The Inside Game
Why Obama should stop doing so much TV
In medieval Washington, no one gets a half-hour solo meeting with a president. But as Barack Obama labored to sell his economic plan last week, he gave three senators, none a household name, the royal treatment. "When I got the call, I was pretty amazed," says Susan Collins, a Republican moderate from Maine. "It was just the two of us, no aides … That's unheard of."
After chatting about Oval Office décor, they got down to business. Obama understood her concern: the stimulus bill, as it stood, was too costly and too diffuse. He agreed on some specific cuts and vowed to work for others. So, in the meantime, could he count on her to vote for a minimum of $800 billion? In flinty-eyed Maine, she said, there just were too many doubts about the price tag. "He didn't convince me," Collins told me later.
To aficionados of Beltway ball, the new president's private meetings were revealing: he was elevating relatively junior players, and, perhaps, relying too much on a congressional gang of bipartisan centrists at the risk of alienating his own party. They were one sign, the Beltway types thought, that his "outside" game (campaign-style speechmaking) was still better than his "inside" game (the process of muscling through the crowded paint of institutional power). But late last week, it appeared that they'd underestimated the president. A group of bipartisan senators had reportedly come to terms on a stimulus bill. At about $780 billion, Collins seemed convinced.
Like all new presidents, Obama is learning how to make friends—and how to adjust the microphone of the bully pulpit. For one thing, it's extremely sensitive. When the president suggested, in passing, that Republicans stop listening to Rush Limbaugh, the result was to make the radio talk-show host even more influential in GOP ranks. It also takes time to know when, and how often, to commandeer airtime. Three weeks into his presidency, Obama already seems overexposed in the capital —and that was before a prime-time press conference scheduled for this week. The decision to do back-to-back interviews with TV anchors turned into a noble but almost self-flagellatory exercise as he spent much of the time apologizing for vetting mistakes.
Dealing with Congress is even trickier, even if it's "run" by your own party. He doesn't really know the place—he barely had a cup of coffee before launching his presidential bid—and has had trouble deciding whether to treat the members as equals or as incorrigible children. The former approach (with a little scolding thrown in for good measure) seems to have worked.
New presidents naturally want to correct for their predecessor's weaknesses. It's what they run on. George W. Bush feared and loathed the press; Obama likes to show off his ease in dealing with it. Bush disdained dealing with Congress directly; Obama is sending the opposite message, attending lunches and retreats as if he's one of the guys. Bush refused to apologize or second-guess himself; Obama said "I screwed up"—or words to that effect—on five networks.
The good news for Obama is that his congressional colleagues care about one thing only, winning, and some version of a stimulus package almost surely will be signed into law eventually. The White House has realized that the best use of Obama's time now is firing up voters as he did during the campaign; they, in turn, can demand that members of Congress (private meeting with the president or no) enact his agenda. Obama will hit the road this week to sell his plan. As a basketball player in high school, he was known for a confident outside shot. But it seems that he's got more than one way to score.
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Howard Fineman is Newsweek's Senior Washington Correspondent and Columnist, senior editor and deputy Washington bureau chief. He is the author of "Living Politics," a column that began on MSNBC.COM and Newsweek.com and that now also appears in the print magazine. An award-winning reporter and writer, Fineman also is an analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, appearing regularly on "Countdown with Keith Olbermann," "Hardball with Chris Matthews" and "TODAY." The author of scores of Newsweek cover stories, Fineman's work has appeared as well in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The New Republic. His 2008 national best-selling book, "The Thirteen American Arguments," was released in paperback by Random House in the spring of 2009.
One of the nation's leading political reporters, Fineman has interviewed every major presidential candidate from (then-vice president) George H.W. Bush in 1985 to (then senator) Barack Obama early and often in the 2008 campaign cycle. His current work focuses on the Obama Administration and its top officials, as well as on Congress and politics throughout the country. Although based in Washington, Fineman travels widely in the U.S. and has covered politics and other events in 49 of the 50 states.
Fineman's work has produced many milestones and awards. A cover story in November 2001 featured President George W. Bush's first extensive interview after 9/11. Another cover, "Bush and God," was part of a series of articles that won the 2003 National Magazine Award for General Excellence. His reporting has helped Newsweek win many honors from the Magazine Publishers Association and the American Journalism Review. Other awards include a "Page One" from the Headliners Club of New York, a "Silver Gavel" from the American Bar Association and a "Deadline Club" from the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ). In 2006 he received the Alumni Award from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.
As a reporter and writer, Fineman ranges widely. Besides campaign-year covers, other projects have included: race and politics, the impact of digital technology on society, the influence of Hollywood on politics, the rise of the religious right and of conservative talk radio. He has interviewed business leaders such as George Soros, Bill Gates, Steve Case and Robert Rubin and entertainment figures such as Warren Beatty, Jane Fonda and Jay Leno.
Although now under exclusive television contract to NBC, Fineman over the years has appeared on major public affairs shows, such as Nightline, Face the Nation, Fox News Sunday, Larry King Live, Charlie Rose and the NewsHour. He was a regular panelist on Washington Week in Review on PBS (1983-95) and on CNN's Capital Gang Sunday (1995-98). He worked with Ted Koppel on Nightline specials, and has been a guest on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report."
A native of Pittsburgh, Fineman began his career at The Courier-Journal in Louisville, covering the environment, the coal industry and state politics before joining the newspaper's Washington bureau in 1978. He moved to Newsweek in 1980, was named chief political correspondent in 1984, deputy Washington bureau chief in 1993, senior editor in 1995 and senior Washington correspondent and columnist in 2008.
Fineman holds an A.B., Phi Beta Kappa, from Colgate, an M.S. in journalism from Columbia and a J.D. from the Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville. His legal education included a year as a visiting student at the Georgetown University Law Center. He received Watson and Pultizer Traveling Fellowships for study in Europe, Russia and the Middle East, and has traveled to more than 40 countries, among them China, Vietnam, Japan, Ukraine, Israel, Turkey and the West Bank Palestinian Territories.
Fineman is married to Amy L. Nathan, a senior counsel at the Federal Communications Commission. They live in Washington with their two children, Meredith and Nicholas.
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