An Open Letter to President Barack H. Obama

Dear Mr. President:

If you’re wondering why your party lost Ted Kennedy’s senate seat in Massachusetts, you should stop listening to what Katie Couric has to say about it, or Fox”News” or even NPR. They’re all going to repeat the same old Beltway bromides that your inner-circle of Clintonites (most of whom you should fire) are already telling you. They are going to tell you the same thing that Scott Brown is saying: the Democrats moved too fast on health care, have created too much debt, have gone too far to the left.

They’re all wrong. The problem is exactly the opposite. You and your party did not move nearly fast enough or boldly enough on health care. You let the bill get watered down and become useless. You compromised with the Republicans and the Blue Dogs. The Republicans, of course, are not now nor will they ever negotiate in good faith. Sure, Olympia Snowe might, but the rest of them are going to shoot at you no matter what you do. If you tack right, they will shoot at you. If you tack left, they will shoot at you. They are not interested in solving the nation’s problems because their base, rich people, are doing fine with the status quo, and their populist voters, the so-called Joe-the-Plumbers, have a long and sad history of voting against their own self-interests. The Republicans are about in gaining and keeping power. You should have moved forcefully ahead with real reform without them while you had the chance.

It’s too late now, of course, or almost too late. But this is an object lesson in American governance, and you’d do well to listen if you don’t want to become a lame duck after your first year.
In Washington DC, they think that if you’re not on the left and not on the right, you must be in the middle. This is idiocy. Some independent voters are actually far left: Greens and Naderites like me. Some are far right of various stripes: John Birchers and black-helicopter loonies. Some are well-meaning but utterly misguided libertarians. But the vast majority of independents, the so-called “swing voters,” simply have no strong political commitments whatsoever. How else can you explain the fact that many of these self-same voters voted for candidates as different as you and your immediate predecessor? This isn’t moderation; it’s mindlessness. In Massachusetts, they voted for Scott Brown even though he tapped into every fake-ass populist cliché in the book: the pickup truck, the open collar, the use of the words “shoved down our throats” and “real reform.” This isn’t change you can believe in; this is change you can’t articulate. The fact that swing voters couldn’t see through such flimsy political cladding means that they simply don’t know what they’re doing.

Granted, they think of themselves as moderates, but so does everybody. The fact that they hold few strong political convictions, however, translates into them supporting candidates who do, or who appear to. George W. Bush talked strong, and swing voters liked that: he made them feel definite, part of something stronger and bigger than themselves. He was a remarkably weak leader, of course, befitting his remarkably weak mind, but he had Dick Cheney around to do the heavy lifting for him. I hate to say this to you, Mr. President, as you are an intelligent and well-educated man and an eloquent one, but the swing voters voted for you not because of what you said on the campaign trail but because of how you said it.

If you’re thinking toward fall and the mid-term elections, and I suspect you are, then you ought to be thinking about how you can appear to be strong. And if you don’t want to get your nose dirty, as I suspect you don’t, send out Joe Biden to speak forcefully in public for you, and send out Rahm Emmanuel to break heads in private.
Above all, use language people can believe in and suggest legislation that will actually help. Don’t let conservatives in your own party get in your way; if they aren’t on board, they should be cut off come the next election cycle. That’s party discipline, and it’s another thing the Republicans do better than you Dems do.

Strong liberal leaders are ones who pushed through reforms that seemed drastic but were actually reasonable reactions to drastic times. Think FDR. They created programs that we all now love, like Medicare and Social Security. You may have noticed that times are drastic. You need to act accordingly if you want to solve real problems and leave an FDR-like legacy.

Oh, and if Scott Brown and John McCain want an open debate on the health care bill, give it to them. But use the old high-school debate technique of requiring them to come up with a better solution. When they can’t, be prepared with hard facts about how your bill is better and exactly who it’ll benefit. Most of you are lawyers, for crying out loud, and you can’t even win a debate with the simpletons on the other side? You can’t stop there, though. Congress may be about debate, but winning the public is about marketing. Hammer that message home again and again and again. I want to see and hear about a viable Democratic agenda as often as I saw and heard those damnable “five-dollar footlong” Subway commercials.

This is no time for compromise. The Republicans have had the ball in the right-wing endzone for so long that even a single yard toward actual reform of health care or banking or environmental policy seems like a victory. It’s too late to think incrementally: we need a touchdown, and, at this point, that will only come in the form of a hail-Mary pass.

Sincerely,
T.S. DeHaviland

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