Is Obama Too Stubborn to Change Course?
'Change' not to believe in
Last Updated: 6:19 AM, October 17, 2010
Posted: 1:19 AM, October 17, 2010
Michael Goodwin
When word got out that President Obama told an interviewer he had learned from his mistakes, the grandees of the political class swarmed to the bait. Like primitive mystics "reading" the entrails of a sacrificial animal, they began dissecting his comments to divine whether the president is signaling a course change after the election.
Let me save you time and busted hopes. No, no, no -- he's not going to change. Why mess with perfection?
Obama thinks he did everything right and nothing wrong. And he remains stuck on blaming others, including voters, the media, Republicans, Washington, and impossible-to-please liberals.
In short, nearly halfway through his term, Obama still doesn't get it. He's clueless about his massive failures, which means, if he's given the chance, we can expect more of them.
The interview with The New York Times Magazine for today's issue is nonetheless enlightening. Most important, it shows that Obama's public display of confidence to the point of arrogance isn't an act. He really believes his own b.s.
In his eyes, his only mistakes -- he calls them "tactical lessons" -- were limited to not paying enough attention to politics and "marketing and p.r. and public opinion."
One result is that he allowed himself to be pigeonholed as "the same old tax-and-spend liberal Democrat."
This is laughably preposterous for a president whose rank partisanship is already legendary and whose public eloquence is his trump card, one that has diminishing returns precisely because he overplays it.
As for tax-and-spend, his record is his record, and it is off-the-scale frightening.
Obama's self-flattery leads Times writer Peter Baker to wryly conclude, "The first refuge of any politician in trouble is that it's a communication problem, not a policy problem."
Shrinking violets don't make it to the Oval Office, of course, but Obama sees even his failures as evidence of his virtue. "We probably spent much more time trying to get the policy right than trying to get the politics right," he told Baker. "There is probably a perverse pride in my administration -- and I take responsibility for this; this was blowing from the top -- that we were going to do the right thing, even if short-term it was unpopular."
The danger to democracy inherent in that warped view is obvious. The more the public objects to his policies, the more convinced he is that he's right. All issues are reduced to propaganda struggles.
It's a Catch-22 for voters and a self-protection racket for him. He is constantly aware, as all presidents are, of what is said and written about him. But he is incredibly thin-skinned about criticism while immune to the substantive message.
As one Democrat who knows him well told me, Obama is supremely stubborn "with his own view of the world." Whether it's the Mideast, the Ground Zero mosque, health care or the economy, he only sees what he wants to see.
He is an introvert, and is insulated even from his aides. One tells Baker that some insiders consider him "opaque" and a "closed book" who is comfortable only with his Chicago team.
"He can rouse a stadium of 80,000 people, but that audience is an impersonal monolith; smaller group settings can be harder for him," Baker writes.
He describes a bunker mindset, saying many in the administration are "shell shocked" at public fury and have concluded "the best days of the Obama presidency are behind them."
That obviously depends on how you define "best." Most Americans look back on the last two years as a nightmare, with the nation diminished abroad and at home.
The turnaround begins in 16 days.
Remedial reading
Washington is opening a can of phony outrage and charging fraud because banking bureaucrats didn't read every word in foreclo sure documents. If that stan dard applied to Congress, every law would be declared invalid.
Waiting for 'Super Mike'
He didn't put on tights and a cape, but Mayor Bloomberg was inspired by the "Waiting for 'Superman' " film to pledge new school reforms. If he is serious, there is much he can do without seeking union approval.
At least two big pieces of low-hanging fruit are his for the taking. The city has the power to raise some tenure standards and it could save tens of millions by changing or eliminating wasteful bonuses thrown out of whack by inflated exam results.
As teachers union boss Michael Mulgrew concedes, city educrats always could deny tenure "for any reason." Still, upwards of 99 percent of those eligible got what Bloomy calls "jobs for life" because of a rubber-stamp mentality by principals and administrators.
It fell to 89 percent last year, and the mayor is demanding his Department of Education push it down further. "Only teachers who help students and schools move ahead significantly for at least two consecutive years will earn tenure," Bloomberg said last month.
That amounts to a new standard -- if officials can turn his language into a yardstick for 1,700 schools. Definitions of progress are also a moving target because the state is making exams more rigorous.
The first round landed like a bombshell in July. Only 54 percent of third- through eighth-graders passed math tests, a decline of 28 points from last year's 82 percent. Reading scores dropped 27 points, from 69 percent to 42 percent.
The changes wiped out most gains of the previous four years and caused 750 schools to lose at least one grade on their report cards. Only 22 improved.
Yet one thing that hasn't changed is a squishy version of merit pay that grants principals and teachers large bonuses based on school-wide test scores.
About $120 million has been awarded over three years, some of it driven by inflated test scores. The bonuses are also "pensionable" and drive up city retiree costs.
Fortunately, the program is a "pilot" in the teachers contract that expired a year ago and City Hall can kill the bonuses without union approval.
That's not likely, though the city says the program "is under review" given the lower test scores and school grades.
Pulling the plug on it, at least for this year, would serve two purposes. It would save dough and show the entire system the mayor is serious about accountability based on student performance.
That's what "Superman" would do.
CHRIS' HEALTHY NOTION
Now that she knows how it feels to stand up for small businesses, City Council Speaker Chris Quinn might want to go for an encore. She bucked the far left by squashing a bill to give workers paid sick days, correctly noting that raising costs for employers is a bad idea these days.
There is much more to do. Quinn could start by hacking away on the onerous red tape and rigid enforcement of petty rules that penalize struggling mom-and-pop stores. May visions of new jobs and neighborhood improvement fill her head as she eliminates the barriers to opportunity.
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