In which Obama induces false memory in Fallows, and I name that tune

In a headnote to his annual line-by-line annotation of Obama's SOTU (noting the political imperatives driving almost every line), James Fallows elaborates on a point he's made before about Obama: "You can barely remember a word of what he says. Obama's eloquence exists almost exclusively on the macro scale..."  In a sense, Fallows suggests, he remembers less than no lines, since the one line he thought he remembered -- ""not red states, nor blue states, but the United States of America," from Obama's 2004 DNC keynote, was a  "play it again, Sam" -- never quite said.

This evening, Fallows recounts the long back story to that speech and the missing line (as told by David Bernstein in Chicago Magazine), and then segues to some thoughts I sent him, e.g.:

Re that strange absence of memorable phrases: it's not just balanced by one strength, it's book-ended between two: conceptual complexity/coherence on the macro side, and cadence on the sub-micro. At least in 2007/2008, less so now, Obama's speeches were musical, hinging on repeat phrases (yes we can) and on the simplest of rhetorical devices, various forms of parallel structure, e.g. anaphora, the repetition of beginning words (also a lot of parallel phrasings in series -- "A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin" etc.).  It was no accident that Will.i.am was able to set one of his speeches to music to some effect.

That's a distillation of a post I put up in response to Obama's victory speech on election night, 2008, which illustrates the point. That was one incantatory speech.

In SOTU, Obama pushes his "good faith" advantage

A few quick thoughts on the SOTU:

1) Obama began by building on his keynote political strength, which is that voters trust him far more than the Republicans to work in good faith with the opposition.  He came to national prominence by stressing national unity; he reaffirmed his ability to hit that note at highest pitch in the memorial service in Tucson; and he came into the SOTU riding his productive negotiation in the lame duck session. Rolling all that up with a gesture toward the Tucson imperative toward civility,  he in a sense bid to turn the Republicans' electoral success in November against them:

What comes of this moment will be determined not by whether we can sit together tonight, but whether we can work together tomorrow.

I believe we can. I believe we must. That's what the people who sent us here expect of us. With their votes, they've determined that governing will now be a shared responsibility between parties. New laws will only pass with support from Democrats and Republicans. We will move forward together, or not at all - for the challenges we face are bigger than party, and bigger than politics.

2.  In light of that initial call to unity and compromise, he cast commitments that have traditionally been regarded as bipartisan -- to education, research and development, and infrastructure -- as linchpins of the country's long-term economic health. In so doing, he reversed the emphasis that many may have expected in the speech: crucial investments first, deficit reduction and the tax reform that would enable it second.  Jobs were not put forward in a vacuum,  but as an outgrowth of the investments he called for. Indeed, he laid surprisingly little emphasis on short-term economic goals.

The advocacy for "investment" is at this point a rearguard defense, a marker laid down against defunding stimulus allocations to infrastructure and education and alternative energy. 

No crusade in the SOTU?

Matt Yglesias was onto something -- if only administration thinking -- when he wrote:

It sounds silly to call for less presidential leadership, but I think the evidence suggests that what’s needed here is actually a very vague and generic endorsement of the concept of tax reform plus some themeless pudding. Frances Lee’s important book Beyond Ideology: Politics, Principles, and Partisanship in the U. S. Senate argues persuasively that what happens when a president tries to “lead” on an issue like this is that a dynamic of partisan polarization kicks in. What you really need to get tax reform is for some hard-working members of congress from both parties to take the initiative in hammering out a framework and building support on the Hill. If such a thing happens, the White House should of course try to play a constructive role. But jumping all over the issue and a creating a dynamic where tax reform becomes “a key priority for the Obama administration” that opportunists on the right want to kill for the sake of a political win would not be a constructive intervention.

Today, the WSJ's Jonathan Weisman relays (alleged) administration thinking in advance of the State of the Union address:

The president will try to keep the deficit conversation in broad terms, fearing that detailed proposals would put Republicans, Democrats and Washington interest groups into a defensive crouch before real negotiations can take place, according to those officials [familiar with the speech]. White House officials, for instance, have assured Democratic lawmakers that the president will not explicitly call for cuts in Social Security benefits, though he will say changes are needed to put the program on a solid fiscal footing.

Politico repeats a myth about Obama's post-Scott Brown HCR plans

In reconstructing how the Democrats got from the disarray following Scott Brown's election on Jan. 19 to the brink of passing comprehensive health care reform, Politico retails what I believe is a common misperception about Obama's first reaction to the debacle:

Publicly, Obama seemed to side with Pelosi over his own chief of staff, professing his commitment to comprehensive reforms at the State of the Union.

But he was also sending deeply mixed signals. In a closely watched interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos a day after Brown’s win, Obama expressed support for a quickly-passed bill containing only “the core elements” of reform.

Never mind the skewed chronology there. I am convinced that what Obama said in the Stephanopoulos  interview was almost universally misunderstood.  That's by definition his fault  -- he was unclear.  But when he said, "I would advise that we try to move quickly to coalesce around those elements of the package that people agree on," and later referred to the "core elements of the bill," he meant the whole shebang -- new coverage rules, individual mandate, exchanges, subsidies, funding from Medicare cuts, cost-control measures.  In fact, his whole subsequent course of action  -- re-presenting the "core elements," exposing the bankruptcy of Republican thinking, scrubbing the bill of individual carve-outs -- was laid out in outline -- faint outline -- in that interview, and then somewhat more clearly in the State of the Union a week later.

