I don’t think I know

Will Pragmatism Defeat Blind Optimism?

As Obama’s transition period comes to an end, we continue to see a lot of talk about the many challenges he will face as President.  The expectations are huge, and everyone is asking–can he really solve the big issues we are facing?  While Obama’s personality, charisma, and rhetoric has (and continues to) inspire us, the inevitable question has always been: “Is it all talk?  Or can he walk the walk?”  Here is Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria talking about Obama’s challenge:

But presidents cannot simply remain charismatic symbols. They are forced to tackle the problems at hand, and their influence then grows— or ebbs—based on how they handle those challenges. However impressive they were as human beings, it was not in being but in doing that George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt built their enormous reputations. Whatever Obama may have thought when he began this journey, at a time when the war in Iraq was foremost in many voters’ minds, whatever his campaign promises, his presidency will be judged on how he handles the economic crisis that now envelops the United States and the world. For Obama to be remembered as a great president, he has to do nothing less than rescue capitalism.

“Nothing less than rescue capitalism.”  Talk about high expectations.  Let’s not anticipate such instantly brilliant achievements.  Despite what some people think, he’s not Jesus.  In fact, Obama has spent much of his transition period trying to reshape some of the unrealistic goals we have set for him.  In the TIME: Person Of The Year interview, Obama answers, in his own words, how we should evaluate his first few years as President:

I think there are a couple of benchmarks we’ve set for ourselves during the course of this campaign. On [domestic] policy, have we helped this economy recover from what is the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression? Have we instituted financial regulations and rules of the road that assure this kind of crisis doesn’t occur again? Have we created jobs that pay well and allow families to support themselves? Have we made significant progress on reducing the cost of health care and expanding coverage? Have we begun what will probably be a decade-long project to shift America to a new energy economy? Have we begun what may be an even longer project of revitalizing our public-school systems so we can compete in the 21st century? That’s on the domestic front.

On foreign policy, have we closed down Guantánamo in a responsible way, put a clear end to torture and restored a balance between the demands of our security and our Constitution? Have we rebuilt alliances around the world effectively? Have I drawn down U.S. troops out of Iraq, and have we strengthened our approach in Afghanistan — not just militarily but also diplomatically and in terms of development? And have we been able to reinvigorate international institutions to deal with transnational threats, like climate change, that we can’t solve on our own?

And outside of specific policy measures, two years from now, I want the American people to be able to say, “Government’s not perfect; there are some things Obama does that get on my nerves. But you know what? I feel like the government’s working for me. I feel like it’s accountable. I feel like it’s transparent. I feel that I am well informed about what government actions are being taken. I feel that this is a President and an Administration that admits when it makes mistakes and adapts itself to new information, that believes in making decisions based on facts and on science as opposed to what is politically expedient.” Those are some of the intangibles that I hope people two years from now can claim.

I think this is an exceptional answer to a tough question.  His speeches may be idealistic and philosophical, but his answer here shows a much more practical side of Obama.  We have to come up with a realistic set of goals for how we can start fixing the many problems we are facing.   Obama loves America for its ability to change, but he is also longtime constitutional scholar who understands that change doesn’t happen over night.  His idealism continues to mingle with a big dose of pragmatism.  This sits in stark contrast to what has turned out to be a blindly optimistic Bush administration.

As Obama attempts to frame a more realistic picture of what he may accomplish in his first few years as President, we can’t help but be reminded of the Bush administration’s tendency to express an illogical brand of optimism toward the nation’s biggest problems.  We saw a lot of this with Iraq.  Bob Woodward (the famous Watergate reporter) covered this brilliantly in his four books on the Bush administration.  In his third book, he states:

There was a vast difference between what the White House and Pentagon knew about the situation in Iraq and what they were saying publicly. But the discrepancy was not surprising. In memos, reports and internal debates, high-level officials of the Bush administration have voiced their concern about the United States’ ability to bring peace and stability to Iraq since early in the occupation.

Even in 2006–when everyone knew that sectarian violence in Iraq was spiraling out of control–the Bush administration was extremely slow to publicly acknowledge that things were going badly.  If you want to know more about what was going on behind the scenes with respect to Iraq, I recommend this episode of FRONTLINE, this movie, and Bob Woodward’s books.  But Iraq is not the only place where we’ve seen a gap between obvious truth and what the Bush administration presented.  Here’s another excerpt from Zakaria’s article where he talks about restoring confidence in the economy:

How to restore confidence? It’s not as easy as it sounds. After all, George W. Bush has pretty consistently projected an air of confidence, one that tends to get people even more worried than they need to be. Perhaps this is because Bush’s calm often seems utterly disconnected from the realities around him; he appears thoroughly unaware of the facts on the ground, whether in Iraq, Louisiana or Afghanistan. Like Bush, Franklin Roosevelt also projected optimism, but he took great pains to recognize and describe the depth of the difficulties the country faced. In his first fireside chat, Roosevelt explained the basics of banking to the American people and then asked for their help in getting the system working again. “It is your problem no less than mine,” he said, enlisting them in the cause at hand.

Zakaria makes a good point:  Optimism is important, but when it doesn’t match the public’s version of reality it can actually make things worse.  When the Bush administration claimed we would be in-and-out of Iraq, greeted as liberators while removing a tyrant and spreading democracy, the nation lost trust in its leaders because most of it didn’t turn out that way.  When we heard Bush, in 2006, speak of Iraq as a “a decisive moment in the story of liberty,” we ignored him because what WE saw was civil war.  When we saw Bush tell Brownie he was doing a “heck of a job” we shut him out because all we saw was mismanagement and lack of leadership.  And, finally, when Bush and Treasury Secretary Paulson confidently assured us that our economy was fundamentally strong–just as it began falling into a recession… well, most of us probably weren’t listening at that point.

Obama has already acted differently.  Perhaps learning from Bush’s mistakes, he has balanced any optimism toward the economy with a realization that “things will probably get worse before they get better.”  Simply acknowledging this gives him much more room to work as a leader.  If the nation accepts and anticipates the fact that the economic crisis will get at least a bit worse, we won’t freak out and lose trust in the government every time something bad happens.

Obama comes to the Oval Office with the radical philosophy that the American public can for the most part handle the truth.  As he said in the interview, two years from now, he wants the American public to say:  ”I feel like the government’s working for me. I feel like it’s accountable. I feel like it’s transparent. I feel that I am well informed about what government actions are being taken. I feel that this is a President and an Administration that admits when it makes mistakes and adapts itself to new information.”

If he really gives it to us like it is, I think he’ll at least do better than 43.

ps: I’ll give out the next IDTIK shirt on friday!  Get commenting!

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