http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/obama-was-no-political-master-after-all/article/2555753Obama was no political master, after all
By Timothy P. Carney | November 4, 2014 | 11:45 pm
President Obama, it turns out, is good at basically one thing: getting elected.
Nearly all of the other skills of politicians and statesmen, such as persuading the public, crafting compromise, helping his political allies, are absent in Obama. Tuesday’s results — destruction of his party’s Senate majority, and losses in the House — reinforce that Obama’s political prowess is limited to his ability to make people pull the lever for him or cut him a check.
In other words, he can make people like him on Election Day, which is the most important skill for a politician. But it’s a small fraction of what a political leader needs.
Obama isn’t very good at helping other Democrats elected when he is not on the ballot. The only Democrats Obama has helped are those who benefited from a surge in liberal enthusiasm in 2008 and 2012. Obama’s inability to rally voters for other politicians first became clear weeks after he won the White House in 2008.
Democratic Senate candidate Jim Martin was in a runoff after finishing 3 points behind Georgia Republican Saxby Chambliss. Obama cut ads for Martin, hoping to make him the 60th Democratic senator. Chambliss walloped Martin by 15 points in the runoff.
Obama and Biden both went to Massachusetts a year later to try to help Martha Coakley carry Massachusetts. Coakley lost.
In the 2010 election, Democrats lost 63 House seats and six Senate seats. This year, Democrats lost seats in the House and lost at least five Senate seats and counting. Again, in 2008 and 2012, Obama helped down-ballot Democrats because his presence on the ballot boosted turnout. But most of the Senate Democrats he carried to tough wins in 2008 — including Mark Udall and Mark Pryor — were walloped on Tuesday.
Obama also has largely failed to persuade Congress or the public on his favored policies. Lyndon B. Johnson and Ronald Reagan worked Congress to win important votes. Presidents throughout history have used the bully pulpit to rally the public, thus exerting pressure on Congress.
Obama tried to use the bully pulpit on gun control. Instead of the White House pushing Republicans to join Democrats, Ted Cruz — a freshman senator — used his mini-pulpit to whip senators away from gun control. It was a total failure for Obama.
Obama couldn’t win over Congress to support his war in Syria. He couldn’t pass climate legislation through a Democratic Congress. Obama’s biggest legislative victory — Obamacare — was a matter largely of Obama handing the reins over to Nancy Pelosi, Harry Waxman, Max Baucus and Harry Reid.
The only legislative compromise Obama ever cut was the sequester, which Obama hated, and which turned out — after the supercommittee fizzled — to be a failure for the White House.
Obama was famously cold to lawmakers, even those in his own party. Elected Democrats regularly complained (usually anonymously) about never being invited to the White House — or being treated poorly when they were.
Obama earned every one of the more than 200 rounds of golf he has played as president, sure, but he chose to play them mostly with the same handful of friends — almost never with lawmakers, rarely with congressional leaders.
What did Obama do well? Get people to vote for him, mostly. How did he do this? Through gimmicks and posturing. His data-heads found that bringing Beyonce and Jay Z to rallies sparked the interest of exactly the sort of young voters who might stay home but will certainly vote Democrat if they show. He found that talk of battling the special interests was a winning message.
In other words, Obama is the best product marketer in America, but he only learned how to sell one product: Obama.
In this light it makes sense that Obama ran for president after only a couple of years in the Senate. You want an accomplishment? He got elected to the Senate.
When Obama was asked in 2008 about executive experience, he answered that he had led a giant presidential campaign.
This, it seems, was the entirety of politics for Obama: getting people to vote for him. Successful politics begins there. Obama’s politics end there.
