by Balz, Dan
It turned out to be much worse than they imagined. All through the long summer of negotiations, White House officials calculated that Obama’s advocacy for a balanced package of spending cuts and tax increases would make him seem to be the reasonable partner, the adult in the room. In contrast to the president’s reasonableness, they argued, Republicans were doing something extraordinary by holding an increase in the debt ceiling hostage to their own ideological demands for spending cuts, just as their base expected. As Eric Cantor had told the freshmen at the beginning of the year, they were using their leverage when it could be felt most. No party had ever done that with a debt ceiling increase—posturing, yes,* but never this. White House officials believed that if the talks broke down, the public would blame the Republicans for their intransigence. Instead, the public saw a dysfunctional Washington playing Russian roulette with the good faith and credit of the United States. Obama could not escape the blame.
In the aftermath of the debt ceiling negotiations, Standard & Poor’s lowered the country’s credit rating for the first time ever. The ratings agency said the decision was based less on economic conditions than on the broken politics of Washington. The country’s leaders had failed to instill confidence that they could solve its fiscal problems. Consumer confidence plunged sixteen points, the kind of decline associated with cataclysmic events like 9/11 or the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Almost 80 percent of Americans said they were dissatisfied with the way the political system was working. More than seven in ten said they had little or no confidence in Washington’s ability to solve problems. Bill McInturff, one of the nation’s leading pollsters, analyzed a month of data and found the numbers appalling for what they said about the country. “The perception of how Washington handled the debt ceiling negotiation led to an immediate collapse in confidence in government and all the major players, including President Obama and Republicans in Congress,” he wrote.
The debt ceiling debacle put Obama in a sour mood. He was most frustrated by the failure to strike a deal with Boehner and the Republicans, but he was also deeply unhappy over the portrait that was emerging of him, that of a leader who could not work his will with Congress, no matter that the Republicans were united in their opposition. The public understood the obstacles Obama faced with the opposition party, but many people still thought the president should find a way to make the system work. He was the president, after all. He was the daddy figure. “The president thought he got a good deal, thought he had tried to do the right thing, and was basically being portrayed as feckless and weak by people on his side, driven almost entirely by the editorial board and the op-ed pages of the New York Times,” one senior White House official said. “The right was saying the same thing about the president the left was saying, and that’s a bad place to find yourself in.” During the summer negotiations, Obama had met with a group of columnists for an off-the-record conversation. David Brooks made an observation. You’ve lost control of your narrative, he told the president, according to someone else present. Obama was quick to respond. David, he said, the problem is not my narrative. The problem is the economy. We have a terrible economy. But in fact, Obama had lost control of the narrative. “He was very exasperated by how broken Washington was in this case and how Boehner just couldn’t make the deal even if it was the right thing to do for the country,” a senior campaign adviser said. “And surprised by, with notable few exceptions, how the press never just chased the story full-time. Cable’s the biggest driver of this, but there was a controversy, and that just kind of drove a narrative that in our mind wasn’t true.” Obama was not just exasperated. “He was exhausted,” said one person who saw him at the time. “He looked tired, was tired, and I think he had done everything he could to pull that thing together.” Another adviser said Obama was “as low as I’ve seen him.”
As long as he had been running for president or in the White House, Obama had experienced trouble during the summer. In 2007, his campaign appeared stalled and his major donors were in rebellion. In 2008, after Sarah Palin’s selection as John McCain’s running mate gave the Republican ticket a jolt of energy, he had to rally his campaign team to step up its game when polls showed the Republican ticket overtaking him. His first summer as president was marked by the rise of the Tea Party, protests at congressional town hall meetings, and a decline in his poll numbers. The following summer White House officials could see the thunderclouds building for the fall elections. Now there was another summer of discontent. The promise of winter and spring—the eloquent speech in Tucson, the first signs of economic recovery, and the prospect of possible cooperation with the Republicans on deficit negotiations—had given way to an ugly and rancorous summer. He was frustrated at how he was being characterized, frustrated that his party and his allies were so openly attacking him. He thought it was mightily unfair. Could they not see all the things he had accomplished during his first two and a half years in office, from health care—which other presidents over half a century had failed to enact—to saving the automobile industry, to preventing another Great Depression, to passage of financial regulatory reform, all over ferocious Republican opposition?
