I’m conflicted. I want to be healthy, but I also really like fast food. Sometimes I’m good, and I can resists the Arby’s down the street. But sometimes...
How can you tell what someone really really wants? Of course it would all be easier if we had psychic powers or a crystal ball, but sometimes a good substitute is watching what they do. So for instance, if I spent three hours a day on the treadmill, you could guess that I really wanted to be healthy, or maybe thin. Or maybe I just liked running, but how likely is that?**
So what does Obama really want?
You can take Obama at his word – he wants this, he wants that – but his word doesn’t specify degree, which is important when two of the things he wants are in conflict.
- If you take him at his word, he wanted healthcare to pass. Not just because he said so, but because
a) He sacrificed other things he said he wanted – like a public option – in order to get it (leaving aside the question of whether that was a good or necessary strategy)
b) He spent a year of his presidency fighting for it.
c) He virtually exhausted his political capital in order to get it.
If you assume that all these things have value to Obama, then the fact that he sacrificed or spent them to get healthcare passed suggests that he really wanted to pass healthcare.
Whether he wanted to pass healthcare as a means to an end – like making history, or saving his presidency – is irrelevant. I’m not ascribing motives; I’m just saying he really wanted it. Likewise, I’m not specifying what "it" is, aside from a box called healthcare. What’s in the box may or may not have mattered to Obama for different reasons, but I do think it’s fair to say that he really wanted that box to pass, whatever it contained.
- Obama really wants to limit the flow of nuclear material. I think it’s a genuine passion. You remember the big conference he had on the subject, and the way the Villagers scratched their heads, wondering why. Of course the Villagers scratched their heads because they don’t really care about nuclear proliferation, and for the most part, the American people don’t either. They should, of course, but if someone like Obama spends a lot of time and political capital fighting to make the world safe from proliferated nuclear waste, to they get much political credit for it? Not really. But this has been a longtime concern of Obama’s, dating all the way back to his time in the Senate. He fights for it even though he gets no credit either way – either way, progress or not, he expends political capital without the hope of real return. Which means that it’s something that he really wants.
- Obama wants Republicans and Democrats to get along. He really wants it. You saw his hope and faith in this possibility in his "One America" speech during the 2004 Democratic convention. You saw him trying to build bridges with his race speech during the primaries. You see him trying to build a cabinet of Republicans like Gates and Gregg and former Democratic opponents after the election. You see him talk endlessly about it for the past two years, making appeal after appeal and sacrificing things in negotiations that he didn’t really need to sacrifice (in politics too, like the outside money he’s said no to). So what I see now is a lot of people arguing that he’s a bad negotiator. But what if he isn’t a bad negotiator? What if he’s sacrificing things that he wants – like a bigger stimulus package – for things that he wants MORE – like Republicans and Democrats working together to get things done in Washington. In other words, what if we take him at his word – that he really does want to change the political climate in Washington? He talks about it endlessly; what if it’s not just talk? I think it’s real – I think it’s something he really wants and really values.
That said, I don’t agree with him. He may value unity as something intrinsically worthwhile; I do not. People can be united around the idea of feeding the homeless or killing people. Unity in itself has no meaning to me; my question is: united towards what end?
I think Obama sees things differently. I think unity is the important value for him; the direction less so. I think this assumption makes more sense than:
a) Assuming Obama is THAT bad as a negotiator
b) Assuming that Obama really doesn’t want the things he’s sacrificing.
Maybe he wants them – but wants unity more. Bush said he was a uniter, not a divider; I think Obama is the real deal.
**Okay, okay, maybe it’s likely. But you’re talking to an Arby’s lover here.
Crossposted at spartacusx.com.