The costs of Green Lantern-ism

Earlier this week, I mocked liberals who attribute the Obama administration's domestic policy compromises/failures to a lack of presidential will. If only Obama had tried harder, they say, he could have passed the public option, expanded Medicare, etc.

As I've argued, this claim, which I call the Green Lantern theory of the presidency^TM, fails as a description of political reality. But it's also worth noting that this sort of president-centric perspective has real costs both for the political movements that promote it and for the country.

In the short term, the liberal elites who publicly blame Obama rather than the structure of Congress for the loss of the public option are fostering long-term disappointment that will depress Democratic turnout and enthusiasm in 2010 and 2012. Kos, Jane Hamsher, Move On, and Congressional liberals can certainly put more pressure on Obama than, say, Joe Lieberman, but they are poisoning the well for their own movement in a way that we didn't observe among conservatives during, say, the debate over the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts.

Over the long term, Green Lantern-ism promotes cynicism and distrust in the political system. Who wouldn't feel betrayed if they thought that the president could achieve an important goal but wasn't willing to try hard enough to get it? Unfortunately, the press does an exceptionally poor job of explaining the structural constraints that presidents face. We shouldn't be surprised by this failure -- journalists tend to lack detailed knowledge of the legislative process and have strong commercial incentives to cover politics as a dramatic narrative -- but it means that the Green Lantern message goes largely unchecked.

Comments

[neff]

Oh no, not cynicism and distrust of the political system! The American political system that has done so much to earn our trust!

[Rob]

What Brendan calls Green Lantern-ism seems like the natural consequence of the cult of personality that was created around Barack Obama. (Don't hate on me, kids, it was Paul Krugman who first identified the phenomenon nearly two years ago. Pity he wasn't as gimlet eyed when he served as an advisor to Enron.)

And of course Obama's oft-commented on egocentrism, most recently on display in his otherwise excellent Nobel lecture ("That is why I prohibited torture. That is why I ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed. And that is why I have reaffirmed America's commitment to abide by the Geneva Conventions.", "my foreign policy"), feeds the beast.

Our reading for this week: Galatians 6:7.

[joselito]

"Oh no, not cynicism and distrust of the political system! The American political system that has done so much to earn our trust!"

Automatically distrusting something is as intelectually lazy as automatically trusting something.

They're both knee jerk reactions.

[David]

Brendan's assertion that failure to pass a particular health bill sows distrust of government seems to imply that government is supposed to re-structure 1/6 of the economy during a time of severe economic problems, two wars, imminent nuclearization of Iran, the global threat from Islamic extremists, and the issue of global warming (or the issue of AGW fakery), and accomplish this goal in less than a year. That seems a dubious proposition.

However, government is supposed to know what's in the laws they enact. They're supposed to have a budget close enough to balanced so as to protect the value of our currency. They're supposed to not waste the people's money. They're supposed to spend the people's money for the benefit of the public, not to reward or pay off their friends and supporters.

The failure of Congress and the President to fulfill these fundamental duties has done a great deal more to foster cynicism and distrust of government than Green Lanternism IMHO.

[Ben]

It would be great if a little bit of that energy that goes toward being angry at the president for not being a dictator went toward reforming the senate so that policy with the support of a majority of the people could be more easily passed

[rone]

Rob, while the cult of Obama was certainly far more palpable than for other candidates, it's not unusual. I think that Green Lanternism is just part and parcel of being a president in the era of mass media, which really boosts the American expectation of the president as a democratically elected monarch.