Arianna Huffington: Lessons in Leadership: Why Obama Needs to Brush Up on His FDR
[Arianna Huffington is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the The Huffington Post, a nationally syndicated columnist, and author of twelve books...graduated from Cambridge University with an M.A. in economics...]
Watching the gun-toting, Nazi-sign-holding town hall crazies, the talk radio charlatans, and the Palin-infected politicos, my first instinct has been to rally around President Obama and defend his handling of the health care debate against this Cuckoo's Nest menagerie.
But my better instinct has prevailed over my protective instinct. It's time to take a cold, hard look at how the president's leadership -- or, more accurately, his lack of leadership -- on health care has helped create the vacuum that allowed these fringe-dwellers and their preposterous claims to dominate the debate.
Recent polls show that while Obama's personal approval rating remains high (57 percent), only 49 percent of the public has confidence that he will make the right decisions -- down 11 percent from April. This means that Americans still like him, but have less faith in his leadership.
Given his incredible skills as a leader, this is deeply ironic. How could someone with a renowned ability to inspire, communicate complex ideas, and connect with voters find himself in this position?
Chalk it up to another of his strengths that seems to have failed him this time around. The president, though a dedicated student of history, has failed to learn the lesson of our nation's most significant political confrontations: they've required single-minded determination and the willingness to battle entrenched opponents until the fight was won.
The 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote, the New Deal, Social Security, Medicare, the Voting Rights Act -- each of these required a bloody fight. Only after they were pushed into law, and people saw that they worked, did a consensus grow up around them.
Isaiah Berlin famously laid out two opposing styles of leadership in his essay "The Hedgehog and the Fox." The hedgehog doggedly and relentlessly pursues one big idea. The fox, on the other hand, flits and floats and tries to advance the way Obama has on health care -- by spinning, triangulating, and splitting the difference. And it's this foxy slicing and dicing of the message that the public is truly sick of, and which has created the vacuum that allowed the debate to devolve into nonsense about death panels and socialized medicine (In June, the public option was essential; in August it was "just one sliver" of reform. In September, not negotiating with PhRMA was called "a profound mistake"; in July, he agreed to do just that. Etc, etc, etc.).
There is no better example of what the hedgehog approach to leadership looks like than the way FDR handled the fight over Social Security. The story of how it passed, succinctly laid out by Prof. Jerome Karabel on HuffPost, shows that FDR faced many of the same obstacles Obama is facing, including stiff opposition from within his own party.
At one point, Sen. Bennett "Champ" Clark, a conservative Democrat from Missouri, introduced an amendment to weaken the bill by allowing employers to opt out of the program. It passed with the majority of Democrats voting for it. But FDR knew this would, as Karabel puts it, "fatally undermine" Social Security and vowed to veto any legislation containing the amendment. As Yale Professor Jacob Hacker sums it up, "Social Security passed not because Congress wanted it but because Roosevelt demanded it."
Soon after his election in 1932, FDR told a group of labor leaders who were pushing reformist legislation: "I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it." Contrast this with Obama, who has told his most avid supporters to settle down and avoid putting pressure on recalcitrant Democrats.
Of course, even if Obama were to summon his formidable grassroots army, as he attempted to do last week, exactly what is it they would be rallying around when knocking on doors or holding house parties? We've heard the mantra that the president wants "choice and competition." But how does he intend to do that? Specifically. He's been way too fuzzy -- and foxy -- on the fundamentals, with his administration delivering mixed messages from the very beginning....
Read entire article at The Huffington Post
Watching the gun-toting, Nazi-sign-holding town hall crazies, the talk radio charlatans, and the Palin-infected politicos, my first instinct has been to rally around President Obama and defend his handling of the health care debate against this Cuckoo's Nest menagerie.
But my better instinct has prevailed over my protective instinct. It's time to take a cold, hard look at how the president's leadership -- or, more accurately, his lack of leadership -- on health care has helped create the vacuum that allowed these fringe-dwellers and their preposterous claims to dominate the debate.
Recent polls show that while Obama's personal approval rating remains high (57 percent), only 49 percent of the public has confidence that he will make the right decisions -- down 11 percent from April. This means that Americans still like him, but have less faith in his leadership.
Given his incredible skills as a leader, this is deeply ironic. How could someone with a renowned ability to inspire, communicate complex ideas, and connect with voters find himself in this position?
Chalk it up to another of his strengths that seems to have failed him this time around. The president, though a dedicated student of history, has failed to learn the lesson of our nation's most significant political confrontations: they've required single-minded determination and the willingness to battle entrenched opponents until the fight was won.
The 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote, the New Deal, Social Security, Medicare, the Voting Rights Act -- each of these required a bloody fight. Only after they were pushed into law, and people saw that they worked, did a consensus grow up around them.
Isaiah Berlin famously laid out two opposing styles of leadership in his essay "The Hedgehog and the Fox." The hedgehog doggedly and relentlessly pursues one big idea. The fox, on the other hand, flits and floats and tries to advance the way Obama has on health care -- by spinning, triangulating, and splitting the difference. And it's this foxy slicing and dicing of the message that the public is truly sick of, and which has created the vacuum that allowed the debate to devolve into nonsense about death panels and socialized medicine (In June, the public option was essential; in August it was "just one sliver" of reform. In September, not negotiating with PhRMA was called "a profound mistake"; in July, he agreed to do just that. Etc, etc, etc.).
There is no better example of what the hedgehog approach to leadership looks like than the way FDR handled the fight over Social Security. The story of how it passed, succinctly laid out by Prof. Jerome Karabel on HuffPost, shows that FDR faced many of the same obstacles Obama is facing, including stiff opposition from within his own party.
At one point, Sen. Bennett "Champ" Clark, a conservative Democrat from Missouri, introduced an amendment to weaken the bill by allowing employers to opt out of the program. It passed with the majority of Democrats voting for it. But FDR knew this would, as Karabel puts it, "fatally undermine" Social Security and vowed to veto any legislation containing the amendment. As Yale Professor Jacob Hacker sums it up, "Social Security passed not because Congress wanted it but because Roosevelt demanded it."
Soon after his election in 1932, FDR told a group of labor leaders who were pushing reformist legislation: "I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it." Contrast this with Obama, who has told his most avid supporters to settle down and avoid putting pressure on recalcitrant Democrats.
Of course, even if Obama were to summon his formidable grassroots army, as he attempted to do last week, exactly what is it they would be rallying around when knocking on doors or holding house parties? We've heard the mantra that the president wants "choice and competition." But how does he intend to do that? Specifically. He's been way too fuzzy -- and foxy -- on the fundamentals, with his administration delivering mixed messages from the very beginning....