Obama's Morning-After Plan

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One thing I hope Obama dumps when the Wednesday morning hangover dawns: all that talk of changing Washington. A president who thinks he can change Washington is as misguided as a new studio head thinking he can change Hollywood. He may say he’s arrived to foster new ideas and adapt the great novels he was raised on, but he will still wind up doing Pirates of the Caribbean IV or succumbing to some bollixed-up development process that ends in tears or a frightful Nicolas Cage movie.
Voters seem to understand what a big waste of time trying to change Washington is. After a brief love affair with the new possibilities Obama represented in the 2008 campaign, the electorate has turned its attention elsewhere to try to get things done—to makeshift projects developed by enterprising mayors, or by joining the Tea Party movement, or turning to comedians to express their point of view en masse, or forging private public partnerships to spawn social innovation that has as little as possible to do with the local congressman they hate.
Obama has, as he wanly insists, accomplished a lot in the last two years—ended torture, got us out of Iraq, extended health care, and prevented another Great Depression, all with absolutely no help and nothing but obstruction from the people who are about to collect the big political rewards. Which is why it irritated me to find him observing in Peter Baker’s excellent profile in the Oct. 17 New York Times magazine: “I think anybody who’s occupied this office has to remember that success is determined by an intersection of policy and politics and that you cant be neglecting of marketing and P.R. and public opinion.” Roger to that. Amazing that Obama, possessed of the bully pulpit of the presidency, is musing here about having forgotten as core a political value as bringing the public along.
As from Wednesday, I’d like the president to stop being so high-minded about avoiding corny symbolic theatrics and start playing to win. The absurd myth, for instance, that he's really a Muslim would be easier to knock out if he strode from the White House every Sunday with a big old Gutenberg Bible and marched his family—with the first daughters in adorable Sunday best—to the nearest Episcopalian church. Back in his Chicago Senate days, when he was seeking greater black credibility, Obama was happy enough to attend the Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ. What’s wrong with a bit of God-fearing symbolism of a different kind now? There was a reason Hillary Clinton showed up at the weekly Senate Prayer Breakfasts when she was trying to network across the aisles. “Worshipping in private,” as Obama does, comes off as just another form of annoying elitism


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