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Obama Owns the Room
Obama owned the occasion. Even the cynical White House press corps seemed awed, realizing that the president for a change was the smartest person in the room. As if to emphasize their smallness of mind and character, the journalists embarrassed themselves by gotcha questions and even one silly question about steroid use by baseball player Alex Rodriguez. Would Washington journalists at FDR’s first press conference, at the nadir of the Depression, have dared to ask him about Babe Ruth?
Speaking of Rodriguez and Ruth, I have to say that Obama struck out a few times. His claim that there is no pork in the Congressional stimulus package because there are no earmarks is a talking point that invites ridicule and ought to be retired at once. Even worse, he suggested, as he has done before, that he actually believes fiscal conservative propaganda about an imaginary “entitlements crisis.” He made the surreal comment that Republicans ought to face up to the alleged fact that entitlements are a greater danger to the economy than the costs of the stimulus and bailout. Republicans should concede this? What is Obama thinking? It is Republicans who push the misleading “entitlement-reform” meme, as part of their cynical strategy to lump Medicare (the victim of health cost inflation) with Social Security (whose long-term problems are minor), in order to kill Social Security by means-testing it into the status of an unpopular welfare program for the poor only. On the entitlement issue, Obama needs to be deprogrammed by Peter Orszag, his budget director.
Most troubling of all, the president missed a chance to hit a ball out of the park by distinguishing between the $800 billion stimulus plan to “jolt” the economy (in Obama’s phrase) and the $350 billion TARP II program to rescue the banking sector. Obama and the Democrats may have suffered from the confusion of the two programs in the minds of many Americans who think that the $800 billion stimulus package is going to enrich the bankers. This confusion, and not just the adroitness of Republicans in ridiculing particular programs included in the stimulus bill, may account for the fact that Obama’s own popularity is much higher than that of his legislative program. Having failed to do so in his press conference, Obama needs to spend some time in the days and weeks ahead educating the public about the differences between the stimulus and TARP.
But although the new president can improve his game, it is clear that as much as any American politician of our time he has the brains, eloquence and temperament for the job. His masterly performance in his first press conference should dispel any anxiety that he was an appealing candidate but not a competent executive. Obama is back. And so is America.
Michael Lind is Whitehead senior fellow at the New America Foundation.
How Rich People Smoke Pot
Paul Schrodt is a writer living in New York City. He has contributed to New York magazine, Radar, and Esquire.com.
Justice Clinton?
As vice chairman of Public Strategies and president of Maverick Media, Mark McKinnon has helped meet strategic challenges for candidates, corporations and causes, including George W. Bush, John McCain, Governor Ann Richards, Charlie Wilson, Lance Armstrong, and Bono. McKinnon is co-chair of Arts & Labs, a collaboration between technology and creative communities that have embraced today's rich Internet environment to deliver innovative and creative digital products to consumers.
Obama's Midwest Blunder
Michael Lind is the editor of New American Contract at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C., and the author of The American Way of Strategy. He has been a staff writer or senior editor at the New Yorker, Harper’s magazine, the New Republic, and the National Interest.
What He Should Have Said
Michael Lind is the editor of New American Contract at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C., and the author of The American Way of Strategy. He has been a staff writer or senior editor at the New Yorker, Harper’s magazine, the New Republic, and the National Interest.
Stop the Democratic Suicide
Michael Lind is the editor of New American Contract at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C., and the author of The American Way of Strategy. He has been a staff writer or senior editor at the New Yorker, Harper’s magazine, the New Republic, and the National Interest.
perkins
"Articulateness"?
So much for Mark Lind's vocabulariness.
The suckness of it is astoundingness.
mindlessmissy
lol at the above comment ...
la5tr1d31n
Articulate (adjective), articulately (adverb), articulateness (noun). At least, you know, if you believe the dictionary.
sidneyb
i believe in science!!
...and the dictionary.
lefthem
Regardless of what is causing medicare's issues, is it not an entitlement program, and is it not in trouble? why is that dismissed as a republican talking point
Also, I thought he was clear, if not concise, throughout the press conference. How quickly you all have forgotten Bush's bumblings... In comparison Obama is Churchill and Cicero rolled into one.
Konchster
lefthem
I am in your Amen corner. After 8 years of being unable to parse a single sentence, we are faced with listening to a President speaking our language.
bybrandy
And more shockingly he didn't smirk at us once in the hour.
Zorkadork
Pr-esident Obama not only did well on the macro level, he achieved something which I well nigh thought was impossible.
He won over my 85 year-old father.
I know, you don't care about the old boy, he is just another old man with his lifetime's supply of predjudices. But we spoke this morning, and he was telling me how very impressive our new President was in his address to the nation last night.
The reasons do not matter, but I can promise you that if Obama can win over the heart and mind of an old Oklahoman, he is a leader to be respected. My guess is that we are watching unfold, today in real time, a Presidency of a greatness which this country has seen only three times in its history!
MarineLtCol
"His masterly performance in his first press conference should dispel any anxiety that he was an appealing candidate but not a competent executive"
Seriously Lind? Are you completely incapable of detecting any hint of your complete and utter "buy in" to the cult that surrounds Obama? Have your feet not touched earth yet since the election? I watched the press conference and all I got was that he is long-winded, monotonous to watch, and at times somewhat angry.
I certainly didn't finish watching the rather mundane press conference and come away thinking that he is as brilliant as you think he is.
And, for that matter, I wonder if you were one of the people complaining about George Bush and the partisanship of his administration. Just funny, since you now seem to think that bi-partisanship is overrated.
greengirl
I am one of those regular Americans out here and I think he did a wonderful job. I pray things work out.
SpeakEnglish
Obama has shown everyone just how wet behind the ears he is.His head swiveled like a terrier watching a tennis ball and his rhetoric was unpresidential... a castastrophe from which we cannot recover unless the citizenry is taxed, taxed, taxed, and the government allowed to grow, grow, grow?
Cut the payroll taxes and stop government growth. It's simple; we don't need another Roosevelt, we need a Reagan.
sarahvaz
Can someone please write a story on the petulant questions being asked? Journalists have gotten this presidency off to a rocky start and they need to be held accountable by someone. Framing everything in terms of what Obama made of the news cycle in a given week just exacerbates the fact that we no longer allow administrations do think or act in the long term, at least not ostensibly. I had to leave the room after the first two questions they were so inane. One woman asked if Obama thought was risking his credibility by using such dire languange. Get a clue lady.
MTFinch
"Articulateness" might technically be a word, but it is kind of an ironic word. It is also hard to read.
Lind, you are trying too hard. We get it, you are as nervous as the rest of us that he isn't what we thought he was, but now after proving that he could answer some prepared questions he is clearly Thomas Jefferson and FDR combined. Obama is still not acting like the president of a small business much less the United States. I didn't get over his opening statement as quickly as you did from watching him answer a few questions. There is still something wrong here. The jury is still out on whether or not we have another Carter on our hands.
connie47
Another regular American here, college educated, registered Independent. My husband is a Navy fighter pilot, ret., full-time employed, former Republican (Bush years drove him out), now an Independent. We both support our new president, and we're both sick of hearing the same old mindless chants coming from the dug-in right.
Spasticula
Good point. Obama's prepared remarks are always lame (After too much PR teasing, his inaugural address was a dud). But he can think on his feet, and when he answered questions, he wasn't full of crap and didn't resort to verbal padding like his pathetic predecessor.
Thank you.
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