"Are My Methods Unsound?"

"I don't see any method at all, sir."

Captain Willard, Apocalypse Now

It is worth noting that today - one day after President Obama's Portsmouth town hall meeting - the progressive/liberal/Democratic commentariat has had between little and nothing to say about that meeting. Evidently everybody's enthusiasm for the President's performance is well under control.

It's yet another example of the absence of management on Barack Obama's part.

I mention this because what some of the commentariat is talking about is this article in the Wall Street Journal about Barack Obama's supposed micromanaging. The implication is, of course, that Obama has management issues. Both Paul Krugman and Steve Benen cannot resist getting snippy about it (nor can either resist taking a slap at George W. Bush as well), but it's telling that neither makes any sort of argument as to what Barack Obama's management style actually appears to be.

So, just what is Barack Obama's management style?

For the life of me, I cannot answer that question... Especially in the light of how Obamacare has evolved and progressed over the past several months. It's hard to define what you can't find. The lack of any answer to that question raises another, equally interesting, question for me:

Does Barack Obama have a management style?

For me, the answer to that question seems, at this point, to be an emphatic and unequivocal "No". You have to manage to have a management style. While Barack Obama may be a genius at marketing, he has given me the impression that he couldn't manage himself out of a cardboard box.

Here's where I think Barack Obama screwed up, management-wise:

1) Failure to define the problem: If you're going to fix a problem, it's best that everyone actually understand what the problem is. After all, what you're supposed to be doing is fixing said problem. That could get difficult if nobody has the same notion of what the problem is.  And saying "We have a health insurance crisis" doesn't cut it. I heard one Obama Administration official say we need Obamacare because we've had a health care crisis for 16 years. Let me tell you something: If whatever has been going has been going on for 16 years, it sure as shit ain't a crisis. It may be serious, but it ain't a crisis.

Beyond that, simply saying something is "in crisis" doesn't define the problem at hand. So what is the problem - or problems - Obamacare is supposed to be fixing? Well, that depends on who you talk to. It could be provision of insurance for the uninsured. It might be the cost of drugs. It could be a government run insurance option. It might mean single payer. And then again, it might be something else. Is it any wonder the citizenry is confused about what Obamacare might or might not do?

If Obama had clearly articulated the problem(s) he intended to address, instead of mouthing inanities about evil, greedy doctors/insurance companies/drug companies and banal generalities about the need for "better care", he wouldn't be spending his time trying to convince seniors that Obamacare isn't going to kill them.

2) Failure to define the proposed solution: You want to know why you have ordinary citizens getting crazy at town hall meetings? Well, in large part it is because they think they're being played. That's due entirely to the fact that there is no one person - either in the Obama Administration or Congress - who can actually say, with authority, what Obamacare is and is not. This is because Barack Obama has yet to lay out his definition of Obamacare. So what you now have is each and every member of Congress, plus Obama, plus Orszag, plus Gibbs giving differing accounts of what Obamacare will and will not do. And that's before you get to the CBO, special interest groups and the chattering classes. Given that on any given day you can find at least 500+ versions of what Obamacare is supposed to do,  why would anyone find it surprising that people are sensing bullshit in the air?

Perhaps the most obvious example of the President's failure to define what Obamacare is supposed to accomplish came earlier this week when he publicly stated that the single payer (nationalized health care) model was off the table (via his observations about the Canadian health care system not being suited to the American market). We are months into this process, and it is only now that Barack Obama has publicly ruled out the single payer model. Given that, is it any wonder that some people have viewed Obamacare as a single payer Trojan Horse?

It's worth noting, as an aside, that Obama's failure to clearly articulate his proposed solution has enraged the far left just as much as it has the far right. The consequence of that, beyond even more confusion for the public, is Democrats having to spend time and energy fending off attacks from their supposed allies. Today, it was Ben Nelson and Dianne Feinstein being pestered by Josh Marshall lookalikes. While Nelson hasn't blamed the White House, Feinstein - with good reason - has. This sort of in-fighting can serve no useful purpose outside of the provision of large helpings of glee to those opposed to Democrats in general and Obamacare in particular. And it could have been avoided if Obama had made it clear a couple of months ago that single payer was something he would not support.

3) Failure to engage Congress: Ever get the feeling Barack Obama spends a certain amount of time each and every day sitting in a big, comfy chair saying, "It's good to be the king"? I do. And with reason.

