The Political Limitations of Obama's 'Big Brain'

Robert Scheer is concerned that some of Obama's actions indicate that he is more likely to continue some of the major failed Bush policies, rather than changing them significantly. He singles out Obama's lobbying for the second half of the bailout, which is a crass example of corporate welfare at taxpayers' expense, and the escalation of a failing strategy in Afghanistan.

The good news is that we have a big-brain president. The question is: Will he use it?

That is good news indeed, especially after what we've had the last eight years. Obama may well be one of the most intelligent and intellectual presidents so far.

But the question is not whether he will use his immense intellect. Of course he will, just like he has in the past. The question is which of his ideas he can communicate and act on effectively, given the constraints within which he operates, and what might be called the 'logic' of US politics, which has a mind of its own, as it were.

For instance, he might actually believe that TARP should be changed significantly in order to do what it supposedly was intended to do, but so far has utterly failed to achieve. But he might be unlikely to say so, because this would jeopardize his support from Wall Street, from which he raised more money than any other president (His chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, was one of the House members who raised the most from the same sources).

And probably he knows that 'clean coal' is a dangerous contradiction in terms, and yet feels constrained to support it, because that's how you win elections and get re-elected. Or that nuclear is unlikely - at tremendous costs and huge risks - to significantly reduce dependence on fossil fuels or emissions.

Again, the question is not what Obama, or any other politician, 'really' thinks - we will never for sure anyway. The question is what he can communicate politically, and political communication is highly selective in the statements it accepts and rejects. If people in general, and perhaps progressives in particular, better understood the very strict limits imposed by highly structured and scripted political communication and rhetoric, they could save themselves a lot uncalled for excitement and disappointment stemming from unrealistic expectations, and could instead invest those resources in changing the limits of what is politically not only acceptable, but actually stands a reasonable chance of success.

In other words, the political system has its own rationality, and it tends to be very different from the rationality of individuals and that of other social systems such as the economy, law, education or moral discourses. For example, the Kyoto Protocol, which aims to reduce GHG gas emissions, has failed to do so, in part because it is very difficult for the political and legal communication to lead to actual economic and environmental changes.

More fundamentally, this focus on individual rationality overestimates the capacity of individuals - and be they the most intelligent, best intentioned, and most resourceful - to change social systems that have their own rationality and are self-organized, and therefore are very difficult to 'steer.'

The traditional and still dominant understanding of politics is that it's the 'head' or the 'tip' of society, able to steer society in a certain direction. However, we can see more and more clearly that a globalized, functionally differentiated world society can't be effectively steered, because there is no position from which a collectively binding description of the world, its problems and its solutions could be formulated and implemented.

The implications of the functional differentiation of world society for the potential and limitations of political strategy are important, and we have only begun to think them through. It raises the core strategic question of where best to concentrate scarce resources.

Is Triangulation Back?

Norman Solomon, board member of Progressive Democrats of America, already detects The Return of Triangulation:

The mosaic of Barack Obama's cabinet picks and top White House staff gives us an overview of what the new president sees as political symmetry for his administration. While it's too early to gauge specific policies of the Obama presidency, it's not too soon to understand that "triangulation" is back.

In Solomon's view, Obama is a 'centrist' and 'pragmatic' politician who will seek and occupy the center of political gravity. He quotes his biographer David Mendell, who describes Obama as

an exceptionally gifted politician who, throughout his life, has been able to make people of wildly divergent vantage points see in him exactly what they want to see.

Criticizing progressives for projecting their worldviews on Obama, he is concerned that the progressive base will again be frustrated and demobilized under Obama's triangulation, just as it had been under Clinton's in the 1990s.

Therefore, progressive grassroots need to move the center to the left, by reframing crucial policy choices, such as health care, Afghanistan, etc. This approach is very similar to what progressives like John Nichols recommend, and suffers from the same deficiencies.

Reframing of course is reminiscent of Lakoff's approach to framing and his Rockridge Institute, which had to close last year due to a lack of funds. The whole notion that the Left can change policies by changing public opinion through reframing issues has not been very successful, and needs to be fundamentally reconsidered.

Politics in large part is about the concentration and centralization of resources and decision-making power in organizations. Political power is largely organized power, and organizations are structures of power.

Therefore, progressives need to build and strengthen their own organizations and infrastructure more generally, in order to gain greater influence over and ultimately break into centrist and conservative power structures.

In other words, progressives can frame and reframe issues and policies all they want; as long as they don't have the organized power to make credible demands on those in power, all this activity is unlikely to lead to positions of strength, from which more power could be built.

'What Obama Should Read'

Now that's progress! A president who likes to read! After all, it has been known for a long time that George W. Bush did not even read the one-page executive summary of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, only to turn around and trash it in the media.

The Washington Monthly has asked 19 of its favorite writers and thinkers to suggest the books Obama should read. The result is an interesting list of 25 books.

Joel Garreau, fellow at the New America Foundation, recommends The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World by Peter Schwartz, published in 1996. Here is how Garreau summarizes it:

It’s still the most accessible guide to thinking rationally, systematically, and strategically about futures you can’t possibly predict. Scenario planning is the antidote to the kind of futures bravado that caused us to roll into Iraq thinking there was no other possibility but that they’d throw rose petals at our feet. As change accelerates, you’ve got a lot more strange stuff coming at you, Mr. President. This is the conceptual guide on how to prepare.

While coming from a business and consulting perspective, it is good to be reminded of the importance of scenario planning for developing strategies for an unpredictable future.

Why Scale Back Successful 50-State Strategy?

Howard Dean's 50-state strategy has been widely credited not only with effectively strengthening the Democratic Party across the nation, but also with helping Obama win the election. Some say that Obama went so far to tell Dean on election night that he couldn't have won without him.

Dean has just been replaced by Tim Kaine as chair of the DNC. Many believe that once Obama chose Emanuel as his chief of staff, Dean's fate was sealed, given Emanuel's criticism of the 50-state strategy in the past. Dean is clearly disappointed that Obama did not offer him a position in his administration:

"Obviously, it would have been great," Dean said in a telephone interview from his home in Burlington, Vt. "But it's not happening and the president has the right to name his own Cabinet, so I'm not going to work in the government it looks like."

But why has Kaine now decided, after first praising the 50-state strategy for its overwhelming success, that it would be scaled back? Because

You never should just do what you did yesterday.

This unconvincing justification has been appropriately mocked in the blogosphere.

But what might be the real reason? Perhaps Obama wants to leverage his extensive campaign network to gain greater control over the Democratic Party, which could be similar to the approach he took after winning the primary when he asked donors not to fund 527s so that his campaign could further centralize control over organization and messaging?