Mr. Cool Gets Hot
As president, Obama has walked the walk. But now, with his agenda endangered, he has to learn to talk the talk.
By John Heilemann
New York Magazine
Jan 22, 2010
Barack Obama is not unfamiliar with delivering big-stakes, high-pressure, bet-the-farm speeches—but the challenges presented by Wednesday’s State of the Union are of a different kind and order of magnitude than he has ever confronted before. In the wake of the smack-upside-the-head loss of Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat last week in Massachusetts, with its dire implications for health-care reform and dark portents for November’s midterm elections, Democrats in Washington and around the nation will be looking for more from Obama than mere eloquence or even passion and conviction. They will be studying him to see if he grasps the magnitude of his and his party’s peril, and trying to discern what he intends to do about it.
Among the Potomac panjandrum population, the near-universal consensus is that Obama must undertake a serious midcourse correction. That he must regroup his team, recalibrate his agenda, retool his message, reboot his whole presidency. Obama and many of his senior advisers have heard such bleatings before. During the race that put Obama in the White House, Establishment Democrats periodically concluded that his campaign was on the brink of disaster and counseled dramatic changes of tack. In the early fall of 2008, at the peak of Palinmania, Obama’s pal and adviser Valerie Jarrett returned from a trip to New York and informed the candidate that party big shots were freaking out over John McCain’s post-convention surge in the polls. As Mark Halperin and I report in our new book, Game Change, Obama’s response was nonchalant: “Just tell them to calm down.” Campaign manager David Plouffe was even more dismissive of what he liked to describe as Democratic “bed-wetting.”
The ability of Obama and his people to retain their continence when all around them were soiling their shorts was key to their success in 2008. The question in the minds of many Democrats now, however, is whether the Obamans have overlearned the lesson. Last year, as Obama’s standing in the polls weakened and support for health care plummeted, the administration’s stay-the-course posture sometimes came across as less an example of Roger Federerian cool than Alfred E. Neumanish what-me-worryism.
(Read more here.)
By John Heilemann
New York Magazine
Jan 22, 2010
Barack Obama is not unfamiliar with delivering big-stakes, high-pressure, bet-the-farm speeches—but the challenges presented by Wednesday’s State of the Union are of a different kind and order of magnitude than he has ever confronted before. In the wake of the smack-upside-the-head loss of Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat last week in Massachusetts, with its dire implications for health-care reform and dark portents for November’s midterm elections, Democrats in Washington and around the nation will be looking for more from Obama than mere eloquence or even passion and conviction. They will be studying him to see if he grasps the magnitude of his and his party’s peril, and trying to discern what he intends to do about it.
Among the Potomac panjandrum population, the near-universal consensus is that Obama must undertake a serious midcourse correction. That he must regroup his team, recalibrate his agenda, retool his message, reboot his whole presidency. Obama and many of his senior advisers have heard such bleatings before. During the race that put Obama in the White House, Establishment Democrats periodically concluded that his campaign was on the brink of disaster and counseled dramatic changes of tack. In the early fall of 2008, at the peak of Palinmania, Obama’s pal and adviser Valerie Jarrett returned from a trip to New York and informed the candidate that party big shots were freaking out over John McCain’s post-convention surge in the polls. As Mark Halperin and I report in our new book, Game Change, Obama’s response was nonchalant: “Just tell them to calm down.” Campaign manager David Plouffe was even more dismissive of what he liked to describe as Democratic “bed-wetting.”
The ability of Obama and his people to retain their continence when all around them were soiling their shorts was key to their success in 2008. The question in the minds of many Democrats now, however, is whether the Obamans have overlearned the lesson. Last year, as Obama’s standing in the polls weakened and support for health care plummeted, the administration’s stay-the-course posture sometimes came across as less an example of Roger Federerian cool than Alfred E. Neumanish what-me-worryism.
(Read more here.)
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