Paul Krugman has a great column today in the New York Times summing up what so many of us are feeling about Obama's actions lately.
What we are feeling is both anger and confusion. Anger because Obama is enabling an apocalyptically disastrous Republican agenda a lot more than he has to. And confusion because we can't figure out what he could possibly be thinking. It is nice not to be alone in this but to have America's greatest MSM columnist and economics Nobel laureate directly channel what we are thinking.
The two actions that most highlight Obama's inexplicable behavior of late are:
- the unilateral decision to freeze the pay of federal workers - a meaningless gesture that has a negligible effect on the deficit but is sure to take money out of the economy and out of the hands of the most reliably Democratic base in the country
and
- the obsession with chasing an ever-moving "compromise" with the Republicans on extra tax cuts for the rich
Krugman's column highlights and contrasts both of these.
...he announced a pay freeze for federal workers. This was an announcement that had it all. It was transparently cynical; it was trivial in scale, but misguided in direction; and by making the announcement, Mr. Obama effectively conceded the policy argument to the very people who are seeking — successfully, it seems — to destroy him.
...
Meanwhile, there’s a real deficit issue on the table: whether tax cuts for the wealthy will, as Republicans demand, be extended. Just as a reminder, over the next 75 years the cost of making those tax cuts permanent would be roughly equal to the entire expected financial shortfall of Social Security. Mr. Obama’s pay ploy might, just might, have been justified if he had used the announcement of a freeze as an occasion to take a strong stand against Republican demands — to declare that at a time when deficits are an important issue, tax breaks for the wealthiest aren’t acceptable.
Speaking of needlessly ceding talking points to a ruthless and amoral enemy:
...he apparently intended the pay freeze announcement as a peace gesture to Republicans the day before a bipartisan summit. At that meeting, Mr. Obama, who has faced two years of complete scorched-earth opposition, declared that he had failed to reach out sufficiently to his implacable enemies. He did not, as far as anyone knows, wear a sign on his back saying "Kick me," although he might as well have.
Most of us here don't understand how a president this smart could be making such a strategic miscalculation:
The real question is what Mr. Obama and his inner circle are thinking. Do they really believe, after all this time, that gestures of appeasement to the G.O.P. will elicit a good-faith response?
And then there is the inexplicable political miscalculations that must be going on in the Obama White House:
What’s even more puzzling is the apparent indifference of the Obama team to the effect of such gestures on their supporters. One would have expected a candidate who rode the enthusiasm of activists to an upset victory in the Democratic primary to realize that this enthusiasm was an important asset. Instead, however, Mr. Obama almost seems as if he’s trying, systematically, to disappoint his once-fervent supporters, to convince the people who put him where he is that they made an embarrassing mistake.
Who does Obama think is going to donate, phone bank, and go door-to-door for him in 2012?? Republicans? Right-leaning Independents? Does he really think there are people out there who will say "Gee, I am a fiscally conservative swing voter but since Obama saved .0001% of the federal budget by freezing salaries, I'm going to donate the max and yes we can!" No, of course not. Republicans and others who are politically savvy seem to understand that you need to motivate your base, or else you lose elections. Is Obama really not smart enough to understand this? Are his advisors?
Overall, the tone of Krugman's column is not just disappointment but incredulity, which is exactly what I feel. I can't believe what is happening here. How can Obama and his team be so politically inept?
This is the same person who played the 2008 election like a fiddle, beating the Clinton machine then winning the general election in record numbers. What is going on? How do we go from that to needless extrene alienation of his base and continuing coddling of the monsters who are out to destroy him?
Update: There have been some good suggestions offered for getting into the administration's head as to why they are doing what they are doing. A good one is here. However, to me the most likely explanation is that the administration thinks that the way forward is to "pull a Clinton" ala 1994, and move to the perceived center to politically outflank the Repubs. This makes a lot of sense because the administration has many of the same people left over from those days. However, I believe they are sadly mistaken, because the political, electoral, economic, demographic, and media realities are very different today than they were then. In 2012 it will not be 1996 - we will not be in the midst of greatest economic boom ever, the Republicans will be rabidly enthusiastic because they have their own TV propaganda network, Obama will be hurting for money because he has hurt his base, and there will be no Perot.