Blaming staff for structural problems

Back in January, I predicted a rash of process-based explanations of President Obama's declining political fortunes in 2010:

During the next eleven months, it will become increasingly obvious that Democrats face an unfavorable political environment and that President Obama's approval ratings are trending downward. Inside the Beltway, these outcomes will be interpreted as evidence that the Obama administration has made poor strategic choices or that the President isn't "connecting" with the American public. Hundreds of hours will be spent constructing elaborate narratives about how the character, personality, and tactics of the principals in the White House inevitably led them to their current predicament.

Within two weeks, the narratives about Obama not "connecting" arrived thanks to Scott Brown's victory in the special election for the open Senate seat in Massachusetts.

It's now been about a month since I wrote the original post. After tiring of the "not connecting" narrative, the press has now moved on to blaming Obama's advisors for his political problems. Congressional Democrats have quickly gotten on board, implausibly blaming Rahm Emanuel for not targeting more conservative Senate Republicans on health care.

Obama's staff certainly has made mistakes, but I doubt they are the principal cause of the administration's problems. As I've pointed out before, good fundamentals make political strategists look like geniuses and bad fundamentals make the same strategists look like idiots. In other words, staff performance is largely a reflection of the political fundamentals (in particular, the economy), not the cause of a president's success or failure.

Unfortunately for Obama's staff, they're under siege from all sides. The political press needs a dramatic narrative in which the President's problems are the result of failed political tactics; Democrats need a scapegoat; and Republicans want a scalp (particularly Emanuel's). If the year doesn't go well for Obama, it's likely that someone will be thrown overboard.

PS I predict Mickey Kaus is ahead of the curve on phase three, which will be to blame Obama himself for poor strategic choices.

Update 2/12 9:14 AM: See also Peggy Noonan's column today, which points in a similar direction as Kaus (i.e. blaming Obama himself).

[Cross-posted to Pollster.com]

Comments

[Rob]

No doubt Brendan is correct that Obama's political fortunes are very much tied to the economy and other fundamental factors. However, let's not let the staff off too easily. The health care bill was a mutt to begin with (all along Kaus has been especially critical of what he refers to as Orszagism), but it's also been badly mismanaged. In other words, the bill was a mutt, and Emanuel screwed the pooch.

Emanuel was also the guy most responsible for filling government positions. Not only did the vetting process turn out to be a fiasco, but beyond that, many subcabinet positions remained unfilled well into the year (because no one was nominated, not because of Senate holds), and some are unfilled still.

And we haven't even started to talk about the stimulus package and automaker bailouts that were more about favoring unions than improving the economy.

Obama is also suffering the inevitable consequence of having sold voters on a nebulous and unattainable vision of hope, change and comity and delivering to them hype, binge and comedy. That's mostly his fault, but also the fault of his political advisors. Obama can't be fired; members of his staff can. Res ipsa loquitur.

[David]

Nobody wants to blame Obama. The press blame his staff. Brendan blames "fundamentals," which he seems to attribute to bad luck. I disagree. Obama has been a dreadful President. His ratings would be even worse, but for a favorable media.

E.g., corruption in the Justice Dept.: Dropping prosecutions against friends of Obama for no justifiable legal reason. Firing Justice Dept. employees who were investigating friends of Obama. Stonewalling Congress, when they try to get the facts.

Foreign policy: Obama has done nothing to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and delivery systems. His ignorant comments undermined the possibility of negotions between Israel and the Palestinians. Few have confidence that he will succeed in Afghanistan.

Obama's unprofessional national security policy, which even got blasted by USA Today.

The incomprehensible health bill passed by giving away special payoffs -- virtually bribes -- to wavering Democratic Senators. No more need be said.

The fake stimulus bill. I don't think stimulus works to end recessions. I know of no examples where a stimulus bill has succeeded. But, the actual bill didn't spend the money rapidly and didn't spend most of it in private sector job creation. Instead, huge amounts went to Democratic special interests.

Incidentally, we've seen the failure of Stimulus Bill in the loss of 5 million jobs. But, the full impact of overspending hasn't been felt yet. Obama's enormous deficits are likely to lead to high inflation and/or continuing recession or worse. It's true that Obama came into office facing big deficits. His job was to reduce them, not to explode federal spending so the deficits became incurably big.