Via-Washington examiner
By: Chris Stirewalt
U.S. President Barack Obama attends a G8 round table session in L'Aquila, Italy, Wednesday, July 8, 2009. The leaders of the Group of Eight nations, united in their desire to work together to fight the worst economic crisis since the Depression, are discussing Wednesday how to coordinate their exit strategies once their economies are stable. (Haraz N. Ghanbari/AP)
Like an armada making its uncertain way through rough seas, the Obama administration's agenda is fast approaching the point of no return.
Sailing into a headwind of worsening unemployment, mounting public skepticism, and anxieties on Capitol Hill, the temporizing admiral of the fleet must choose whether to risk utter ruin or turn back for safer waters.
We know President Barack Obama to be audacious about his own advancement, but he has never shown a tendency to be bold on big ideas. He is a conciliator and a mender of hurt feelings for the Oprah era. He talked big to achieve the presidency, but since his election has been more comfortable in his old role of mediator.
But to get the two biggest parts of his agenda -- a national health plan and global warming fees -- through Congress this year, Obama will have to start acting like an officer of the line and order his crew into the fight, however much his own stomach churns at the sound of splintering broadsides.
Many in Washington believe that and that prudence will soon prevail because Obama does not have the courage to persevere in the face of heavy losses. Health care and global warming will have to wait because of the realities of recession.
When he returns this weekend from his trip through Russia, Italy and Ghana, Obama will have to prove to both his opponents and the restive members of his own party that he is not a querulous leader, but instead a war admiral with a reckless streak.
And the act will likely be about as convincing as his outrage over the Iranian crackdown on the election protesters: A flash of righteous indignation, a touch of the evil eye, and then the enshrouding fog of intellectual equivocation until the last skull was cracked in Tehran.
In Congress, the increasing calls for another round of stimulus and the circular debates about health care and global warming reveal the anxieties of those closest to the will of the voters. And the voters have lost their stomach for change.
Polls suddenly show Obama's national approval rating orbiting around 50 percent instead of 60 percent, and swing state surveys reveal that the moderate folks willing to try anything that wasn't Republican in 2008 are rapidly losing confidence in the president's agenda. Obama has lost 13 points overall on his job approval rating in Ohio since May and 11 points on his handling of the economy.
The calls for another stimulus are the best evidence of this trend. Old campaigners like House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer look ahead to lingering double-digit unemployment and see not just the 15 House seats the GOP might expect to grab in 2010, but maybe double that. If the same trend allows Republicans to even hold their 40 seats in the Senate, it could make the second half of Obama's term unpleasant.
What the survivors on Capitol Hill would advise Obama is that there is nothing wrong with a "redeployment" when things get too tough. And if Obama were to throw up his hands at the worsening economy and declare a strategic pause on the rest of his plan while he focused on putting Americans back to work, he would find plenty of support from his own party.
And the messages they're sending are become more and more desperate.
Every day, there is a new version of an existing proposal to expand coverage, or a plan to for it. But senators know they cannot expand medical coverage without rationing health care and increasing taxes. Like a man working a puzzle with a missing part, they try the pieces again and again in a new order and get the same result. They're leaving it to the president to tell Americans their taxes are going up and their options are going down, at which point moderates start running for the hills.
Lawmakers sent an even clearer message about the president's global warming agenda. In the lopsided House, a deeply compromised version of the plan could only muster a two-vote margin of victory. Senators have all but declared the bill dead on arrival on their side, despite the president's renewed sales pitch.
Giving up on either health or carbon would cost Obama his core supporters and his credentials as a reformer, so he dithers about his options and waits for the way forward to present itself.
But time and tide, as they say, wait for no man.
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