Northbound

Thomas L. Friedman, in the New York Times today:

More and more lately, I find people asking me: What do you think President Obama really believes about this or that issue? I find that odd. How is it that a president who has taken on so many big issues, with very specific policies — and has even been awarded a Nobel Prize for all the hopes he has kindled — still has so many people asking what he really believes?

Well, it’s not that difficult to understand.  A big portion of what Obama says is (everyone recognizes this) fluffy rhetoric or windbag puffery.  Part of what he says is soft-soap, stuff he thinks his audience wants to hear – the line about health care reform not adding a dime to the deficit, for example.  (Anyone who ever heard Bob Dole trying to talk like a conservative is familiar with this.)  And part of what he says, of course, is what he wants to do and how he wants to do it.  But it’s difficult – certainly Friedman struggles with this – to pull out what you would call a consistent philosophy.  (This is why some liberals think Obama is a squish and why some conservatives think he’s a neo-Bolshevik.)

I don’t think that President Obama has a communications problem, per se. He has given many speeches and interviews broadly explaining his policies and justifying their necessity. Rather, he has a “narrative” problem.

Obama has more of a “content” problem than a “narrative” problem, if you ask me.  (What Friedman is trying to do is present the old “framing” argument – liberal ideas are better than conservative ideas but less well presented; if they were presented better, more people might agree with them.)

He has not tied all his programs into a single narrative that shows the links between his health care, banking, economic, climate, energy, education and foreign policies.

This is untrue.  Obama has done this, but the narrative is “it’s all George W. Bush’s fault, you can’t blame me.”  Having said that, I would like to hear how Obama’s banking policy (what do you mean, you’re spending bailout money on staff bonuses?) with his Iran policy (can I get you anything, Revered Mullah?  Coffee?  A nice muffin?).  But that’s me.

Such a narrative would enable each issue and each constituency to reinforce the other and evoke the kind of popular excitement that got him elected.

It would?  How?  I don’t see anything what will bring back that level of popularity, short of Obama doing something awesome like rescuing a kitten or capturing bin Laden or developing an effective spam filter.

Without it, though, the president’s eloquence, his unique ability to inspire people to get out of their seats and work for him, has been muted or lost in a thicket of technocratic details. His daring but discrete policies are starting to feel like a work plan that we have to slog through, and endlessly compromise over, just to finish for finishing’s sake — not because they are all building blocks of a great national project.

Keep in mind here, what Friedman (a self-confessed neo-authoritarian) is basically complaining about here is the democratic process itself.  What he is basically saying here is that if Obama were to tie health care (which is what’s bogged down into the thicket) into some big “national greatness” narrative, suddenly the scales would fall from the eyes of the Capitol Hill dealmakers.  Oh!  My God!  This health care bill is…. a building block of a great national project!  Of course, I will drop my opposition to it!  Let us pass this far-reaching vision into law immediately!  What was I thinking, calling for a trigger before the public option could be implemented?  Let’s get this sucker into conference committee and come out tomorrow with a Canadian-style system, because such a thing is necessary for the Great National Project to move forward.  Yeah, right, as if.

And let’s not forget – the slogging and endless compromise is due, largely, to Democratic opposition to the more extreme elements of the various Congressional plans.  And let’s also not forget that Obama has offered no plans – zero, none, nada – to Congress as it works to put this, the most important building block in the liberal Ziggurat of Awesomeness, in place.  (And you show me one “daring” Obama policy.  One.)

What is that project? What is that narrative? Quite simply it is nation-building at home. It is nation-building in America.

This is ludicrous.  This is a base of sweet, creamy idiocy topped off with a dark, thick topping of stupidity, covered with a white, fluffy layer of dumb, with a round, red candied ball of ridiculousness on top.  America isn’t Germany 1946 or Somalia 1993 or Afghanistan 2002 or Haiti whenever.  It’s America, and the idea that America needs the kind of nation-building that destroyed or badly-damaged states have needed from time to time is simply too thick-headed for words.  (If Friedman were talking about Detroit or New Orleans or the St. Louis Rams, he might – might – have a point, but the woes of individual cities are not the stuff of nation-building.)

I’ve always believed that Mr. Obama was elected because a majority of Americans fear that we’re becoming a declining great power.

Mr. Obama was elected because of superior GOTV, a unified party behind him, a deeply unpopular incumbent, a flailing McCain/Palin campaign, and a financial crisis of historic proportions, not because people agree with Tom Friedman.

Everything from our schools to our energy and transportation systems are falling apart and in need of reinvention and reinvigoration.

Really?  Is this so?

• Schools:  If schools aren’t better than what they were during the “Why Johnny Can’t Read” 70′s, despite billions of dollars pumped into them, despite every technological advance there is, despite serious upgrades in teacher pay, I don’t know what sort of reinvention or reintegration you could do.
• Energy:  I grew up in the oil crisis.  Tell me energy isn’t in better shape now than it was then.  Tell me.
• Transportation:  You want to tell me how much money we’ve put into repairing roads and bridges and all that over the years?  Where did all that money go?  And what, specifically, is needed to “reinvent” transportation?  More light rail?  The Segway?

And what people want most from Washington today is nation-building at home.

What people want most from Washington is a big chunk of bailout money that they don’t have to pay back.  Tell me I’m wrong.

Many people, including conservatives, voted for Barack Obama because in their hearts they felt he could pull us all together for that project better than any other candidate. Many are what I’d call “Warren Buffett centrists.” They are not billionaires, but they are people who believe in Mr. Buffett’s saying that whatever he achieved in life was due primarily to the fact that he was born in this country — America — at this time, with all of its advantages and opportunities.

I believe that. And I believe that without a strong America — which, at its best, can deliver more goods and goodness to its own citizens and to the world than any other nation — our kids and many others around the world will not have those opportunities.

Wait a second.  Is Friedman here saying that Barack Obama was the candidate for a strong America?  Because it doesn’t look that way to me.  Obama was the candidate for weak America – sycophantic with Euro elites, submissive to the Iranians and North Koreans.  Obama is the candidate of the apology tour.  Friedman is right when he says that Obama is about delivering the “goods and goodness” – the goodies, but what else is he about?

I am convinced that this kind of nation-building at home is exactly what Mr. Obama is trying to deliver, and should be his unifying call: We need universal health care because it would strengthen our social fabric and enable our businesses to better compete globally. We need to upgrade our schools because no child in 21st-century America should be left behind and because we cannot compete for the best new jobs without doing so. We need a greener economy, not just to mitigate climate change, but because a world growing from 6.7 billion people to 9.2 billion by 2050 is going to demand more and more clean energy and water, and the country that develops the most clean technologies is going to have the most energy security, national security, economic security, innovative companies and global respect.

Here you get into policy differences, of course, but I am uncomfortable with all the “need” language.  I am uncomfortable with the politics of diktats – we must spend X billion dollars on schools because we need to compete with Y over Z. 

But to deliver this agenda requires a motivated public and a spirit of shared sacrifice.

That is to say, high taxes.

That’s where narrative becomes vital.

To explain to people, this is why I am raising your taxes.

People have to have a gut feel for why this nation-building project, with all its varied strands, is so important — why it’s worth the sacrifice. One of the reasons that independents and conservatives who voted for Mr. Obama have been so easily swayed against him by Fox News and people labeling him a “socialist” is because he has not given voice to the truly patriotic nation-building endeavor in which he is engaged.

Or it’s because he’s a socialist.  You never know.  (Hey, Friedman said he didn’t know what Obama believes, and considering he’s already nationalized the auto industry and would like to nationalize a big part of health care, “socialist” isn’t that unreasonable of an epithet.)