It’s not I disagree that in the hands of President Obama conciliatory rhetoric is a ruthless strategy. It’s more that I need some time to flesh out what this means and how it has worked out as intended and how it has worked out kind of by accident.
I think in some instances, it simply hasn’t worked out.
On the whole, though, I do think this provides at least part of an explanation for his strategy and his successes, and I’ve said as much in at least the narrow area of his efforts to negotiate the budget.
Capsulized early on in the insight that Obama doesn’t play 11-dimension chess; he plays poker.
Sometimes it’s the deal; sometimes it’s misreading the risks; sometimes it’s misreading the others’ hands’ sometimes it’s dumb luck.
Always the play is to move the agenda forward.
The rejiggling of alliances in the Middle East is becoming quite striking; today Juan Cole reported that al-Zawahiri has taken an oath of allegiance to the new leader of the Taliban, Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansur and wonders what that means organizationally.
The other thing that is remarkable recently is the US ability to avoid linking issues with other countries. Progress on Syria is not hamstrung by disageements and sanctions on Russia over Ukraine. Russia’s willingness not to link issues is also notable.
I think there are a bunch of world leaders looking at the Republican clown car and deciding that the world is in need of a dose of stability again. Even Europe seems to have looked over the brink too long on Greece and wants a different direction. And China’s has painted itself into a corner on its currency policy at last. But its bold infrastructure policy could be the economic locomotive for the world economy if it can keep that going. I hope that Max Baucus doesn’t have any post-ambassorial career opportunities hanging on certain things he does relative to China. There is no reason for natural competitors to become enemies because of that fact.
Obama is positioned to create a different paradigm for world stability in 17 months if he can see it through. Changing the Iran piece apparently has some potentially positive ripples in a number of directions.
Obama plays poker … but he basically trusts that his opponents are operating from self-interest. He was extremely unprepared for a Republican Party that was willing to cause massive damage to the USA in order to make Obama look bad. He spent all of his first two years, and much of the next four, in vain trying to find some sort of compromise with the GOP. Meanwhile, the GOP leaders were open in their intent to never let Obama have any victory whatsoever, and furthermore by their actions to distort any an all facts to make Obama appear in the worst light possible.
It appears Obama has finally – FINALLY – figured this out after the electoral slaughter last November. For the rest of the Democrats it is essential – if they are to be successful – to treat the GOP as the primary enemy and to assume that everything they do is for the sole purpose of increasing their power. And the plants – like Lieberman – treat them as you would any member of the GOP.
Maybe we’ll return to a cordial, collegial, kind of politics once again. In the distant future. But this is today’s reality.
you’ve fallen into the trap the writer describes, thinking Obama is naive but has finally learned something. To me it defies belief that a Black man raised in the USA who attains the office of president could be naive about opposition.
There are two ways to interpret Obama’s behavior in his first two years in office:
Both of these would look the same from the outside, but I’ve always been inclined ot believe #2 because nothing has ever indicated to me that the President is so stupid that a couple of internet bloggers can outthink him.
Also, the electoral slaughters of the mid-terms are as much the fault of spineless Blue Dogs as the President’s.
Absolutely. I can’t help but think back to the initial Syria accord where we negotiated with Russian and Iran to get all of the chemical weapons out of Syria while not linking that to regime change. At the time, I remember the President and John Kerry being on the receiving end of a lot of ridicule for that deal. I don’t remember the details, but it did seem a little haphazard, but the real story was the remarkable content of the deal, rather than the way we got to it (which was, of course, the shiny object that the media focused on). It didn’t fix Syria and didn’t further our official policy of regime change, but it did remove chemical weapons from a very nasty theater of war, involving several countries that we don’t usually see eye to eye with. I remember thinking at the time how this ridiculed accord could be a watershed moment for US diplomacy. President Obama demonstrated that, at least when he’s talking, if he says he’s negotiating about A, it’s not a proxy for A+B+C; he means A. Iran was part of those talks; we may never know, but I have to believe that the Syrian chemical weapons accord was instrumental in convincing the Supreme Leader in Iran that a bargain was possible – that when President Obama says he wants to talk about the nuclear program, he means he wants to resolve our dispute over the nuclear program, not the nuclear program AND Hezbollah AND Hamas AND meddling in Iraq AND not recognizing Israel’s right to exist, etc.
And you’re absolutely right to point out how remarkable it is that other countries, particularly Russia, are ALSO willing to engage on these issues in isolation. Putin’s situation regarding Ukraine and the Russian economy is poor and deteriorating, and yet outside of its immediate, European, sphere of influence he seems to be perfectly willing to play a constructive role. I doubt any of this would have been possible without Russian cooperation. It’s fascinating. And leaves some reason for hope.
If President Obama can indeed effect a new paradigm for world stability in the next 17 months, I might be able to relax just a little bit with having a President Hillary…
Turns out it was eleventy-dimensional chess all along. Shucks.
I look forward to reading that fleshed out essay. One piece of the puzzle, as Booman knows, is Obama’s background in organizing. He learned there a basic vocabulary and intellectual framework for politics that is still useful to him all these years later.
Thinking about relationships, power, self-interest, negotiation, compromise, strategy and tactics, etc., is all part of how he approaches his current job.
Using conciliatory rhetoric as part of a strategy to either 1) persuade your opponents to become your allies, or 2) force your opponents to look (and act) unreasonable is, if not Organizing 101, then it’s Organizing 201—which is a “course” the young Barack Obama definitely “took” while working for Gamaliel in Chicago in the 1980s.
Seems to me Murray Bowen or Gregory Bateson on the double bind theory has much to offer here; I’ve dreamed for years that we’d elect a president who knew how to put it into practice and I think we have
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_bind
[hope the link works]
Well that would explain why the GOP has gone over the edge, wouldn’t it.
I’m not staking a psychiatric diagnosis on this, just how the communications flow gets structured in interaction but:
Thus, the GOP primary circus.
yes; and ultimately it can cause (and some, e.g. Murray Bowan, might say, it’s the only way we know of right now that can) constructive shift in a polarized frozenly static system, e.g. what you noted about movement in the ME situation.
on second thought “result in” is a better description than “cause”
My comment became a diary … Obama, the Community Organizer as POTUS
The Obama Method is really based on Saul Alinsky’s struggle of the lower class in Chicago and his power based community organizing.