There was one characteristic of President George W. Bush that his opponents never figured a way to effectively combat - his ability to focus all of his attention and power on one issue at a time. While his Democratic opponents were all trying to pull him into battles on health care, defense, immigration, stem cells, abortion, etc., he would pick just one issue and make it his administration's top priority. Every major speech, every major TV appearance, every major article produced would focus on that one issue, until either the president has his way or it became clear that the American people wee not behind him.
President Obama seems obsessed with the idea of being the Anti-Bush, not only undoing moves that the public was never comfortable with (i.e. Gitmo) but also taking opposite stances on nearly everything. One of those moves is trying to attack every issue and every constituency at the same time. Now, in the midst of an economic crisis, not only is trying to tackle military transformation, health care reform, and tax reform, but now also Immigration Reform (which incidentally is one of the few issues that President George W Bush focussed on but had to abandon without having his way).
Perhaps this is a "divide and conquer" strategy to force the opposition to thin themselves out by opposing every Obama priority. But it looks like a desperate man trying to make hay because he knows his time is short. And desperation is never attractive in a leader.
Thursday, April 09, 2009
The Anti-Bush: Trying to do it all
Posted by Nomad at 5:51 AM
Labels: BarackObama, immigration, obama, president, stategy, strategery
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3 comments:
I read this article too and can't help but think that immigration is an issue for his 2nd year, not the first. But maybe he figures that he can get all the Democrats to vote for things now, so why risk putting something off to when he might not have as big a majority in one of the houses of Congress.
It seems like a lot of the things he's trying to accomplish are second year issues - particularly given the current state of the economy. He may be doing what Crchair suggests, but it seems that in doing so he could create fatigue in his own party having to fight so many battles on so many different fronts all at once. It's possible that he gets very little from this strategy simply because he can't get his own party to focus on one issue long enough to form a coalition.
It has more to do with a promise he made to voters that he would begin the immigration reform during his first year. I think he is trying to keep that promise, though it is a political quagmire for him. It is a poor political move just because of how much it looks like he is undercutting his own jobs initiative.
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