[graycat]

My guess is that much of Obama's political strategy is mostly just to pretend. So, there he sees a public issue and says something, just something, just says it, to defuse the issue and, then, counts on (1) the mainstream media not getting into the details of what is wrong with the fantasy statement, (2) the voters being busy with other things, and (3) soon something else in the headlines.

Except for the fantasy statements, Obama is careful about actually doing anything. He's good at making sure that whatever happens, he is not held to blame.

But he does actually do some things: He pushed 'clean, green, pure, pristine, 100% all-natural energy' and got a lot of campaign contributions. He has pushed ObamaCare but seems to want to 'push' its implementation out past the end of his second term (fine with me). So, he wants ObamaCare as fantasy but not as actual implementation. He does some little things in Syria, e.g., supposedly trained about 20 rebels in how to use some Russian missiles; so, he gets to claim to support 'fighting for freedom' or some such in Syria without actually doing much or much he could get blamed for. He asks the DoD to give him options for doing more in Syria, no doubt already knowing that all the options would be high on cost and low on effectiveness and that he won't approve any of the options; but just by making public that he asked for the options he will please some voters. After one of the high school shootings, he visited the site and said he was going to 'get the guns' or some such. Of course the Second Amendment and the NRA are still there, along with a lot of gun owners in rural and Western states. But the high school shootings are out of the headlines now. We could go on and on this way.

For the NSA leak issue, he sees right away that a lot of voters are concerned about the Fourth Amendment and so makes statements, like the one to Leno, that he is against 'over reaching government' or some such. But as the Salon article explained in detail, what Obama said to Leno was just nonsense. But such nonsense is about all Obama needs because only a tiny fraction of the voters will get as deep as the Salon article, and the MSM mostly won't go there. So, superficial nonsense is enough.

Maybe it's a smart strategy. There is a danger that once people catch on that mostly he's just passing out fantasy nonsense no one should take seriously, too many voters will get pissed. Maybe. Maybe not.

At least he's not actually doing much, and money he doesn't spend isn't wasted and projects he doesn't do aren't failures. We've got plenty of government and in total don't really need more. So in a major sense, Obama can get by without doing very much. Actually I wish that at times W had done less.

There is a risk if the country actually needs a president; in the meanwhile it's okay for him to spout fantasy nonsense on Leno and work on his golf game and jump shot.

[venus]

You could replace "Obama" with pretty any other PM or president of any country on earth, mix around the current affairs to suit, and your comment would be just as true.

Welcome to media-driven representative democracy. And when I say "representative", I mean the media represents us, which it basically does. And when the media gets tired of a story, after a few days or weeks, they move onto something else, and so do we, and so do the politicians. That is their job, and that is what we expect from them, as voted by us through our support for the media, who represents us.

Democracy depends on scrutiny, accountability, long-term follow-up. It's a problem.

[graycat]

At times I've blurted out that the most serious problem facing Western Civilization now is the news media, journalism, that fails to provide the information needed by well informed citizens.

My hope is that the Internet will make the needed information available and that enough citizens will get and use the information to get the government we need to meet the challenges of our current world.

E.g., the OP points out some of Obama's superficial nonsense, and we discuss it here. Much more such activity, and Obama will have to think twice and talk once, and we might be on the way to better government.

[ochiba]

For further reading on this topic, I can highly recommend Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman.

http://www.amazon.com/Amusing-Ourselves-Death-Discourse-Busi...

[graycat]

Looks good.

With great strain I omitted my usual rants about the role of formula fiction -- e.g., a good guy, white hat, with a problem, and a bad guy, black hat -- and morality plays -- evil, sinful humans transgressing against the pure, pristine, precious, sensitive, delicate, snow white, 100% all-natural environment by wasteful, selfish use of filthy carbon, with retribution the destruction of the planet, and redemption through sacrifice of getting rid of cars and returning to bicycles and horses -- in journalism.

Journalism usually fails standard high school term paper writing standards, e.g., the role of primary references.

For nearly all important work in our society, original research in mathematics or physical science, professional engineering, medicine, finance, law, the standards of quality in journalism are laughable. An airplane designed with the techniques of journalism would never get off the ground, which would be a very good thing.

We could go on and on.

The book mentioned TV: My ISP gave me a cable TV set top box with their special deal for lower cost than service without TV, but I've never connected a TV to the box! I haven't watched TV in months and not much for years. The set top box has a good clock!

[mcphilip]

I agree with your assessment of Obama essentially kicking the can down the road via placating sound bites ready for consumption by the masses. However, I'm curious what would lead one to expect any other response from a politician. Are there any examples where an empower has been told he has no clothes and then the emporer agrees and takes corrective actions?