As in Afghanistan, Obama picks "none of the above" from the HCR menu

There would seem to be large risks inherent in Obama's planned half-day health care summit with leaders of both parties on Feb. 26. It's the final farewell to HCR supporters' fervent wish that the House would swiftly pass the Senate bill with an agreed-on reconciliation blueprint -- a dream that was already dead. It risks letting more House Democrats twist and pull in multiple directions if their political outlook continues to deteriorate. 

It should be recognized, though, that the plan is completely consistent with the strategy that Obama has outlined at least since the State of the Union address -- and in fact, as I have argued in detail, since his Jan. 21 interview with George Stephanopoulos, in which Obama was less than clear and seemed -- accidentally, I think -- to indicate that he was open to a scaled-back bill.  The steps that he's outlined -- and begun to execute -- with increasing clarity since that point are these: re-present the pending bill to the American people; defend its "core elements"; explain why they cannot be pulled apart; solicit Republican "ideas" and expose their vacuity; get the Republicans on record in the interim stonewalling a jobs bill and tough banking regulations. This public campaign is designed to generate political cover for Democrats to pass the Senate bill with reconciliation fixes -- or, best case, to pick off a Republican or two with a high-profile concession such as building tort reform into HCR, and so enabling a normal Senate-House bill merger procedure.

In fact, the apparent risks of the summit are largely illusory.

A gallon of water at bedtime for bedwetters: Obama's HCR prescription

Once again, Obama will not meet the cravings of ardent supporters of comprhensive health care reform. He simply refuses to step in aggressively and steer floundering  House-Senate negotiations for a "reconciliation sidecar" that would make the Senate bill palatable to the House.  As Jonathan Cohn outlined with perfect clarity last night, the basic structure of such a deal is as plain as the forever-postponed deal between Israelis and Palestinians. But Obama refuses to catalyze it -- now.  That's notwitstanding the litany of prominent Democrats --  Weiner, Sherrod Brown, Franken, Sanders -- openly exhorting him to weigh in decisively.

Obama wants to first step back and redress what he's acknowledged as errors in communication and process and rebuild support for the bill before asking House members to vote for it. He is gesturing toward bringing Republicans back in because he wants to expose the bankruptcy of their proposals; he is defending the passed bills' essentials; he wants also wants time to highlight Republican intransigence and do-nothingism on creating jobs and reforming the financial system.  The Times reports that Obama laid the strategy out at a fundraiser last night:

At the fund-raiser for the Democratic National Committee later on Thursday, however, Mr. Obama said that once Congressional Democrats had worked out their differences and settled on a final bill, he would push for a vibrant, public debate over the health care legislation. He said he planned “to call on our Republican friends to present their ideas.”

How Obama will -- and won't -- lead on health care reform

Steve Benen has the very section of Obama's meeting with Senate Democrats (cut up and elided) that I was struggling to transcribe from the tape:

"All that's changed in the last few weeks is our party has gone from having the largest Senate majority in a generation to the second-largest Senate majority in a generation," Obama said. "If anybody is searching for a lesson from Massachusetts, I promise you the answer is not to do nothing."

He added, "I know these are tough times to hold public office. The need is great; the anger and anguish are intense." While "the natural political instinct is to tread lightly, keep your head down and play it safe," he said, Democrats should remember the promises they made in their election campaigns.

"So many of us campaigned on the idea that we're going to change this health-care system" Obama said. ..So many of us looked people in the eye who had been denied because of a pre-existing condition, or just didn't have health insurance at all ... and we said we were going to change it..*. "Well, here we are with a chance to change it....I hope we don't lose sight of why we're here. We've got to finish the job on health care."  We've got to finish the job on regulatory reform. We've got to finish the job, even though it's hard."

A health care strategy in Obama's pregnant pause?

Two days ago, I started a post in which I was planning to contrast this intrepid declaration by Nancy Pelosi with what I viewed as mixed messages from Obama:

"You go through the gate. If the gate's closed, you go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we'll pole-vault in. If that doesn't work, we'll parachute in. But we're going to get health care reform passed for the American people."

Paraphrasing Steve Benen, I wrote, "Compare Pelosi's strength and determination with the ambiguity emanating from Barack "identify those core elements of this package" Obama" (Benen's comparison was with Mary Landrieu).  The epithet came from Obama's Jan. 20 interview with George Stephanopoulos, in which the President had seemed to me to be pulling in two directions -- first suggesting that a health care bill might have to be stripped down to win some Republican support, and then explaining why the core elements of the bill could not be pulled apart.

But a funny thing happened on the way to "publish post."  I reread the interview, searching for the wording for my epithet, and began to think I had misread it the first time.  That's partly Obama's fault; his language was unclear.  But his thinking at that point was, I think, completely consistent with his presentation of the health care reform task in the State of the Union address a week later. In both cases, he studiously avoiding speaking as a tactical party leader. He gestured toward one more reach-out to Republicans.  He left the door open to picking up a Senate Republican vote or two and therefore going back to negotiating a merged Senate-House bill, rather than trying to navigate the much messier process of the House passing the Senate bill and negotiating fixes to be achieved through reconciliation.

But also in both, he asserted that the HCR bill had been misrepresented, that its key parts were interdependent,  and that a full-scale bill must be passed. In the interview, when he said, " I would advise that we try to move quickly to coalesce around those elements of the package that people agree on," he was not talking about a scaled-down package. "People" may have nominally included Republicans (or not nominally, if he thinks that his own advocacy may pull in a Republican or two). But essentially, Obama meant that Democrats need to recognize that the core elements in both bills cannot be pulled apart, and that they therefore need to find a way to negotiate or live with whatever parts of the bill they find objectionable and get the core elements -- i.e., in all likelihood, the Senate bill -- passed.