Where Did Obama Go Wrong?

We always knew that this would be a tough election year for the Democrats. In 2006 and 2008, anti-Bush sentiment tipped independents to for vote Democrat. In 2008, the economy scared a lot of people and, as the President recently observed, people do nto act rationally when they are scared (or to put it more realistically, they voted against the party in charge when the economy crashed). Finally, the excitement the country felt over having a black candidate at the top of the ticket spilled over to the rest of the ticket. Without Bush in the White House or Obama on the ticket, some seats were bound to swing back to the Republicans. Add in an economy that refuses to recover and things look bad for anyone with a "D" after his name.

But the current anger goes beyond that. Two current columns examine this. Frank Rich feels that Obama did not go far enough in going after Wall Street. There is something to this. The nation's top concern for the last two years has been the economy. The Democrats should have been focused on that. Yes, they passed some sort of financial reform bill. I doubt that the average man on the street even knows that it was passed and I suspect that not even political junkies (or Congressmen) can say what is in it.

Instead, Congress should have been holding hearings on everything that goes on in Wall Street. Rich has seen a recent documentary about the crash. This information should have been on CSPAN instead. People need to know, what worked and what didn't. How many people knew that the system was going to fail and how many were just along for the ride and didn't ask any questions?

Realistically, this was not going to happen. Too many Democrats could be implicated and most of Wall Street's money went to the Democrats the last couple of elections. Congress would end up investigating itself.

On the other hand, Marc Thiessen feels that Obama's big mistake came three days into his administration when the Republicans offered their ideas for a stimulus.

Obama said he would consider the GOP ideas, but told the assembled Republicans that "elections have consequences" and "I won." Backed by the largest congressional majorities in decades, the president was not terribly interested in giving ground to his vanquished adversaries.

The President's advisers predicted that the recession would end during the Summer of 2009 (technically it did) and be followed by a robust recovery (this part didn't happen). Obama probably never considered that the economy would fail to recover. If he had any inkling what was going to happen he would have done whatever it took to sign on as many Republicans as possible. The Democrats would be in much better shape if they had shared responsibility for the stimulus with the Republicans. This is certainly true. President Obama rejected the Republicans. He was not only listening to his economic advisers, he was also listening to political advisers who told him that the Republicans were doomed to be a permanent minority party. He had just won an election by the biggest margin a Democrat had received since LBJ in 1964. He had sizable majorities in both houses. There was no reason to work with the Republicans. Let them work with him or be left on the sidelines.

That made it easy for the Republicans. A concerted White House push can always pick up a few votes from the other side, but only if the President puts some effort into it. Obama did not. After the TARP, the stimulus, and the budget, the public had a deep case of sticker shock. By voting against all of these, the Republicans gained a previously unearned reputation for fiscal restraint. Without that the Tea Party would still have formed but it would be running 3rd party spoilers instead of supporting the Republicans.

So, had Obama actually worked to reduce partisanship he would be in a much stronger position today. A "We're all in this together" approach would be much stronger than his car-in-a-ditch speech.

Obama's final problem was that he effectively outsourced the economy. He never seemed to understand that his presidency is tied to the economy. If it fails then he will be a failed president, no matter what else he passed. Worse, he turned the economy over to people who are heavily implicated in the collapse. The Left continues to be outraged. The right points out that no one on his economic team has any actual experience in private industry.

So, it appears that Obama was doomed almost from the start to make some poor decisions. He never recognized the importance of concentrating on the economy or of dealing with the opposition. He also forgot one of the iron laws of politics - no matter how strong you look now, the other side will eventually be in charge again. His initial mistakes are poised to prove this.