Unfortunately, I suspect the average American prefers a leader who always gives confident, reassuring statements in response to any crisis. It helps reinforce the illusion that intelligent, honest, and benevolent actors are leading the nation in a healthy direction.

[graycat]

> However, I'm curious what would lead one to expect any other response from a politician.

I will give some examples of US presidents who actually did some things. This will take me into some very contentious history: My goal isn't to take sides in the history but just to illustrate that some presidents actually try to do things. For some of the items in history, you may believe that the presidents did well or poorly; that difference does not concern me here but only that they did do somethings along with, secondarily, to observe that we can differ on the quality of the results. If we do differ on the quality of the results, then we have to accept that presidents who do things can risk failure; one way to avoid both failure and success is not to do anything.

As far as I can tell, no one knows what was in the minds of W and Cheney at the start of Gulf War II -- not even still in the minds of W and Cheney.

But Gulf War II was a big effort and not just some "placating sound bites", platitudes, cliches, fantasy nonsense. I thought that the effort was foolish, but it wasn't small.

So, for Gulf War II, were W and Cheney just pushing out "placating sound bites"? No, I don't think so. Basically I wish all they had done was push out "placating sound bites". Instead, I have to believe that they believed that what they were doing was prudent, maybe even necessary, to "protect and defend" the US. And they had a point: At the time of Gulf War II, doing nothing seemed to risk a significant WMD attack on the US; I didn't really believe there was much risk, but, right, it was a small chance of a big loss and, thus, difficult to evaluate.

Of course, as we know now, what they did in Gulf War II cost the US a lot in blood and treasure. I'm sure there were some brilliant military operations, some grand heroism, and some astounding successes; there were also some major screw ups.

Maybe long term, history will record that the US dumping Saddam in Gulf War II and putting in place a democracy, fragile, a long way from perfect, was a grand turning point in the Mideast, US and world security, taming of radical Islam, and progress for world peace. Hopefully. And I can believe that such was some of what W and Cheney had in mind. I doubt we achieved such success, but maybe.

So, Gulf War II was an example of political leaders actually doing something, that they believed in, that was risky, and that they could get blamed for. I'd say they were high on courage, sense of responsibility, and patriotism but too low on simple, basic, pragmatic smarts.

Else? For Saddam, I'd have put in place one heck of an intelligence operation so I knew what the heck he was/was not doing. I'd turn as an intelligence asset everyone of importance in the place short of his cook and maybe also his cook. Then I'd "Make him a offer he couldn't refuse: 'Behave or you and your family, children, and grandchildren will all perish.'"

Or, for a small example, in Iraq US General "Mad Dog" Mattis told some Sheiks: "I come in peace. I didn't bring artillery. But I plead with you, with tears in my eyes, if you f&&k with me, I'll kill all of you.".

I know; I know; international relations are not supposed to do that. So, adjust the message a little. But, net, I'd have left the thug in power and saved US blood and treasure. If the Iraqi people didn't like their thug, then that was their problem; the role of US policy was mostly just to make sure he was not our problem.

Ike? He pushed the interstate highway system.

Reagan? The Soviets were terrified of Star Wars (I doubt that they should have been), and Reagan used it, along with Poland, etc., to help break up the USSR.

LBJ? He was just determined, beyond belief, to 'fight for freedom' in Viet Nam. He allocated huge US blood and treasure. My view is that the US is fully happy with Viet Nam now (my Brother laser printer was made in Viet Nam and is better than my old HP laser printer), and my view is that the US could have had essentially the same result in 1947, 1956, ..., by doing essentially nothing. Yes, Ho Chi Minh liked to appear on parade reviewing stands in Moscow and Peking -- nothing's perfect -- but actually that meant next to nothing.

Net, lots of US presidents actually try to do big things; mostly I don't like the results; but they don't all just mouth platitudes.

[1337biz]

Even so one might be critical of it I think Obamas central accomplishment will be Obamacare. If this will be finally rolled out all other agenda points are going to become just smallprint in his legacy.

[graycat]

The US health care system can use improvements, but the improvements will not be easy to implement in practice, and there is a risk of "doing harm".

If ObamaCare is a good design for the US health care system or can be morphed into such a design, then Obama, Pelosi, Reid, the Senator Kennedy staffers who wrote an early version, etc. will deserve credit.

My guess (from reading some of an earlier bill) is that as passed it was a steaming pile of sewage, to mess up the US health care system and kill people and waste money, but eventually it may get turned into something good as implemented in the Executive Branch.

