HOWIEINSEATTLE: "Slumdogs Unite!"---"Battle over stimulus plan tests Obama's mettle"

Sunday, February 08, 2009

"Slumdogs Unite!"---"Battle over stimulus plan tests Obama's mettle"

He's calm, he's cool, he's been called "No Drama Obama" - but President Obama is going to need every bit of that reserve this week as he takes to the road to sell his stimulus package.

Obama has barely learned his way around the White House and just took his maiden voyage on Air Force One last week, but thanks to the economic meltdown, change has already come in a big way in Washington.
In the three short weeks since Obama took office, Obama headlines have shifted from wonder and awe at his ascendancy to outright shock and awe at the partisan battling over his stimulus package.

Cable television - which thrived on two years of 24/7 election coverage - has morphed into an endless stream of dueling analysts and politicians engaged in full-throated debate over Obama's economic recovery and stimulus package.

And the cozier campaign-era news conferences with Robert Gibbs, now the White House communications director, have taken on the familiar feel of the Fourth Estate in full combat regalia - with tough, detailed questions being lobbed from all corners, and some serious pushback.

Even as the Senate forged a tentative deal on the $827 billion plan Friday, it's looking like deja vu all over again: Obama is now hitting the road and reaching out beyond the Beltway after some high-profile attacks from Republicans, including Arizona Sen. John McCain - the 2008 GOP presidential candidate who used to talk about "reaching across the aisle" but has likened the stimulus bill to "socialism" in a speech broadcast live from the Senate floor.

With the president preparing to go on his own public offensive - with a campaign-style trip to job-strapped Indiana on Monday followed by his first prime-time news conference - political observers say the tough sledding for the president and vicious partisan tug-of-war provide clear evidence that the post-inaugural reality check has hit Obama, for real.

"You're new, you're exciting, you're from outside Washington and you're beating up the status quo - and suddenly, you're no longer the change," said Bill Whalen, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. "You're the next target."

Simon Rosenberg, who heads NDN, a Democratic advocacy group, says the difficult drama starring Obama in the first weeks - including the new administration's effort and its road bumps over nominees - is being played out in some dire national circumstances.

"The country is hurting, people are desperate for their leaders to succeed - and their expectations are very high," he said. "And he's just a man. He's not a god. ... People are coming to realize ... that change, as it always is, will be hard. Barack Obama will have to grind it out."

"The moral of the story is that it's a lot more fun to campaign than it is to govern," says Jack Citrin, a professor of political science at UC Berkeley's Institute of Governmental Studies. Obama "is finding out that there's tension between being a person who wants to unify and be the president of all the people and being the leader of a party - and that tension is built into the role of president."

Indeed, nowhere is the changing role - and some of those tensions - more evident than in the live broadcasts of the daily sessions with the White House press corps.

Citrin says that is just the way it should be.

"Part of the media response is, in some sense, responsible journalism," the watchdog role aimed at holding political leaders accountable, he said.

"Part of it may be, 'We were accused of giving this guy the free ride, now let's show people we can be tough' ... and some of it may be 'Michael Jordan is supposed to score 50 points a game. So what happened when he just scores 20?' "

But either way, "what it points to in a what's-new, 24-hours news cycle is that no one has any space to breathe," he said.

Rosenberg said Obama's particular challenge in the current campaign to sell his stimulus plan is to work with the Republicans - who, like McCain, have gone into rapid-fire attack mode.

"One of the things that the president will have to do ... is show he can work with Republicans while disagreeing with their politics," he said.

And that also explains Obama's announcement to take his case directly to the people Monday, and to push back against the GOP, saying he will not return to the failed economic policies of the past, Rosenberg said.

Citrin says that - in the wake of a disastrous presidential election for the GOP - the stimulus plan has "given the Republicans something to be relevant about."

But their tactics, he said, may be questionable in an era in which Americans may have questions about the plan - but still overwhelmingly support their new president.

"If you're judging this as a boxing match - (Republicans) have scored points, but they didn't score a knockout. And they're playing a dangerous game," he said.

So look for a long road ahead of tough times - and more reality checks - in an administration that was supposed to be "no drama Obama."

"He's fought back very hard and beginning change that will require a titanic effort. We're in this for the next five years," Citrin said.

And if Obama - and Washington - has learned anything in the past weeks, it's that America may be in for a long haul, "a ferocity in our politics, an intensity we haven't seen in a very long time," Rosenberg said, "because the stakes are so high."

What's next: Tough stimulus negotiations are expected between the House and Senate.