Barack Obama's "Learned Heplessness"

A column in yesterday's Washington Post looks at an issue that drives me to distraction: Barack Obama's failure to exhibit bold leadership and willingness to allow himself to be played by Republicans time and time again. Given the economic situation gripping the nation, bold measures and leadership are needed. Instead, we get timidity and a capitulation to GOP demands often even before serious discussions begin. This lack of leadership is what would make me consider voting for someone else in 2012 were the Republicans able to nominate a viable opponent - something that's admittedly a long shot given the manner in which the GOP leadership has come to be controlled by the twin Frankenstein monsters that control the GOP base: the Tea Party and the Christian Taliban. Here are some column highlights:
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Is Barack Obama a president or a pawn? And is there any difference nowadays? Seeing how narrow the boundaries of debate have become on the biggest issues facing the country makes the question unavoidable.
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On the central near-term economic issue – jobs – Paul Krugman has trenchantly described the “learned helplessness” gripping the White House. As a result we hear only timid ideas that can’t make a real dent. Ditto on the long-term debt, . . .
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But the phenomenon goes far beyond jobs and debt. On the issues of bank capital and Afghanistan, both of which will be the targets of momentous decisions in the weeks ahead, the options being debated seem just as inexplicably narrow and out of touch.
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Take bank capital first – specifically, the amount of capital large banks are required to hold as a buffer against loss. Inadequate capital at “systemically important” financial institutions was the main reason the housing meltdown led to epic taxpayer bailouts. Yet higher capital rules are being fought by big bankers, because such rules threaten their ability to pay themselves outrageous bonuses . . . . Why would we listen (again) to the self-interested pleas of the same folks that helped tank the economy even as they got rich, escaped prosecution, and passed the bill to the rest of us?
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Or take Afghanistan, where 100,000 U.S. troops will run through upward of $150 billion this year chasing what the CIA guesses are 30 to 100 members of al-Qaeda. No one supporting this decade-old war can define what “success” really means. Yet the troop withdrawal options the president will review starting this week range from 3,000 on the low side to perhaps 20,000 on the high. How can the “boldest” withdrawal option leave us with more troops in Afghanistan than Obama inherited?
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When the voices at the table are so deeply invested in the institutions and habits of mind that brought the economy low, or that have made Afghanistan a quagmire, how likely is it that the options they present to a president will really change things?
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A president’s power to shape events are more limited than we generally think. But a president’s power to shape the boundaries of debate are limited only by his imagination and by his appetite for political risk. From the looks of it, Barack Obama has plenty of imagination. So if he chooses not to challenge these boundaries, he’s a prisoner not only of entrenched forces arrayed behind the status quo; he’s a pawn, ultimately, of his own ambition.
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Frankly, but for the likelihood that the GOP nominate a nut case or someone out of the mainstream, Obama does not deserve re-election at this point. Millions of us voted for a leader but instead we got a timid follower.