DOUGLAS E. SCHOEN: Time For [POTUS Barack] Obama To Pull A [Bill] Clinton.
Time for Obama to Pull a Clinton
When I met with the president in early 1995, I warned him he would not be re-elected unless he changed his reputation.
By DOUGLAS E. SCHOEN
As campaign season heats up—for the midterms, of course, as well as for 2012—President Obama is pursuing a strategy that is bound to fail. To secure his political future, he needs to change his approach in the way that Bill Clinton did halfway through his first term.
I first met with Mr. Clinton privately in early 1995, after the Republicans gained control of Congress for the first time since 1954. I warned him that he could not be re-elected in 1996 unless he turned around his administration's reputation: from one of big-spending liberalism (represented by his attempt to massively overhaul the health-care system) to one of fiscal discipline and economic growth.
Mr. Clinton did just that, and now Mr. Obama must do the same—and quickly. Yet the White House seems to believe its approach should be to blame George W. Bush for everything. Polls suggest that this approach is likely to have only the most limited success.
According to a recent Fox News poll, nearly half the electorate (47%) thinks Mr. Bush's policies are partly to blame for the country's current economic difficulties. But more than three-quarters (76%) says it is time for the Obama administration to start taking responsibility for the condition of the economy.
This means that Mr. Obama should seek to persuade voters that he has, at the very least, taken steps to stabilize the economy, the banks, the financial system and the auto industry. He must emphasize that he has turned around month after month of massive job loss; to do so, he can use the just-released Congressional Budget Office report that estimates the stimulus increased employment by between 1.4 and 3.3 million jobs. And Mr. Obama should forcefully explain how the job-promotion plan he launched has the potential to create the kind of private-sector jobs he has promised.
Mary O'Grady and Stephen Moore give President Obama the roadmap for moving to the center, analyze today's economic report, and respond to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's speech this morning in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
Moreover, he must compellingly make the case that his administration has a consistent plan and policy agenda—something it has not had to date.
Mr. Obama and his Democratic colleagues also need to stop their phony populist campaign emphasizing that they have taken on the banks and Wall Street. Populism—particularly of the left-wing type that seeks to expand the role of government with redistributive fiscal policies and increases in government spending, intervention and ownership—rarely if ever works. In the absence of a successful argument for the administration's overarching policy approach, a populist campaign would be as fruitless as blaming George W. Bush for every ill America now faces.
Beyond that, the administration must emphasize that it understands the electorate's concern about fiscal prudence, the deficit, the debt and the need to balance the budget. The independent voters who hold the fate of the Democrats in their hands are looking for candidates who champion, in a bipartisan context, fiscal discipline, limited government, deficit reduction and a free market, pro-growth agenda. If Democrats don't offer this, they will be branded liberal tax-and-spenders.
When President Clinton had his own health-care and spending baggage, he shed it by adopting an agenda that included a balanced budget, frank acknowledgment of the limits of government, welfare reform, and the protection of key social programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. Mr. Clinton would almost certainly have lost the 1996 election had he not taken that approach. Democrats would have suffered major losses in the 1998 midterm election had they not followed him.
Mr. Obama must undertake the same kind of repositioning now in order to turn around his fortunes and those of his party. To be sure, once he's made the case for conciliation, consensus and fiscal prudence, he can emphasize that the Republicans have failed and are responsible for the debt and the deficit. But he must offer the electorate a choice by making an affirmative case for his administration's policies.
A negative campaign that focuses on the past and promotes populism is doomed to fail. After almost two years of the Obama presidency, trying to win elections by blaming Bush is an exercise in futility and, perhaps, self-destruction.
Mr. Schoen, who served as a pollster for President Bill Clinton, is the author of the "Mad as Hell: How the Tea Party Movement is Fundamentally Remaking Our Two-Party System," out from Harper on Sept. 14.
When I met with the president in early 1995, I warned him he would not be re-elected unless he changed his reputation.
By DOUGLAS E. SCHOEN
As campaign season heats up—for the midterms, of course, as well as for 2012—President Obama is pursuing a strategy that is bound to fail. To secure his political future, he needs to change his approach in the way that Bill Clinton did halfway through his first term.
I first met with Mr. Clinton privately in early 1995, after the Republicans gained control of Congress for the first time since 1954. I warned him that he could not be re-elected in 1996 unless he turned around his administration's reputation: from one of big-spending liberalism (represented by his attempt to massively overhaul the health-care system) to one of fiscal discipline and economic growth.
Mr. Clinton did just that, and now Mr. Obama must do the same—and quickly. Yet the White House seems to believe its approach should be to blame George W. Bush for everything. Polls suggest that this approach is likely to have only the most limited success.
According to a recent Fox News poll, nearly half the electorate (47%) thinks Mr. Bush's policies are partly to blame for the country's current economic difficulties. But more than three-quarters (76%) says it is time for the Obama administration to start taking responsibility for the condition of the economy.
This means that Mr. Obama should seek to persuade voters that he has, at the very least, taken steps to stabilize the economy, the banks, the financial system and the auto industry. He must emphasize that he has turned around month after month of massive job loss; to do so, he can use the just-released Congressional Budget Office report that estimates the stimulus increased employment by between 1.4 and 3.3 million jobs. And Mr. Obama should forcefully explain how the job-promotion plan he launched has the potential to create the kind of private-sector jobs he has promised.
Mary O'Grady and Stephen Moore give President Obama the roadmap for moving to the center, analyze today's economic report, and respond to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's speech this morning in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
Moreover, he must compellingly make the case that his administration has a consistent plan and policy agenda—something it has not had to date.
Mr. Obama and his Democratic colleagues also need to stop their phony populist campaign emphasizing that they have taken on the banks and Wall Street. Populism—particularly of the left-wing type that seeks to expand the role of government with redistributive fiscal policies and increases in government spending, intervention and ownership—rarely if ever works. In the absence of a successful argument for the administration's overarching policy approach, a populist campaign would be as fruitless as blaming George W. Bush for every ill America now faces.
Beyond that, the administration must emphasize that it understands the electorate's concern about fiscal prudence, the deficit, the debt and the need to balance the budget. The independent voters who hold the fate of the Democrats in their hands are looking for candidates who champion, in a bipartisan context, fiscal discipline, limited government, deficit reduction and a free market, pro-growth agenda. If Democrats don't offer this, they will be branded liberal tax-and-spenders.
When President Clinton had his own health-care and spending baggage, he shed it by adopting an agenda that included a balanced budget, frank acknowledgment of the limits of government, welfare reform, and the protection of key social programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. Mr. Clinton would almost certainly have lost the 1996 election had he not taken that approach. Democrats would have suffered major losses in the 1998 midterm election had they not followed him.
Mr. Obama must undertake the same kind of repositioning now in order to turn around his fortunes and those of his party. To be sure, once he's made the case for conciliation, consensus and fiscal prudence, he can emphasize that the Republicans have failed and are responsible for the debt and the deficit. But he must offer the electorate a choice by making an affirmative case for his administration's policies.
A negative campaign that focuses on the past and promotes populism is doomed to fail. After almost two years of the Obama presidency, trying to win elections by blaming Bush is an exercise in futility and, perhaps, self-destruction.
Mr. Schoen, who served as a pollster for President Bill Clinton, is the author of the "Mad as Hell: How the Tea Party Movement is Fundamentally Remaking Our Two-Party System," out from Harper on Sept. 14.
Labels: POTUS Barack Obama
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