When trouble lurks, No Drama Obama stays calm as everyone around him goes ballistic. Then he waits — and waits — for that superdramatic moment when he can ride to his own rescue with what the press reliably hypes as The Do-or-Die Speech of His Career. Cable networks slap a countdown clock on the corner of the screen and pump up the suspense. Finally, Mighty Obama steps up to the plate and, lo and behold, confounds all the doubting bloviators yet again by (as they are wont to say) hitting it out of the park.
Frank Rich makes a good case for Obama getting into the fight earlier. Now that No Drama Obama is president, he really has to conquer the habit of letting everything go to hell and then sweeping in for a rescue. This time he waited too long.
In the meantime, a certain damage has been done — to Obama and to the country. The inmates took over the asylum, trivializing and poisoning the national discourse while the president bided his time. The lies that Obama called out so strongly in his speech — from “death panels” to “government takeover” — ran amok. So did all the other incendiary faux controversies, culminating with the ludicrous outcry over the prospect that the president might speak to the nation’s schoolchildren on a higher plane than, say, “The Pet Goat.”
None of this served his cause of health care reform or his political standing. The droop in Obama’s job approval numbers isn’t remotely as large or precipitous as the Beltway’s incessant doomsday drumbeat suggests. But support for his signature program declined, not least because he gave others carte blanche to define it for him.
Rich thinks the steady flow of cable and radio sewage would have been stopped by an earlier, steadier intervention from the White House. I don't think so. I think Max Blumenthal, who has explored contents of the Republican cloaca, sees a more generalized and ravenous cancer over on the right. It has a long history, beginning well before any of us who are alive now remember. As Rich reminds us, Franklin Roosevelt reacted to his own Joe Wilson head on by telling the country that "he welcomed the 'hatred' of his enemies." FDR won the day.
Indeed Obama instantly gained a foot or two in height Wednesday night once that South Carolina clown hollered “You lie!” (One wonders what this congressman calls the Republican governor of his own state, Mark Sanford.) As the political analyst Charlie Cook has pointed out, Obama’s leadership poll numbers have also suffered from his repeated deference to Congress. Waiting for the pettifogging small-state potentates of both parties in the Senate’s Gang of Six is as farcical as waiting for Godot.
Trouble is, the most powerful talkers on the right are paid to find Joe Wilson more credible than anyone not backed by money on the right. Obama's ability to jump in at the last minute isn't good enough. Starting yesterday, he has nail it first time around.
