Obama will admit on Sunday’s episode of 60 Minutes that “leadership isn’t just legislation.” Barry is still terribly confused on what happened this past Tuesday. Communication on his legislation was not the issue, it was his legislation itself that frustrated most Americans.
Instead of attempting to discredit this absurdity spewing forth from Obama, we should be reading in to the spin being issued out of the West Wing.
First, Obama is trying to keep his base intact. If he were to admit that the electoral failures were due to his legislative agenda, he would be admitting that he and his ideas are the sole problem that Democrats have when it comes to winning elections. This would also signal that he is taking the Clinton approach post-94 midterms by way of saying “I should probably tone down a little bit, I’m getting carried away with myself.” Obama knows that if he loses his progressive base, he will be threatened on the campaign trail in 2012. And historically speaking, that doesn’t work out so well for sitting Presidents.
Second, Barry is shifting the blame to faceless folks. How many people in America can name Communications folks that operate inside the beltway other than Robert Gibbs? These communication folks being blamed by Obama in his post-mortem analysis are just faceless bogeyman that don’t exist. It’s much easier to create a fictitious reason for failure than to accept something that has real consequences. And it protects a lot of folks when people are looking for heads to chop off after a massive failure.
And third, it casts an image around Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid that they should continue to serve in their leadership roles. While most parties toss out their leaders after such catastrophic failures, Pelosi and Reid are attempting to defy odds and keep their jobs. Blaming the failures of communication strategists on getting out the message is one way to say, “it wasn’t my fault.” Pelosi has already announced she will seek the top Dem position in the House, and Reid is expected to do the same in the Senate.
This theme of a “communications failure” will eventually run its course, and by that point, America will have already moved on from what the midterm election results meant. The left only cares that they insulate themselves over the coming weeks from a complete unraveling of their current leadership scheme.
