Obama Must Learn from Clinton

As Yogi Berra would say, is this political déjà vu all over again?  If so, then despite their recent major setbacks, all is not lost for the Democrats so long as they, or more accurately Barack Obama, learn from their mistakes and revisit their recent history.  And thus Republicans should be wary of over-confidence.  We too have seen this movie before, and are well advised to remember our own past as well so that we do not repeat it.

Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts and the (anticipated) gains in the 2010 midterms for the GOP have been likened to the 1994 elections following Bill Clinton’s first two years in which the Republicans under the skillful guidance of Newt Gingrich swept control of both houses.  In the aftermath, Clinton dusted himself off and wisely took the advice of his political guru Dick Morris by lurching hard to the center.  He brilliantly embraced several traditionally Republican issues and made them his own.  The culmination of his comeback was the 1995 year-end budget standoff with GOP leaders which resulted in a partial government shutdown for which the majority of Americans, right or wrong, blamed Congress.  Clinton’s about face was so calculated and his usurpation of GOP issues so complete that he’d evolved in a few short years from advancing Hillarycare to proposing to “end welfare as we know it.”  In his 1996 State of the Union address he went so far as to offer that “the era of big government is over.” The GOP was left with little to work with and became mired in defending its role in the shutdown. Bill Clinton handily defeated Bob Dole in 1996.

If the Democrats are smart, which remains to be seen given their continued obtuseness, they will take a page from Dick Morris’ winning formula for Clinton’s resurgence and drag Obama kicking and screaming to the center to focus on the issues that most matter to the public.  Forget healthcare for now.  Bury cap and trade.  Toss KSM and his minions back into a military cell where they belong.  Get on with the business of implementing policies that will provide for sound and lasting economic growth, create jobs, prosecute with vigor our wars abroad and provide security at home.  Obama’s up-coming State of the Union speech will tell how much the lessons of this past series of state elections have been taken to heart by his advisors. If Obama dusts off the 1994 playbook, we may be in for more than we bargained for in the coming elections.

With that said, Republicans may not have much to worry about as there are a few striking differences between 1994 and 2010.  And they go to the psychological and ideological make-up of the two presidents themselves.  Bill Clinton was a democratic governor who, despite his liberal leanings, had to govern in a conservative southern state.  Unlike Obama, who came to the White House with zero executive experience and was thus never compelled to learn the art of compromise or perish, Clinton was politically agile and quite attuned to the subtle changes in the winds of public opinion.  And he knew how to position himself so that wind was always at his back.  Clinton understood what Ben Franklin, another astute political observer, realized two centuries earlier: “Politics is the art of the possible.”  This was a mantra that he brought with him to the White House and after his first year of leftist overreach he relearned very quickly.  Thus could Clinton with little sense of self-betrayal move from trying to push for gays in the military and turn healthcare over to Washington to cutting taxes, reducing regulations, and implementing welfare reforms that the GOP thought belonged solely to them as winning issues.

Obama, however, is not Bill Clinton.  He has never really been in the company of different-minded politicos.  From his travels abroad as a youth, to his time in the ivory towers of academia, his role as a community organizer and positions in the overwhelmingly Democratic Chicago machine, to his associations with far-left zealots from Bill Ayers to Reverend Wright,  Obama has only known the left side of the world.   He may be a master politician when it comes to campaigning.  But does Obama have the political dexterity to govern?  Can he, in fact, force himself to swallow the indoctrination of a lifetime and embrace more centrist (even slightly to the right) issues as his own when necessary to rebuild his shattered presidency and deny the GOP talking points in November?  This remains to be seen.  I have seen little evidence that he is even capable of appreciating, let alone adopting in the form or policy, another point of view beyond his own.  And why should he possess such a skill?  He has never had to before. After all, when you have been told your entire life that you are the smartest kid in the room, it is difficult to take differing viewpoints to heart.  Rather you will just stubbornly continue to pound home your own message until others see the light.

Will Obama learn the same lessons that Clinton did and resurrect his presidency?  Will he be a two-termer pragmatist like Bill, or a failed one-termer ideologue like Jimmy Carter?  So far the signs point to the latter.   Obama recently proposed that his read on the Massachusetts debacle was that: “People are angry.  They’re frustrated.” (So far so good) “Not just because of what’s happened in the last year, or two years, but what’s happened over the last eight years.”  In short: the Mass. election was as much referendum on George W. Bush as him.  Really?   Ah yes, what better way to stick it to the Bush people than vote a Republican into Ted Kennedy’s old seat in the most solidly Democratic state in the country.  This shows a level of denial and disconnect with the voters that only the truly arrogant could possess.  Can you imagine Bill Clinton offering up such a preposterous thesis that the 1994 election was as much a repudiation of George H.W. Bush as his own policies?  And therein lies the difference and why, for the Democrats, Obama may be their Nero.   Still, we must stay vigilant and keep the issues that have ousted Democrats from positions of prominence in New Jersey, Virginia and now Massachusetts as our own.  2009 may be a repeat of 1994.   It is now our duty for the good of the country to not allow 2010 to become our 1996.  Let Obama keep his hubris.  We must stay focused on what got us so far in such a short period of time.  And build upon that.