Feb
5
Obama’s Mistakes
Filed Under American Politics
I think he’s made a number of them in his first year and I might turn this into a series of posts, but for now, I want to focus on one mistake from his first year in office that lends itself easily to hindsight.
Do you remember from this blog last year the discussions about Obama’s declared war on Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. Within his first week in office, Obama was warning Republicans that they can’t “listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done”. Rahm Emanuel called Limbaugh “the voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican Party”. And then there was Fox News. The White House Communications Director, Anita Dunn had this to say about Fox in October last year:
“Fox News often operates either as the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican party,” she said. “They take their talking points, put them on the air; take their opposition research, put them on the air. And that’s fine. But let’s not pretend they’re a news network the way CNN is … We’re going to treat them the way we would treat an opponent.”
The war between Fox and the White House became the narrative for a week or so.
The Obama administration made a clear attempt to define conservatism as an extremist force, as exemplified by Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. This of course is a view not unique to the Obama administration. From them to Nancy Pelosi and congressional Democrats, to liberal pundits and gobshites like Olbermann and Matthews and on to the liberal commentators at blogs like this one (we remember the rather one track commentary of Israel, Morgan and Simon around this time), the need to define conservatives as “wingnuts” is an endemic one.
And as events have transpired, it has been shown to be a wasted effort. Clearly, Obama wanted to separate the conservative base from the middling American voter. Define conservatives as extreme, and watch the non-conservative voter distance them-self from conservatism and push them into the welcoming Democratic Party. Well wasn’t that a damp squib? Instead what we’ve seen is Fox become the most trusted news network, the tea-partiers in poll after poll being shown to be more likely to be well thought of than not, moderate Republicans like Scott Brown and Mark Kirk embracing more conservative positions than they would normally and still gaining votes and a base as energised as they’ve been in the last decade.
As a political tactic, it failed miserably, and may well have back-fired. From the first week of his Presidency, the American voter, who had been promised a new era of post-partisanship, was suddenly witnessing a pre-emptive partisan strike. I get the feeling Obama has learnt from this mistake, there is less of the “I won” rhetoric. But there is one thing I am certain of; his party certainly haven’t learnt that lesson and nor has the base.
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5 Responses to “Obama’s Mistakes”
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What happened to Anita Dunn?
Rhoda
She quit.
Have anything to do with going up against Fox?
Rhoda,
But, I believe Obama replaced her with her husband…same difference.
C. Cabbie,
Yes, it backfired badly on Obama. Americans hate to have someone like a president tell them who they can watch on TV…Obama and Rahm Emanuel’s tactics were so blatant, that even the most naive weren’t taken in by them. But, I guess its worked so well with their far-left base, that they thought it would work on the center.
Now I’m hearing that Holder, Geithner and others are going to be thrown under the bus because of how badly this years gone. Interestingly, Emmanuel is now attacking Holder for his bad decision on the New York terrorist trials…even though we all know that was Emmanuel and Obama’s idea in the first place. I predict that after Holder is gone, Obama will boot Emmanuel.
Unfortunately, Obama is running out of people to blame for his terrible decision making…but he always has Bush, at least for a while longer.