Silly Little Country

Not Talkership, Leadership

Peggy Noonan (h/t Paul Wells) captures a little bit of what is striking me as I try to watch Obama's town hall meetings other appearances.

These are the two great issues, the economic crisis and our safety. In the face of them, what strikes one is the weightlessness of the Obama administration, the jumping from issue to issue and venue to venue from day to day. Isaiah Berlin famously suggested a leader is a fox or a hedgehog. The fox knows many things but the hedgehog knows one big thing. In political leadership the hedgehog has certain significant advantages, focus and clarity of vision among them. Most presidents are one or the other. So far Mr. Obama seems neither.

He seems not to know what to say other than his usual spiel on fundamental values and lies about bipartisanship.

My gut feel watching is that he is reeling, unaccustomed to having to make a decision and push an important agenda forward, falling back on what he thinks he does best, selling himself. But, whatever the press may say, he seems terrible to me in town hall meetings - answers either in empty rhetoric, or is just wrong about what he talks about. His weaknesses in understanding of economics and knowledge of history are showing through in exactly the two areas Noonan points at.

Contrast it with the new secretary of homeland security, Janet Napolitano, who, in her first speech and testimony to congress, the same week as Mr. Mueller's remarks, did not mention the word terrorism once. This week in an interview with Der Spiegel, she was pressed: "Does Islamist terrorism suddenly no longer pose a threat to your country?" Her reply: "I presume there is always a threat from terrorism." It's true she didn't use the word terrorism in her speech, but she did refer to "man-caused" disasters. "This is perhaps only a nuance, but it demonstrates that we want to move away from the politics of fear."
Ah. Well this is only a nuance, but her use of language is a man-caused disaster.

And on the economy:

So one wonders why, say, the president does not step in and insist on staffing the top level of his Treasury Department, where besieged Secretary Tim Geithner struggles without deputies through his 15-hour days. Might AIG and the bonus scandals have been stopped or discovered sooner if Treasury had someone to answer the phones? Leadership is needed here. Not talkership, leadership.

My guess is that Obama simply does not understand what the Treasury is trying to do. Moreover, he probably lacks sympathy for the task, as has been evidenced by his total failure of leadership (i.e. he has led in the WRONG direction) on AIG bonuses. Moreover, in this case, he has led only reactively.

Noonan does also offer some fun - I did not know there was a web site featuring a blog written by Obama's teleprompter (TOTUS, as I saw mentioned elsewhere).

It's bummed that it has to work a news conference next week instead of watching "American Idol," it resents being dragged to L.A. in Air Force One's cargo hold "with the more common electronic equipment." It also Twitters: "We are in California! One of the interns gave my panels a quick scrub and I'm ready to prompt for the day." And: "Waiting for my boss's jokes to get loaded for Leno!"

posted by Alan Adamson @ 9:44 AM