President Obama is a nice, moral family man. Too bad he has to deal with wild-eyed ideologues in the congressional GOP.
That's the sentiment of Eleanor Clift's December 10 Newsweek.com piece, "Filling In the Blanks," which examines where the president stands in the public's perception at the midway through his term in office.
As is standard operating procedure for Clift, Republicans and conservatives are cast in a negative light while Obama is humanized and dealt with very sympathetically. Here's how Clift opened her piece (emphases mine):
Republicans would apparently sooner walk over broken glass than yield on tax cuts for the rich. President Obama lacks that degree of ideological fervor, which is why he was elected. He’s not a fighter; he’s a conciliator. The Harvard Law Review, where he expertly resolved petty turf and academic battles, didn’t prepare him for the intractable nature of today’s GOP. In the battle over the Bush-era tax cuts, he folded earlier than he should have, but at the end of the day, he did the right thing in accepting the extension in exchange for a package that puts more money into the economy and helps the middle class.
Of course, congressional Republicans are fighting to extend the expiring Bush tax cuts for all Americans, regardless of income bracket, not to enact fresh tax cuts for the "rich," but why let accuracy get in the way of good melodrama?
Clift continues the inaccuracies in her second paragraph:
You could say we’re all Keynesians now, with Republicans cheering government spending as long as it’s in the form of tax cuts...
That's right, to Clift, a tax cut is government spending, which presumes the money is the government's, and it's just letting you do its spending for it.
Clift isn't one of those liberals hoping to scuttle the deal, perhaps because accepting it gives her a fresh opportunity to fawn over Obama while castigating Republicans and lamenting a cable news climate that is hostile to or at least dubious of Obama:
If Obama had stared down the Republicans and let all the tax cuts expire rather than given the GOP what they wanted, that would inflict real financial pain along with a cable-news uproar over how he can’t govern. The president probably got the best deal available to him given the emboldened GOP, and it’s a first step toward recapturing the post-partisan, nonideological persona that he campaigned on. Republicans won big in the midterms, but they were the beneficiaries of a primal scream of disgust with politics as usual, and they shouldn’t mistake that as a mandate for their conservative agenda.
Two paragraphs later, Obama turned to Democratic pollster Peter Hart to add to her gauzy treatment of Obama:
Unlike Bill Clinton, who is a survivor, Obama is an adapter, says Democratic pollster Peter Hart. “If Clinton were on the Titanic, he’d be in lifeboat No. 1,” says Hart, recalling how Clinton, who grew up with an alcoholic stepfather, did whatever it took to survive politically, from bringing in Dick Morris on the sly without telling his longtime aides to lying about sex. Growing up, Obama had to adapt to living in different places with his mother and with his grandparents, and also to his mixed-race heritage. This week he adapted to the new political reality on Capitol Hill. No muss, no fuss, that’s what he does.
[...]
Voters see Obama as a solid family man, and it’s a point of connection that he sorely needs. Two years into his presidency, the public is having a hard time coming to grips with him, argues Hart. They are taking his measure and trying to figure out who he is, and where to place him on the compendium of presidents. They like him, they’re rooting for him, and they want him to be the JFK for the 21st century. But his presidency has been too choppy and lacking in theatrics for voters to get a good grasp on what Obama is all about.
[...]
[H]e’s got to fill in the rest of the blanks about who he is and what he stands for, and the next two years should give him ample opportunity.
To Clift, Obama's the victim of circumstance and of his supposedly low-drama approach to life in general and the presidency in particular. Neither his political philosophy nor his competence at governing are called to question or even considered questionable, while the political philosophy and policy programs of Republicans are considered exactly the opposite.
