© 2010, UrbisMedia
Usually I prefer to keep my comments on “happening” events, or “news” to Carpe Diem. But I will break with that here because I have this sinking sense that things are spinning out of control for President Obama. It is by now evident from me and others of my political stripe that the honeymoon is not only over for the president, but that the thrilling did not match the billing. Mr. O not only has feet of clay, he isn’t all that nimble when he has to hold forth on them (teleprompterless) and, moreover, they seem to be sinking further into quagmires with which his administration has been presented. Many commentators were saying that Mr. Obama did not need another crisis to deal with just when Gen. Stanley McChrystal ran is mouth off (again) to a Rolling Stone reporter. But it does raise the question of whether his choice of general is really is really what this crisis is all about.
The crisis might just be President Obama’s style of exercise of political power. Although the times—the post Bushian world—call for bold leadership (audacious Mr. Obama might say), and many of us agree, it turns out that he president’s cautious, temporizing style is not that of a leader, but of a manager. We consider this style in terms of the three major “quagmires” that Mr. Obama seems to be “managing” but not solving.
The War Quagmire
Managerial mentality is well illustrated by the manner in which the President approached his McChrystal problem. After firing the general, the President quickly re-stated the purpose of the Afghan war in terms that could easily have come from the mouth if his predecessor, Mr. Bush; words to the effect that the war was protecting the American people. Anyone with half a brain knows that is complete crap, and probably counterintuitive to boot, but managerial mentality means you fix the immediate problem (replacing McChrystal) but not the meta-problem. (Actually, Obama should have defenestrated this strutting little peacock long ago, after his first MacArthur-esque antics.) The real problem is the stupidity of fighting a war with the Taliban (Al Qaeda having largely decamped for Pakistan) and thinking that war is an effective approach to nation-building.* Managerial mentality sees the problem as one that that requires finding the right general with the right approach. However, Afghanistan is unlikely to work well with Petraeus’ strategy. We are already bribing one side of the internal struggle between the Karzi government and the Taliban, and the nasty Arabs (AQ), with their internal Sunni-Shiite squabbling appear to have already left for the other side of the mountains.
Obama seems unwilling, or incapable of seeing Afghanistan with fresh eyes. Perhaps the earliest indication that Obama saw the wars in Iraq ad Afghanistan as soluble problems—rather then as the problem—was the retention of Robert gates as Secretary of Defense. Perhaps no better portrayal of where managerial mentality can lead is the role of Alec Guinness in The Bridge on the River Kwai. Obama has bought into the Bush logic of the war, lock, stock and Karzai. The problem with Afghanistan isn’t motor-mouth McChrystal, it is managerial menality of President Obama.
The Health of the Economy Quagmire
Further proof of the President’s managerial mentality is the way in which he related the immensity of health care costs and the economic problems of corporations, pensions and the country in general. Perhaps the most significant political opportunity (albeit a thorny one, even with a congressional majority) since the civil rights legislation of the Johnson administration is heath care. But the President’s ineffectual managerial approach to the issue—his taking the single-payer off the table and not defending the “public option,” the only two sensible policy options—led to a solution that “bribed” the insurance cartel that controls much of American health care to go along with.
Moreover, the conduct of the health care debate damaged the President politically. His insistence on bi-partisanship in the face of the obstructionism of the opposition characterized him as a pleader rather than a leader. Sensing weakness in his resolve the radical right rallied to form the Teabagger resistance to any and all legislation proposed by the administration.
Having backed him down on health care the right wing went right after Obama on deficit spending (suddenly a worry to them after their incredible support of Bush’s record-setting deficit and “off the books” trillion-dollar wars), playing that scare card mainly with the assistance of the Teabag zombies. Yet, what the administration really needs to do is not cut, but spend. This is a Keynesian moment if there ever was one, and getting people back to work and get money circulating through the economy again. Yet the hypocritical deficit hawks are even opposing extensions of unemployment insurance.
The Drill, Baby, Drill Quagmire
Managerial mentality essentially approaches the Gulf oil spill as a problem of, as Malia importuned her daddy, “plug that hole.” Initially, it is of course, the urgency of the problem to do just that. But while calling a moratorium on other drilling in the Gulf, the president, in his Oval Office speech, made no direct and firm statements of policy related to needed changes in energy policy (much of it thanks to those secret meetings between Dick Cheney and oil company execs) and the need for passage of a serious climate bill. The inability, or unwillingeness, to frame things broadly and comprehensively for the American public (and we don’t mean a vague mantra of “change” and “hope” here) is an unfortunate deficit for a man with the rhetorical gifts of Mr. Obama. To call the Gulf spill an “environmental 9-11” and then not seize the historical moment fully, is regrettable.
The Wages of Managerial Mentality
The most disconcerting aspect of managerial mentality is satisficing, or the managing of a problem or need to, and often only to, the extent of relieving its problematic aspects, or meeting the minimal requirements of a need. Cleaning up the BP oil spill, and having it pay reparations and damages, but not addressing offshore deep drilling, the almost total lack of safety and other regulations and, at the same time, comprehensively addressing American dependence on fossil fuels, is the prevailing example of managerial mentality. As we have argued the seriously flawed health care legislation and the playing of musical generals in Iraq and Afghanistan, derive from the same myopic and defeatist policy perspective. If O wants to get involved in nation building there is a project a bit closer to home for him—in fact it is his home. The resources needed for America’s economic recovery are sinking into the sands of the Iraq and Afghanistan at the rate of some $3000 every second.
To his credit, Mr. Obama shut down the unneeded F-22 Raptor program, a plane whose parts were being built in forty-two states. So why not entertain building wind turbines and solar panels and energy-efficient building materials in forty-two states?
In a quagmire you can just keep your head out enough to breath—or you can drain the swamps you are mired in. Managerial mentality will not do that. More than one commentator has remarked that Mr. Obama needs to find an inner FDR, a bold comprehensive structural approach to our problems. He might get away with managing to “get by” by satisficing our problems. But the risk is that they the quagmire might deepen to where a desperate country will grasp any demagogue who can convince them that real change is possible. We’ve done it before.
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© 2010, James A. Clapp (UrbisMedia Ltd. Pub. 7.2.2010)
*Apparently the idea of completely trashing a nation, then helping to rebuild it in a manner that is economically advantageous to the U.S. comes for WWII. Now, Germany and Japan love us, sort of. But the people of Iraq and Afghanistan must be wondering, among other things, why their trashing period is taking twice as long as WWII.