's implication, Obama thus far has not.

Obama's political opposition has also shifted. One year ago, Republicans were off balance. House Minority Leader John Boehner began 2009 warning Republicans to hold their tongue. By autumn, Boehner was accusing Obama of "subverting the constitution." Boehner once affirmed Obama's bipartisanship. He now, like his party, rails against Obama's divisiveness. A slim majority of conservatives approved of Obama in his first week; only about a quarter do today.

So the inkblot remains formless. The longer this is the case, the more difficult it will be to reconcile opposing views. Where liberal leaders saw hope, some convey a degree of disillusion. Where conservatives once spoke of Obama in quasi-bipartisan tones, they mostly today see their political bête noire.

Themes most important to independents have been particularly tarnished. Obama's inauguration address spoke of the promise to move beyond the ideological "worn out dogmas" that have "strangled our politics." The words matched his 2008 image. Now many independents believe Obama is stuck in old dogmas. It's the core reason independents approval of Obama fell below 50 percent as early as summer.

Liberal leaders want the progressive president who will spend big. Independents sweat the return of the big spending liberal. No bloc sees the man they once saw. Cue the adage: try to please everyone, please no one.

Then there is the economy. The general rule of presidential politics is that economy matters most when it really matters (as during recessions). That means that if this president is akin to a Rorschach test, he is especially vulnerable to these hard times.

Yet Obama's 2008 image is not lost, only sullied. The Pew Research Center found last month that 53 percent of adults still believe Obama has a "new approach" to Washington politics. But two-thirds believed in that "new approach" last February. Importantly, independents belief has fallen from 62 to 48 percent over that period.

The American public is roughly split on Obama's accomplishments, according to a December CNN poll. Half believe he has "fallen short" of their expectations and half believe he has "met" or "exceeded" expectations.

Perhaps more importantly, for the professed bridge builder, a December Wall Street Journal poll found that only 12 percent view 2009 as a period of partisan "unity." One year earlier, 52 percent said they expected party "unity" in the coming year.

The American mind cannot escape the gap between expectations and reality. And because of Obama's Rorschach persona, neither has he.