Obama the Arrogant

The President has repeatedly called the Republicans "the Party of 'no'" but he is turning out to be the President of "no compromise". A recent Washington Post piece by Jason Horowitz paints the President as arrogant and unwilling to bend on his historic, far-reaching goals. This should not come as a surprise to anyone. During the campaign, Obama made it clear that he expected to be another transformative president like Reagen and FDR. He made a point of modeling his cabinet on Lincoln's "cabinet of rivals". Horowitz has pointed out that in the reaction to his piece, no one argued with his description of the President.

What does this mean to Obama's presidency? Obama and his inner circle have convinced themselves that the rise of the Democrats in the last two elections means that the country has moved to the left. They ignore the alternate explanation that the voters were disgusted with Bush's wars and Republican corruption and spending.

The President and his advisers are all believers in What's the Matter with Kansas? which advances the thesis that Republicans use edge issues to convince people to vote against their own best interests. This mindset lets them ignore polls since the people do not know what is good for them. This behavior was on display in the health care debate. The White House ignored the results of all major polls which shows a solid majority of the country against the current bill. Instead they pointed to some individual issues that the public supports in principle. Their reasoning is that, once the bill is passed, it will become overwhelmingly popular and will become a monument to the Obama presidency.

This arrogance and single-mindedness is hurting the Democrats. The entire House comes up for election every other year including this year. They worry that the White House's concentration on health care over the economy will give the Republicans a huge advantage.

Obama's arrogance shows up constantly in foreign policy. He takes long-standing allies for granted and has snubbed many of them. The United Kingdom has been our closest ally for a century but he has personally slighted its Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. Just this month, the US reversed its long-standing support of British ownership of the Falkland Islands in favor of hands-off neutrality. At the same time, the White House has counted on Obama's aura of destiny to persuade hostile countries to be more friendly. So far, his efforts have done little more than make us look weak and faithless.

For those opposed to Obama's over-all goals, his arrogance is a blessing. Where Rahm Emanuel has pushed for incremental changes that could pass with bipartisan support, Obama has instead gone for hard-to-pass, major reforms. The White House originally planned a "wave" strategy of building political capitol by passing a wave of bills, each reaching further than the next with the idea that each victory would make the next one easier to achieve. They overestimated their reach and had used all of their political capital by the time they got to health care.

When Obama has made a show of bipartisanship, it has been more of a sham. He seems to expect that the Republicans will abandon their principles if he approaches them directly. This happened when he met with Republicans about the stimulus and again when he met with them over health care. He was willing to talk to them but not to change his legislation. When the Republicans explained their objections to the stimulus he simply told them to stop listening to Rush Limbaugh.

This attitude has hurt Obama. Some Republicans were willing to work with him on closing Guantanamo as long as it did not force terrorists into the criminal court system. Obama ignored this in order to have a show trial for KSM (he then announced that he expects KSM to be found guilty and executed). This became a Republican rallying point and united the Republican opposition to closing Guantanamo.

While Obama's arrogance and tone-deafness may hinder his agenda, it is not good for the country in general to have a chief executive who has crippled himself. Clinton displayed some of the same arrogance in his first two years. After losing Congress, he moderated and managed to secure some successes. George W. Bush lost Congress in 2006 but managed to preserve a working majority by reaching out to moderate Democrats. Unfortunately, Obama has already rejected these models for governing.