One article in particular stung the White House, written by Drew Westen of Emory University and published in the New York Times on August 6 with the headline, “What Happened to Obama?” It was as searing an indictment as anyone who purported to be an ally of the president had made. “The president is fond of referring to ‘the arc of history,’ paraphrasing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous statement that ‘the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,’” Westen wrote. “But with his deep-seated aversion to conflict and his profound failure to understand bully dynamics—in which conciliation is always the wrong course of action, because bullies perceive it as weakness and just punch harder the next time—he has broken that arc and has likely bent it backward for at least a generation.” He argued that Obama should have dealt harshly with the Wall Street transgressors who brought on the economic collapse. He said Obama had chosen to “avert his gaze” from the economic inequality and corporate influence harming the country. Westen blamed Obama for not listening to those in and out of his administration who had called for a larger stimulus package—without taking into account how difficult it would have been to enact something larger than the $800 billion package. “The result, as predicted in advance, was a half-stimulus that half-stimulated the economy,” he wrote. Westen said he and others who supported Obama in 2008 had overlooked “disquieting aspects” of the candidate’s biography—“that he had accomplished very little before he ran for president”—and said the country was now led by a president “who either does not know what he believes or is willing to take whatever position he thinks will lead to his re-election.” He offered a final thought on why Obama’s presidency had come to this point: “He ran for president on two contradictory platforms: as a reformer who would clean up the system, and as a unity candidate who would transcend the lines of red and blue. He has pursued the one with which he is most comfortable given the constraints of his character, consistently choosing the message of bipartisanship over the message of confrontation.”
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The president’s advisers said he was thoroughly irritated with Westen’s piece. Once published, it shaped the post–debt ceiling conversation. It was proof, some analysts said, that Obama’s base was in revolt. There was little evidence that his real base—African Americans in particular—was defecting. But among liberal elites there was great dissatisfaction and disappointment. Westen’s piece also burned the president’s advisers, who paid far more attention to such writings than many people might assume. “It got to their liberal nerves,” a leading Democrat said of the White House staff. The decision was, “We’ve got to stop the quacking by the professional base.”
The White House responded by getting Obama out of Washington. On August 15, the president landed in Minneapolis for the start of a three-day bu
s tour that would take him to small towns in eastern Iowa and western Illinois. As he traveled across the gently rolling landscape near the Mississippi River, Obama’s motorcade numbered almost twenty vehicles. The president rode aboard a new, armored black bus, a behemoth of a vehicle with flashing lights and tinted windows that seemed to match the determined—even dark—mood of the White House team. Iowa was always therapy for Obama, and the bus trip was as much designed as a restorative for the president as it was a time to try to reframe the debate and stand clear of the wreckage back in Washington. But the president received a jarring welcome when he arrived in Iowa—a front-page editorial in the Dubuque Telegraph Herald that said he should have stayed in Washington. “While many folks here are flattered that you are spending time with us in the Dubuque area, we respectfully ask what will be accomplished,” the editorial said. “Will this be a productive session with positive outcomes and clear direction, or is it a publicity-generating event to bolster your re-election campaign?” The editorial said the money spent on the trip would have been better used for flood victims in the region. It ended with another jab at the president for lack of leadership: “We don’t need your attention as much as we need your leadership. We need a president who won’t tell the people what they want to hear but a leader who tells us what we need to hear.”
Slate’s John Dickerson tweeted, “The president is on a political bus tour which he says isn’t . . . political where he will tell Republicans to stop behaving politically.” The truth was that the president wasn’t quite ready to show his hand for the next battle with the Republicans. He was in Iowa and Illinois in a holding pattern. His White House and political teams were still working out their fall plans. And so for three days, his problems traveled with him. The crowds were generally friendly and polite. It was the Midwest, after all. On his second day, Obama left the Hotel Winneshiek in tiny Decorah, Iowa, and someone shouted out, “Welcome to the 50s.” The comment could have been a reference to the time warp of small-town, heartland America. It was actually a reference to the fact that a few weeks earlier the president had just turned fifty, now noticeably grayer than when he first came to eastern Iowa in 2007 to ask people, improbably, to help make him president. He stopped often in between his scheduled town halls. He bought ice cream at DeWitt Dairy Treats. He went into a high school gymnasium to say hello to members of a women’s volleyball team. In Decorah, one woman yelled, “We love you. We’re behind you.”
But if people were friendly, their questions conveyed the seriousness of the times. In Atkinson, Illinois, a Realtor from nearby Geneseo said that after the debt ceiling, the phones in her office had stopped ringing. “We have no consumer confidence after what has just happened,” she said. A farmer registered dissatisfaction with government regulations that he said hindered his ability to produce a crop. The New York Times’ Mark Landler wrote, “Mr. Obama got tough questions from people who said they were fearful about their future, frustrated by the paralyzed job market and fed up with a political culture in Washington that produced the debt-ceiling imbroglio.” Obama soaked up the criticism and pushed back against the Republicans. He said some of his opponents were willing to engage in political brinksmanship “even if it costs the country.” Many of the people in the audiences expressed support. At his last stop, in Alpha, Illinois, a college student said to Obama, “I just want to let you know one thing. I am not disappointed in you like Michele Bachmann wants everyone to believe.” The president responded, with an ironic smile, “Thank you. I appreciate that.”
While Obama was on his bus tour, the Gallup organization reported that approval of his handling of the economy had plunged to 26 percent, the lowest of his presidency. The day after he returned to Washington, he left the capital for his summer vacation. The day after he arrived on Martha’s Vineyard, the Dow fell more than four hundred points.