Barack Obama is the President of the United States, not the commander of the Enterprise. Turning to somebody with the intellect and temperment of a Nancy Pelosi or a Harry Reid and saying, "Make it so" is not going to produce positive results in anything, much less health care reform. So what do we have now? Obamacare is a single 1,000+ page bill, comprised of five seperate bills welded together, that seems unlikely to come close to passing in the Senate. It's so concise and well written that a meaningful percentage of the population now half-believes Obama wants to green-light the snuffing of their grannies.

Had Barack Obama worked in close concert with a few of the less moronic legislators of both chambers, he could most probably have avoided the whole grannie snuffing thing by producing a reasonably coherent bill containing a minimal number of badly thought out provisions. Obama chose to forego that opportunity, and ended up with the job being done by folks like John Dingell and Charlie Rangel. Look at what he got.

4) Failure to engage the public: Outside of mouthing platitudes and demonizing the people and organizations who actually do health care, Mr. Obama hasn't spent much time communicating with the hoi polloi. Again, I get the whole "It's good to be the king" vibe out of this. And the bizarre thing about it this: Barack Obama isn't some marble-mouthed mumbler like George W. Bush. Given the appropriate setting, Barack Obama can communicate with the best of them. Why he has chosen to ignore what could be his greatest strength is beyond me.

What I keep thinking over and over is this: "What would Ronnie have done?" Well, if Ronald Reagan had chosen to fight this sort of fight, you can damn well bet he would have given a dozen or so damn good speeches to sympathetic crowds in controlled venues right off the bat, and he would have done it at the mainstream media's convenience. Ronnie understood what the bully pulpit was and how to use it. The last thing he would have done was (a) cede his fight to someone like Nancy Pelosi, and (b) conduct that fight on anything other than his own chosen ground.

There was no good reason to try to sell Obamacare via town hall meetings, and the why was as obvious a month ago as it is today: You cannot control them unless you exclude anyone other than the converted. That pretty much defeats the purpose, because town hall meetings, especially with members of Congress, are at best a one-minute story (with video) on the local news. They certainly don't get the sort of Katie Couric/Brian Williams treatment a presidential town hall meeting gets. So, for a town hall meeting to really work, you actually need to have the unconverted and the skeptical there. As we now know, that carries certain risks that the scenario of a president using the bully pulpit manages to avoid.

Beyond that, why would you entrust a moron like Arlen Spector to fight your fight if you had the speaking talents of Barack Obama? It's akin to Tiger Woods asking Charles Barkley to play in the Masters for him.

5) Failure to stay on-message: Perhaps health care captivates Barack Obama because he has ADD and is hoping for a cure. What else can account for further derailing his message by coming to the rescue of Skip Gates back on July 22? That ended up blowing the one opportunity Obama had to tidy up an increasingly chaotic legislative process prior to the August recess, and came days after Tim Geithner and Larry Summers both publicly signalled the need for a tax increase.

To drive the point home, it is worth noting that here we are, the day after Obama's Portsmouth town hall meeting, and the White House and Barack Obama have done what? Nothing. No follow-up by Obama. No follow-up by anyone. So guess what? The news cycle is off Obamacare and on other things... Like whether the cute little girl who asked a question at Portsmouth was a plant.

You get the idea. If Barack Obama has a managerial fault, it surely isn't that he micromanages. That implies that he manages, which remains unproven.

Update: Steve Benen still doesn't get it. There's a shock.

Comments

[markg8]

Lemme see now, the WSJ criticizes Obama for being too much of a policy wonk and getting down in the weeds and talking too intelligently about issues. They basically say he ought not treat Americans like adults who can understand legislation. They suggest he be more like George Bush, who for all his faults never treated Americans like adults and certainly never delved into detail about his policies. Karl Rove would have had a stroke if he tried.

You apparently agree with the WSJ but your prescription is a gazillion or so words criticizing him for not explaining his policies in more detail. I don't get it.

[Dennis the Peasant]

No, I don't agree with the WSJ and I say so.

[Mark A]

Obama couldn't "manage" a fruit stand. The idea of him serving as president would have made a great sit-com. Now, unfortunately, it's for real and no longer funny.

[Eric Blair]

And people thought Palin was unqualified to be VP.

[Dennis the Peasant]

Yup. I feel safer with Joe Biden as VP, I can tell you that.

[Allen]

Dennis, the "crisis" started 16 years ago when Clinton scared the shit out of people by trying to do the same thing.

I'm not sure exactly what might be the most effective management style for a President, but I do know it does not include turning the whole thing over to the most distrusted people in the country, Congress.

People are even cursing out the rep from my district on this, and he's a conservative republican. The main question seems to be, "What the hell are you bastards up to?"

[markg8]

Yeah my conservative congresswoman caught hell yesterday at a town hall too. Well actually it was just the truth and she thought it was hell.