I do fear the influence of Dr. Karen Davis and her academic, economic, health care systems research nonsense -- I've been too close to such nonsense.

There are major suggestions, e.g., from Barney Frank, that ObamaCare is just a step to 'single payer' and, with the power of the Commissioner, really just nationalization of the US health care industry, a huge fraction of the US economy. I'm very afraid of the consequences in health care quality, cost, and abuses of government power.

I know; I know; the US health care system is a very long way from free enterprise now. NIH pays for a huge fraction of the medical research. Likely, as elsewhere in Federal Government research grants, the research supports the 'research-teaching' hospitals that do so much for patients, and poor patients, training physicians, and doing medical research. The FDA is right on top of each new product. The CDC plays a major role in US health care. The Hill Burton hospitals admit anyone regardless of ability to pay. Many hospitals are funded by city taxes. Etc.

Improvement: Needed? Yes. Possible? Maybe. Easy? No. A mess? Easy!

Yes, Obama has supported ObamaCare, but actually he showed that he knows next to nothing about the issue, e.g., during the summer of the big debate made some uninformed town hall statements and got slapped down hard by the US College of Surgeons and then mostly just shut up about the details.

I suspect that ObamaCare will be put on a back burner, maybe become just a subsidized insurance plan, and otherwise junked, a little after Obama leaves office.

[Shivetya]

When the press is combative, the press is docile if not subservient since he has entered the political spectrum. If it weren't for Putin's obvious lack of respect for President Obama Snowden would already have been shipped back

[venus]

> If it weren't for Putin's obvious lack of respect for President Obama Snowden would already have been shipped back

Huh? Got any kind of evidence for this extremely doubtful statement? Or is it just an idle fantasy of yours?

I am sure Putin respects Obama just fine; they're both consummate politicians playing their parts to the T.

[pekk]

The press always likes something that sounds like a scandal and this presidency has been no exception. You are suffering from confirmation bias. The media is not 'liberal'.

[newbie12]

"...the nation’s journalists have moved a bit to the right since the 1990s, but are still considerably more liberal than the general public."

http://www.journalism.org/node/2304

[snowden]

Unfortunately for the American people, more people will have seen Obama make his remarks on Leno than those who read the Salon article. Getting your news from clowns is dangerous to our liberties.

[pvdm]

Who is the clown here ? Obama or Leno ?

[alan_cx]

Serious answer? Both.

Which pains me greatly, I used to quite like and respect both.

[snowden]

Obama gives clowns a bad name. The same cannot be said of Leno.

[wpietri]

Another possible interpretation on the security stuff is that he's just being outmaneuvered by the people working for him. Most of his information on these topics comes from people inside the security bureaucracy or the security industry (if that's indeed a difference). And those people are lifers; the top ones have seen a number of presidents come and go.

This is Obama's first time as an executive of anything substantial, and I don't think he's ever been a bureaucrat. The US faces some significant threats, and there's plenty more that can be made to look significant. He could sincerely believe that he's striking the right balance between security and liberty. And the political situation, which does not encourage democrats to do anything that increases the risk of terrorist action.

I'm deeply disappointed with this, but personally I'm inclined to apply Hanlon's Razor here. Of course, I also tend to apply it to Bush, who I still think was well-meaning and generally sincere, but incurious and somewhat hapless. Trying to run a country with 3 pounds of meat is an impossible task, so "disappointed" is basically the top end of my scale.

[marze]

It is all PR at this point. Snowden really should study the art of PR in depth. I'm not thinking he is doing a terrible job with his limited contact with the press so far, but more education in the PR area wouldn't hurt. To do PR right, you need to pick your message and stay on it.

I think what the average person may not grasp about Snowden is that he is a true patriot, who truly loves his country, in a way far beyond the average American. I mean, he basically risked spend the rest of his life in some prison to publicize what he viewed as the government invading privacy in gross violation of the 4th amendment to the constitution. Would any of us risk spending the rest of our life in prison to bring that to light if we were in his position? Not likely, and it is because we don't have the same level of love for our country as he has.

Snowden needs to really focus his PR people and efforts on that simple message, that he acted out of love for his country. It is a simple message. Otherwise, he risks being painted as an out of control punk, or whatever.

[graycat]

I believe you have a good point, but it appears that so far he is winning. And the Guardian and the Wapo understand how to push an issue before the public. And apparently Snowden has a long list of stuff he can release slowly, once each few days, for a long time.

[raheemm]

How would you classify handling the American economy during the worst banking crisis, killing OBL, pulling US out of Iraq, etc, etc? Pretending or Doing?

