Back on Sept. 16, 2008, William Galston was stirring the pot with this open letter to Barack Obama:
I'll get right to the point: You are in danger of squandering an election most of us thought was unlosable. The reason is simple: on the electorate's most important concern – the economy -- you have no clear message, and John McCain has filled the void with his own.
History tells us otherwise. This hand-wringing occurred, of course, well after Obama began his rise in the polls as McCain's convention bounce subsided and the Palin effect began, even as Obama's disciplined communications strategy began reaping returns. Most of Galston's suggestions were already standard practice on the campaign -- when the post was first published, I recall wondering what election he had been watching. Around that same time, I wasn't too impressed with a lot of the criticism coming from people like Galston: "a common castigation of Obama is that he isn't setting the narrative of the race -- that the debate isn't on his terms. But it should be clear by now that this isn't true: The race is about change and who can bring it to Washington. Obama's campaign is betting that its message will be the one that resonates with voters, and McCain's will be seen for what it is."
Today, Galston has a new article out, fretting that Obama has too much on his agenda and that he's going to end up like Jimmy Carter. His argument is really just a (valid) criticism that Obama has been too hesitant in tackling the financial crisis head on, but he doesn't really offer any evidence that Obama's other agenda items are the reason why. Perhaps more interesting, he argues that the context of the New Deal was much worse than our time, but that Obama should nonetheless follow Galston's somewhat eccentric reading of Roosevelt's strategy.
The president's agenda is very ambitious. I'd be amenable to hearing criticisms of where and how he should limit his priorities in order to be more successful, but Galston's article doesn't make that point. My own view of why the administration hasn't moved successfully on the financial crisis yet is that the the problems are enormously complex, they have not been able to appoint officials as quickly as they'd like due to ethics rules and early nomination missteps, and that they want to ensure that their next step is a final plan and not another vague set of principles. I don't see how the president's health-care reform efforts, ambitious budget policy, or energy and education reform agenda are holding him back. Many of these issues are linked to the economy, many have been unaddressed for far too long, and this crisis is an opportunity to do fundamentally important policy work. It's also possible that some of the trickier proposals in the budget could get postponed in Congress; the budget is a picture of the possible, not a guarantee that everything in it will survive first contact with the legislature.
In any case, Galston hasn't shown that he is particularly insightful about Obama's political style. (You can question a lot of things about the president and his team, but "self-discipline"? really?) Both pieces I link to seem to be written from the perspective of 1992, when a particularly Clintonian brand of economic rhetoric was paired with policy incrementalism, but it's a different climate now. Both articles worry about a lack of narrative -- which also reminds me of the post-2004 Democratic malaise, when that was the critical buzzword -- but the administration (and the campaign) have proven to be successful public communicators. I don't think anyone will be questioning Obama's ability to "get things done," given the breadth of accomplishment in his first 50 days. Of course, there is a long way to go until 2010 and the economy is always in danger of outpacing the government's efforts. But for the time being, the president's broad agenda serves him well.
-- Tim Fernholz
