By Peggy Noonan
Obama still has supporters but theirs is a grim support.
The Republican establishment reasserted itself this week and good thing too because the establishment was right. It said Republicans in the House should back and pass the Boehner bill on the debt ceiling because it goes in the right directions contains spending cuts but not taxes and is viable. So accept victory avert crisis and get it to the Senate.
The establishment was being conservative in the Burkean sense: acknowledges reality respect it and make the most progress possible within it. This has not always been true of them. They spent the first decade of this century backing things a truly conservative party would not have dreamed ofcareless wars huge spending and most scandalously a dreamy and unconservative assumption that it would all work out because life is sweet and the best thing always happens.
They were mostly led by men and women who had never been foreclosed on and who assumed good luck especially unearned good luck would continue. They were fools and they lost control of their party when the tea party rose up rebuking and embarrassing them. Then the tea party saved them by not going third party in 2009-10. And now the establishment has come forward to save the tea party by inching it away from the cliff and reminding it the true battles are in 2012 and after. Lets hope the tea party takes the opportunity.
As this is written the White House seems desperate to be seen as consequential. Theyre trotting out Press Secretary Jay Carney who stands there looking like a ferret with flop sweat as he insists President Obama is still at the table still manning the phones and calling shots. Much is uncertain but the Republicans have made great strides on policy. If they emerge victorious they had better not crow. The nation is in a continuing crisis our credit rating is not secure and no ones interested in he-man gangster dialogue from The Town. What might thrill America would be a little modesty: We know we helped get America into some of this trouble and we hope weve made some progress today in getting us out of it.
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But that actually is not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about something that started to become apparent to me during the debt negotiations. Its something Ive never seen in national politics.
It is that nobody loves Obama. This is amazing because every president has people who love him who feel deep personal affection or connection who have a stubborn even beautiful refusal to let what they know are just criticisms affect their feelings of regard. At the height of Bill Clintons troubles there were always people whod say Look I love the guy. Theyd often be smilinga wry smile a shrugging smile. Nobody smiles when they talk about Mr. Obama. There were people who loved George W. Bush when he was at his most unpopular and they meant it and would say it. But people arent that way about Mr. Obama. He has supporters and bundlers and contributors he has voters he may win. But his support is grim support. And surely this has implications.
The past few weeks Ive asked Democrats who supported him how they feel about him. I got back nothing that showed personal investment. Here are the words of a hard-line progressive and wise veteran of the political wars: I never loved Barack Obama. That said among my crowd who did love him I cant think of anyone who still does. Why is Mr. Obama different from Messrs. Clinton and Bush? Clinton radiated personality. As angry as folks got with him about Nafta or Monica there was always a sense of genuine generous caring. With Bush if folks were upset with him he still had this goofy kind of personality that folks could relate to. You might think he was totally misguided but he seemed genuinely so. . . . Maybe the most important word that described Clinton and Bush but not Obama is genuine. He doesnt exude any feeling that what he says and does is genuine.
Maybe Mr. Obama is living proof of the political maxim that they dont care what you know unless they know that you care. But the idea that he is aloof and so inspires aloofness may be too pat. No one was colder than FDR deep down. But he loved the game and did a wonderful daily impersonation of jut-jawed joy. And people loved him.
The secret of Mr. Obama is that he isnt really very good at politics and he isnt good at politics because he doesnt really get people. The other day a Republican political veteran forwarded me a hiring notice from the Obama 2012 campaign. It read like politics as done by Martians. The Analytics Department is looking for predictive Modeling/Data Mining specialists to join the campaigns multi-disciplinary team of statisticians which will use predictive modeling to anticipate the behavior of the electorate. We will analyze millions of interactions a day learning from terabytes of historical data running thousands of experiments to inform campaign strategy and critical decisions.
This wasnt the passionate take-no-prisoners Clinton War Room of 92 it was high-tech and bloodless. Is that what politics is now? Or does the Obama re-election effort reflect the candidate and his flaws?
Mr. Obama seemed brilliant at politics when he first emerged in 2004. He understood the nations longing for unity. Were not divided into red states and blue he said were Big Purple we can solve our problems together. Four years later he read the lay of the land perfectlyreally perfectly. The nation and the Democratic Party were tired of the Clinton machine. He came from nowhere and dismantled it. It was breathtaking. He went into the 2008 general election with a miraculously unified party and took down another machine bundling up all the accrued resentment of eight years with one message: You know the two losing wars and the economic collapse weve been dealing with? I wont do that. Im not Bush.
The fact is hes good at dismantling. Hes good at critiquing. Hes good at not being the last guy the one you didnt like. But hes not good at building creating calling into being. He was good at summoning hope but hes not good at directing it and turning it into something concrete that answers a broad public desire.
And so his failures in the debt ceiling fight. He wasnt serious he was only shrewdand shrewdness wasnt enough. He demagogued the issueno Social Security checksuntil he was called out and then went on the hustings spouting inanities. He left conservatives scratching their heads: They could have made a better more moving case for the liberal ideal as translated into the modern moment than he did. He never offered a plan. In a crisis he was merely sly. And no one likes sly no one respects it.
So he is losing a battle in which he had superior forcesthe presidency the U.S. senate. In the process he revealed that his foes have given him too much mystique. He is not a devil an alien a socialist. He is a loser. And this is America where nobody loves a loser.