[pavanred]

I don't know why killing OBL is considered a big win, it's not in my opinion. It took so over 10 years, many human lives, run down the US economy from a surplus, American citizens are giving up on some basic freedoms, people are paranoid with fear, got the ugly side out in form of G-bay, torture etc and more over recently, US is loosing credibility e.g. I saw a cloud services website recently being discussed on HN and they mentioned ...We are serious about security, we do not have servers in US... on their website (paraphrasing), it's bad if not being associated with US is one of your business's selling point. I don't know why killing OBL is considered an achievement, but people don't seem to notice at what cost it came. And, the worst part, it was one attack, and the rest US did to themselves. I wish US was a little more resilient. Regarding the banking crisis, they way I see it they did well to maintain status quo and in my opinion they only setup themselves for the next big fall because the same people are responsible for the same banks are probably doing the same thing again. Pulling out of Iraq, it's probably debatable again, because I was for pulling out of Iraq but the current state of Iraq, July being the bloodiest month ever of more than 1000 people killed in July alone, I wouldn't use this as something exemplary for someone's achievements.

[graycat]

Pulling out of Iraq? I suspect that Iraq will pour blood into the Persian Gulf and then return to a strong man thug, Saddam II. Maybe not. I hope not. There are various people and factions there eager for blood, and when they get killed off maybe there will be peace there again.

For OBL, you are looking at the bigger picture, starting with 9/11, and not just with the Navy Seals and their raid, and your view is fully appropriate: OBL and a few guys with airline tickets and box cutters got the US to do a lot of harm to itself as you listed. We were sucker punched. We've done it to ourselves.

And apparently OBL was not completely nuts but understood well enough to say that his objective was not to defeat the US but just to watch it bankrupt itself! We need to wise up.

What we do to ourselves if there was a really serious threat and attack?

[steven2012]

If you paid attention, all of Obama's "deadlines" for pulling the US out of Iraq were the same deadlines as Bush. The only time they were different was before the first election.

[graycat]

Economy: Spend a lot of money via TARP I and TARP II and otherwise let Bernanke handle it.

There is one view that the US went from The Great Depression to a hot economy, with 2-3 jobs for everyone who could work, in just 90 days after people started shooting at us. We spent huge bucks, and nearly everything that the bucks bought was junk on a battlefield in a few weeks or sold for war surplus. Still, the spending, even on stuff that was just junk, got us out of The Great Depression.

My view is that mostly the extra spending was just wasted, but, as for the WWII example, have to believe that even wasted such spending can get us out of a great depression. So, I'm not totally against the spending. But the waste was still a black mark. We didn't have just to waste so much of the money.

OBL? Fine. But bringing in Hollywood to make a movie and letting out secret information on Navy Seal tactics was not good. I credit the Navy Seals and the DoD. Even if a president doesn't do anything, there still is the rest of the government, and sometimes it does things. So, can credit Obama for not messing up a good effort across the Potomac River in that five sided funny farm.

US out of Iraq? Another post in this thread says that that was just the schedule anyway.

I can't claim that Obama never does anything. Still, I see a difference: It appears to me that he has the strategy I tried to describe, on a lot of headline issues, pass out a lot of platitudes but actually do something on only a small fraction of those. Otherwise do relatively little and, thus, don't get blamed for failures.

It's all on a continuum and not 0 or 1. It just looks to me like he talks the talk without walking the walk, or some such, more than other presidents since, say, FDR.

Maybe it's good pragmatic leadership, and if so most of the blame is on the mainstream media and the voters. US voters are awash in power, can shake DC just by pulling some levers behind a curtain, and with the Internet are awash in information. If Obama gets away with what the OP described, then the voters get what they deserve.

[jivatmanx]

>Still, the spending, even on stuff that was just junk, got us out of The Great Depression.

The U.S. was the only major country with cities and factories left standing, that weren't hit by wave after wave of bombers, so rebuilding your country necessitated buying U.S. goods.

The U.S. also suffered relatively fewer casualties than the other major players. The Nazi scientists didn't hurt either.

You are correct in that spending money on otherwise useless military items / people, is indeed useless[0], though those receiving military contracts argue the opposite, called "Military Keynesianism".

[0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window#Th...

[alexqgb]

No, voters in general are not "awash in power". The vote has been heavily rigged, to the point that House Republicns, who command a majority of ~20 seats, were abor to secure this margin even as Dem candidates garnered 1.4 million more votes.

Some voters are (relatively speaking) "awash in power". But these tend to be while, male, older, and rural.