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As the bus tour was concluding, White House officials put out the word that the president would deliver an economic speech when he returned from vacation. This too was part of the holding pattern as the White House tried to regroup. “There was this huge debate going on about whether the president should have a jobs plan, and so we figured we can suffer through three weeks of jobs planning,” said one of the president’s advisers. “We also thought it would make it easier for him to be on vacation if everyone knew when he came back something big was going to happen.” But first came a misstep that reinforced the impression that Obama’s White House was far from ready for the fall battle. On the morning of August 31, White House chief of staff Bill Daley called John Boehner, who was in Ohio, to inform him that a letter would be forthcoming to the leaders of Congress requesting that the president be allowed to deliver a speech to a joint session of Congress on the evening of Wednesday, September 7, the day the House was scheduled to return from its August recess. A little later that morning, White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer sent out a tweet with the news that Obama had asked for the joint session speech.
Almost immediately, a White House official got an angry call from Barry Jackson, Boehner’s chief of staff. Why weren’t we informed of this? he demanded to know. Apparently Boehner had not relayed to his staff the contents of Daley’s call. The real problem, however, was that the White House was asking for a prime-time speech by the president on the night of the first big post–Labor Day debate among the Republican presidential candidates, scheduled for the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California. White House officials said the GOP debate was not a factor in the planning, though privately they had begun to explore whether the sponsors of the debate, MSNBC and Politico, would consider moving back the start time by an hour. “It is coincidental,” White House press secretary Jay Carney told incredulous reporters. Carney said the existence of one debate on one cable channel was “not enough reason not to have the speech at the time that we decided to have it. Again, there’s one president; there’s twenty-some odd debates.”
The White House talking points only made the president look small and petty. Conservative talk radio whipped up opposition, and by the middle of the afternoon Boehner responded by telling the president to move the speech to Thursday, September 8. Daley called Boehner back and pressed him to schedule the speech as requested, but Boehner would not budge. Obama was furious with his staff, feeling they had put him in the position of appearing to try to jam the Speaker. By nightfall, Obama gave up and agreed to move the speech. It was a one-day hiccup, but one that again reinforced perceptions of a weak president. The New York Times wrote an editorial castigating Boehner for petty politics, but could not resist a shot at the president. “It was distressing,” the editorial said, “to watch President Obama fail, once again, to stand up to an opposition that won’t brook the smallest compromise. . . . Mr. Obama’s people negotiated with Mr. Boehner’s people behind closed doors. When they emerged, the White House caved, to no one’s surprise.” Daley bore the brunt of the criticism—and accepted the blame. “I’ll take responsibility for that,” he said. It turned out that his days as chief of staff were numbered, though his departure was not primarily because of this episode.
The flap over the speech may have seemed minor—Washington gamesmanship at its worst—but it had a powerful effect on many of Obama’s allies. Some of the president’s political advisers were privately critical of the White House, worried that the debt ceiling fight had bled away confidence in Obama’s leadership. “I just don’t think they looked around the curve on some of the leadership stuff,” Robert Gibbs told me a few days later. “What’s stunning to me on some of these polls is how much those characteristics have taken a real big hit. I mean, this is the guy who killed Osama bin Laden.” Gibbs was frustrated especially about the mishap over the timing of the economic speech. “You want to reset the agenda on jobs,” he said. “So you don’t pick the single most political time slot possible in the week to do it. That’s what I don’t get. If you look weak and political all in the same pitc
h, I mean, what could be worse?” Gibbs knew the president well, having been with him from the 2004 Senate race forward. “My guess is more than anything he’s frustrated,” he said. “I think for a long time he’s been playing this [the battles with Republicans] as if it’s a little bit more on the level. I think he is more clear-eyed about the game that’s been played.”
The day after the standoff over the speech, I sat down with David Axelrod in Chicago. He was furious with the Republicans. “This is the first time they’ve [Congress] ever turned down a president,” he said. “They knew that we ran on this pledge to try and bring more cooperation and less partisanship to Washington, and I think they were never going to let us do that.” The lesson from the debt ceiling and the embarrassment over the speech was plain. “It really does take two to tango, and if you’re out there on the dance floor tangoing by yourself you look kind of stupid,” he said. He was deeply worried about the economy and determined not to let the Republicans turn the coming election into a referendum on Obama. “This is the Romney strategy,” he said. “Blame Obama for every ill and offer yourself as the remedy, but mostly blame him for every ill. And if we’re passive in the face of that, then we’ll certainly lose.” He said he did not believe past was prologue and argued that many Americans did not blame Obama for the problems he had been dealing with. That would give the president an opening to climb out of the political hole he was in. “From next week on,” he said, “we have to articulate a clear, clarion-clear economic vision that people see themselves in, not a clinical kind of macroeconomic vision but an economic vision for now and the future that they have an investment in. I think we need to recoup the basic themes that drove him all through his political career, about sort of how do you not just recover from the recession but how do you restore the middle class, how do you restore the sense of fairness and opportunity that we’ve lost? And without clearly articulating that vision—and he hasn’t for sure—we can’t win.”