By Peggy Noonan
Obama increasingly comes across as devious and dishonest.
Somethings happening to President Obamas relationship with those who are inclined not to like his policies. They are now inclined not to like him. His supporters would say Nothing new there but actually I think there is. Im referring to the broad stable nonradical non-birther right. Among them the level of dislike for the president has ratcheted up sharply the past few months.
Its not due to the election and its not because the Republican candidates are so compelling and making such brilliant cases against him. That actually isnt happening.
What is happening is that the president is coming across more and more as a trimmer as an operator whos not operating in good faith. This is hardening positions and leading to increased political bitterness. And its his fault too. As an increase in polarization is a bad thing its a big fault.
The shift started on Jan. 20 with the mandate that agencies of the Catholic Church would have to provide birth-control services the church finds morally repugnant. The public reaction? Youre kidding me. Thats not just bad judgment and a lack of civic tact its not even constitutional! Faced with the blowback the president offered a so-called accommodation that even its supporters recognized as devious. Not ill-advised devious. Then his operatives flooded the airwaves with dishonestnot wrongheaded dishonestcharges that those who defend the churchs religious liberties are trying to take away your contraceptives.
What a sour taste this all left. How shocking it was including for those in the church whod been in touch with the administration and were murmuring about having been misled.
Events of just the past 10 days have contributed to the shift. There was the open-mic conversation with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in which Mr. Obama pleaded for space and said he will have more flexibility in his negotiations once the election is over and those pesky voters have done their thing. On tape it looked so bush-league so faux-sophisticated. When he knew hed been caught the president tried to laugh it off by comically covering a mic in a following meeting. It was all so . . . creepy.
Next a boy of 17 is shot and killed under disputed and unclear circumstances. The whole issue is racially charged emotions are high and the only memorable words from the presidents response were If I had a son hed look like Trayvon. At first it seemed OKnot great but all rightbut as the story continued and suddenly there were death threats and tweeted addresses and congressmen in hoodies it seemed insufficient to the moment. At the end of the day the public reaction seemed to be: Hey buddy we dont need you to personalize what is already too dramatic its not about you.
Now this week the Supreme Court arguments on ObamaCare which have made that law look so hollow so careless that it amounts to a characterological indictment of the administration. The constitutional law professor from the University of Chicago didnt notice the centerpiece of his agenda was not constitutional? How did that happen?
Maybe a stinging decision is coming maybe not but in a purely political sense this is how it looks: We were in crisis in 2009we still areand instead of doing something strong and pertinent about our economic woes the president wasted historys time. He wasted time that was preciousthe debt clock is still ticking!by following an imaginary bunny that disappeared down a rabbit hole.
The high courts hearings gave off an overall air not of political misfeasance but malfeasance.
All these things have hardened lines of opposition and left opponents with an aversion that will not go away.
I am not saying that the president has a terrible relationship with the American people. Im only saying hes made his relationship with those who oppose him worse.
In terms of the broad electorate Im not sure he really has a relationship. A president only gets a year or two to forge real bonds with the American people. In that time a crucial thing he must establish is that what is on his mind is what is on their mind. This is especially true during a crisis.
From the day Mr. Obama was sworn in what was on the mind of the American people was financial calamityunemployment declining home values foreclosures. These issues came within a context of some overarching questions: Can America survive its spending its taxing its regulating is America over can we turn it around?
Thats what the American people were thinking about.
But the new p resident wasnt thinking about that. All the books written about the creation of economic policy within his administration make clear the president and his aides didnt know it was so bad didnt understand the depth of the crisis didnt have a sense of how long it would last. They didnt have their mind on what the American people had their mind on.
The president had his mind on health care. And to be fair-minded health care was part of the economic story. But only a part! And not the most urgent part. Not the most frightening distressing immediate part. Not the Is America over? part.
And so the relationship the president wanted never really knitted together. Health care was like the birth-control mandate: It came from his hermetically sealed inner circle which operates with what seems an almost entirely abstract sense of America. They know Chicago the machine the ethnic realities. They know Democratic Party politics. They know the books theyve read largely written by people like thembright credentialed intellectually cloistered. But there always seems a lack of lived experience among them which is why they were so surprised by the town hall uprisings of August 2009 and the 2010 midterm elections.
If you jumped into a time machine to the day after the election in November 2012 and saw a headline saying Obama Loses do you imagine that would be followed by widespread sadness pain and a rending of garments? You do not. Even his own supporters will not be that sad. Its hard to imagine people running around in 2014 saying If only Obama were president! Including Mr. Obama who is said by all who know him to be deeply competitive but who doesnt seem to like his job that much. As a former president hed be quiet detached aloof. Hed make speeches and write a memoir laced with a certain high-toned bitterness. It was the Republicans fault. They didnt want to work with him.
He will likely not see even then that an American president has to make the other side work with him. You think Tip ONeill liked Ronald Reagan? You think he wanted to give him the gift of compromise? He was a mean tough partisan who went to work every day to defeat Ronald Reagan. But forced by facts and numbers to deal he dealt. So did Reagan.
An American president has to make cooperation happen.
But weve strayed from the point. Mr. Obama has a largely nonexistent relationship with many and a worsening relationship with some.
Really he cannot win the coming election. But the Republicans still can lose it. At this point in the column we usually sigh.
