Is Obama too reasonable for his own good?
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Watching President Obama's bipartisan health-care summit, I was reminded of something George Bernard Shaw once said: "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
The Republicans had clearly decided that it was in their best interest to act like the "unreasonable" men in the room--the more intractable, immoderate negotiators. They said the process should "start over from scratch," as if there were enough time remaining before campaign season to repeat the entire ordeal, and they continued to characterize a market-based proposal to reform the private insurance industry as "a government takeover of health care." Obama, meanwhile, sought advantage in seeming "reasonable," making a show of shunning campaign rhetoric and insisting on finding specific areas where "both sides can work together."
"I hope that this isn't political theater, where we're just playing to the cameras and criticizing each other," Obama said at the start of the summit, "but instead are actually trying to solve the problem." Seven hours later, he'd made no discernible progress.
This is the dynamic that largely defined Obama's first year in office. So maybe it's time to ask whether "reasonable" presidential leadership is an inherently flawed proposition. For many Americans the most appealing thing about candidate Obama was his rational cast of mind. After eight impractical, divisive years of George W. Bush, voters welcomed the prospect of a less ideological, more unifying presidency. Reason, the thinking went, would beget results that most people could get behind.
It hasn't really worked out that way. In pushing for his biggest initiatives to date--the stimulus package and health-care reform--Obama has chosen to support what he believes to be the best possible proposal instead of what he believes to be the best imaginable proposal. His economic adviser, Christina Romer, initially recommend a $1.2 trillion stimulus bill, but when his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, said "it would be impossible to move legislation of that size" through Congress, Obama slashed the sticker price to $787 billion. Health care was more of the same. After calling himself "a proponent of a single-payer universal-health-care program"--and later advocating for a public option--the president wound up backing a private-market plan that's nearly identical to the one that GOP leaders such as Bob Dole put forth in 1993.
Obama's first year was hardly a failure. He passed legislation large and small and made far more progress on health-care reform than any of his predecessors had. But the results of his rationalism--a stimulus package that's considered bloated on the right and insufficient on the left; a health-care bill that's stalled in Congress, despite a commanding Democratic majority--have become deeply controversial. His approval rating, meanwhile, rarely cracks 50 percent, and his political capital is largely spent. "Obama won the election by being the rational, professorial type," says Sean Wilentz, the liberal Princeton historian. "It's still unclear, however, that what worked for him as a candidate can work for him as president."
So the question is: would Obama be in better shape politically if he'd been a little less willing to adapt himself to the world, and a little more persistent in trying to adapt the world to himself?
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