Like many other people I thought President Obama’s Oval Office address fell short because it lacked specificity, substance, and even vision. It looked like the sole purpose of the speech was simply to present the president as engaged and doing something–anything–about the BP oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico.
That reaction is understandable–I think that Obama has taken a lot of unfair and even silly criticism regarding this incident. I’m sure that he’s been quite engaged behind the scenes and that doesn’t always translate into the evening news. But if you are going to have an address to the nation at this stage–weeks into the disaster–you really need to demonstrate that you have a handle on the situation by discussing concrete steps you are taking to keep the oil off the coastline.
I didn’t hear that. Or anything memorable, really.
Dan Froomkin, on the problem with the White House’s approach:
How unmoored from reality are Obama and his top advisers to think that some pretty words with so little substance could accomplish so much? It makes me wonder: Was that ultimately the lesson they took from the 2008 campaign — rather than that a nation was hungering for, you know, actual change?
And how much power do they invest in the trappings of the presidency, such that they thought the Oval Office setting would make his feeble call to action so commanding that it would suddenly, benevolently redirect the public’s visceral outrage over the oil spewing from the sea floor, the perfidy of BP, and the sluggishness of the government response?
I don’t blame the speechwriter. I blame Obama, or Rahm Emanuel, or David Axelrod, or whoever it was who ultimately decided that words, rather than action, were the best way to change the perception that the government isn’t doing enough in the Gulf.
The piece asks a number of questions Obama’s speech should have answered. [Incidentally, why the Washington Post ever let Froomkin go is an case study in how that outlet has gone downhill].
Froomkin concludes with a broader political point that the speech illustrates:
The extraordinary barrage of vitriol and obstruction with which Republicans and the right-wing media have consistently responded to Obama, pretty much no matter what he says, has become a fact of life in Washington. So one of the biggest mysteries of Obama’s still-young presidency is: Why doesn’t he find that liberating?
If you’re going to get savaged by your opponents, no matter what, why talk in half-measures and generalities that make even your supporters cringe?
It’s also smart politics. One of the countless lessons of the Bush era is that the American people, for better or for worse, respond very positively to a leader who acts with conviction (unfortunately, that is the case pretty much regardless of what that conviction may be).
By contrast, Obama’s ambivalent mush is getting ripped apart by both the right and the left this morning. Being attacked from all sides is, unfortunately, some people’s notion of good political journalism, but it’s nobody’s idea of effective political leadership.
Correct. President Obama sometimes does a rhetorical dance in an effort not to say something which will upset someone. But some people make it their business being upset. In his futile attempt to placate them, he sometimes comes across as being ambiguous or indecisive. And when unemployment is high, or people need health insurance, or oil is leaking into the Gulf, that’s not what concerned citizens want to see.
On her show tonight Rachel Maddow offered a fake presidential address. I don’t agree with all of her policy recommendations, but it clearly illustrates the direct call to action our president needs to make.