Is Obama Abandoning any Attempt to Shift Public Opinion?

January 26, 2010

A lot of liberals seem to think so.  I’m one of them. I hadn’t really distilled my current disappointment with the Obama administration down to its essence, until I read this piece from Greg Sargent at the Plum Line.

This says it all:

…fairly or not, liberals saw in him someone who would use his extraordinary communications skills to expand the field of what’s pragmatically possible, to move public opinion — not someone who would ever play by the other side’s rhetorical rules. Each time he falls short of this ideal, people grow less willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Hence the outcry about the freeze — even if the details of the freeze are proving less onerous than initially thought.

“Each time he falls short of this ideal, people grow less willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.”  Exactly. Obama failed to use his popularity to attempt to move public opinion on gay marriage.  Then he he failed to attempt to move public opinion on military spending, the useless war in Afghanistan and the role of the commander-in-chief. Then he failed to attempt to move public opinion on the public option in the health care debate. Finally, with the spending freeze, he’s taken an ice pick to the core principles Dems hold dear on taxing and spending, and deficit reduction, which is hugely disappointing for those of us who cheered him on during the campaign when he derided McCain’s spending freeze idea as excessive and foolish.

Yes, Obama’s always been a pragmatist, a realist. And I was never one who drank the Kool-Aid and saw Obama as some sort of super-lefty-liberal. I liked that he was a moderate lefty, and willing to compromise.

But again and again? And always ceding all the ground to the other side? As Sargent says:

Obama is one of the most gifted public communicators in decades. His campaign was premised on the idea that liberals needn’t shy away from arguments with the right or cede them any rhetorical turf. For this reason, each time Obama does cede rhetorical ground on this or that issue, liberals see Obama engaging in a larger capitulation. He seems to be giving up on his own potential for persuasion.

And why? To seem bi-partisan, even in a climate with a hyperbolic, hyperventilating right wing bent on his destruction? That ship sailed after the stimulus bill passed. Why give up your greatest gift for nothing, when you could be at least trying to persuade and shift public opinion? I think that’s what’s got liberals like me tearing our hair our lately.