President Obama ran for office as Mr. Cool, the unflappable leader who would calmly lead the nation through the economic and political storms ahead. Like Joseph Addison’s famous ‘angel in the whirlwind’ President Obama would be the unmoved mover at the center of American politics and bring his intellectual firepower and his steady temperament to bear on the problems confronting us. Where Bush’s hotheaded enthusiasm failed, Obama’s deliberate and cerebral, post partisan approach would succeed.
Well, today he is getting the chance to demonstrate that cool under fire.
Flying to Copenhagen — a city he does not remember fondly — President Obama is herding cats abroad while Harry Reid herds them at home. In both cases, on global warming and health care, deadlines are approaching, poll numbers are falling, and the cats just won’t stay put.
In both cases the causes may be important but the deadlines are artificial and self imposed. If global warming is going to ruin the planet unless something effective has been done by 2050, it doesn’t really matter all that much if an agreement comes now or a year or two off. On health care, the main provisions of the bill aren’t even going to kick in to action until 2014. Again, a few weeks or even months in passing a law that won’t take effect for four years doesn’t much matter.
The deadlines are not only artificial; creating them is a sign that the organizers of both projects are afraid of failure. Both in the Senate and at Copenhagen the hope is that the pressure of a deadline will force compromise, consensus and ultimately action. So far, deadlines in both projects are slipping. Congress has been missing deadlines since the summer on health care; the organizers at Copenhagen have been moving the goal posts as success remains elusive. At first the deadline was to produce a binding international treaty; then it was going to produce a political declaration that would be the platform for a treaty. Now it’s a deadline to produce a statement of principles that would guide the declaration that would produce the treaty.
This reminds me of what an alcoholic friend once told me about “reaching bottom” as a drinker. “A bottom,” she said, “is when your circumstances deteriorate faster than you can lower your expectations.”
Meanwhile the polling on both health care and global warming is in free fall. A piece for the National Journal by respected analyst Bill Schneider surveys the bleak numbers.Belief that human activity is primarily responsible for global warming is steadily dropping in the United States, and in both the U.S. and China (which account for 40% of global emissions) public opinion is shifting away from the idea that fixing global warming is an urgent priority. A Rasmussen poll reported yesterday that only 34% of Americans believe that human activity rather than long term planetary trends is responsible for global warming. There is more bad news in a Washington Post/ABC news poll released today. While a solid 65% of those asked supported government regulation (at low cost) to reduce carbon output, most thought scientists cannot be trusted on the subject of global warming and only 39% favored U.S. participation in a $10 billion per year fund to help poor countries manage the problem. (In Copenhagen, Hillary Clinton has pledged the U.S. to support a fund ten times that size, $100 billion per year, by 2020.) Other polls show similar trends; it is getting harder every day to build public support around aggressive U.S. action on this matter.
The story is similar on health care. The bills before Congress are falling steadily in popularity and some polls now show that voters prefer inaction to action right now. What seems to be happening is that conservatives are stiffening their opposition and liberals, as the bills have moved to the right, are softening in their support. Without the public option, health care reform amounts essentially to forcing Americans to buy private insurance or face penalties. While low income voters will get help, many voters will be forced to pay insurance companies they don’t trust for health insurance they think they don’t need at prices they don’t think are affordable or fair. Senior citizens meanwhile worry that the subsidies for low income voters will come out of Medicare savings: death panels will cut granny off from her pills.
The cats aren’t staying put in other words. The right hates it more and more; the left loves it less.
Copenhagen is working this way too. Reports in the world press this morning indicate that the emissions targets provisionally agreed in Copenhagen would fail to stop the rise in world temperatures at two degrees Centigrade and instead create a rise of three degrees. Environmentalists already saw the two degree standard as an ugly and dangerous compromise; three degrees (in a best case scenario in which countries actually stick to their targets) is not a good outcome for them.
If Clinton and Obama come home from Copenhagen with an agreement that mandates $100 billion a year for poor countries, significant emissions cuts and still doesn’t keep the temperature rise below two degrees, they will have an agreement that nobody loves and that they almost certainly can’t sell.
Both health care and global warming seem to be driving the administration into corners where it is spending political capital to reach goals nobody wants. Maybe this is the messy and ugly process through which compromise is reached on contentious issues. Maybe it’s the way an administration that has lost its political bearings struggles against forces it can no longer control.
It’s too soon to tell, but for now it looks as if the slide in the administration’s fortunes will continue for a while. Liberals are jumping off the bus (or being thrown under it) and conservatives and moderates aren’t jumping on. Overall these separate but similar policy crashes are probably building a public sense that the administration isn’t politically competent; that in turn will further undermine both confidence and support. This could all change by spring. Larry Summers, let’s hope, is right about the economy, and job growth could start to appear. Things if Afghanistan might look a bit better. With reflection, the compromises on Copenhagen and health care could look a bit better. Obama might once again emerge as the ‘angel in the whirlwind’, the calm and unruffled leader at the center of a mighty storm.
Writing about John Churchill, general of the British forces at the Battle of Blenheim that humbled the pride of Louis XIV, Joseph Addison faced a poetic problem. In the old days, military leaders were heroic warriors. Achilles fought his own battles. By the eighteenth century, generals rarely fought; they won battles by planning and direction rather than valor. How do you put that in a poem?
Addison’s solution was the famous ‘angel in a whirlwind’ simile; it describes the style of leadership President Obama hopes to provide and captures some of what his supporters hoped they would get. Anyway, here is Addison describing Churchill who:
Amidst confusion, horror, and despair,
Examin`d all the dreadful scenes of war:
In peaceful thought the field of death survey`d,
To fainting squadrons sent the timely aid,
Inspir`d repuls`d battalions to engage,
And taught the doubtful battle where to rage.
So when an angel by divine command
With rising tempests shaks a guilty land,
Such as of late o`er pale Britannia past,
Calm and serene he drives the furious blast;
And, pleas`d th` Almighty`s orders to perform,
Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm.
Obama has got the storm all right, whether we look at Copenhagen abroad or health care at home. Let’s hope for all our sakes that as he rides the whirlwind, he will direct the storm.
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