WaPo's E.J. Dionne Says Obama Needs to Learn From Clinton

Washington Post columnist is happy that former President Bill Clinton has received a good prognosis from his doctor. Dionne believes that President Obama needs a healthy Clinton to advise him because, according to Dionne, the two have a lot in common and Obama could use some good advice.

Dionne observes that both men ran as "unifiers" but faced attacks from Republicans. Dionne also contends that both Obama and Clinton believe that they can use logic to convince their adversaries to shift positions.

Dionne argues that Clinton can help Obama navigate the challenges he now faces as president and to produce a winning "script" for his presidency:

I am pleased that after the scary tidings, Bill Clinton is doing well. And it may turn out to be providential that he burst into the news at precisely this point. It's hard to escape the sense that a young and promising Democratic president is too closely replaying the opening act of another young and promising Democratic president -- and that Republicans need only recite the same lines they came up with 16 years ago.
Obama needs to rewrite the script. And as a script doctor, Bill Clinton has no equal.

The substance of Dionne's essay is not groundbreaking. I have long argued that Obama shares a lot with the Clintons (both Hillary and Bill). What makes the essay extraordinary, however, is that many people in the media, including Dionne, parroted Obama's campaign rhetoric and portrayed him as the antithesis of the Clintons. The Clintons were divisive and insincere; Obama was the honest unifier.

Remember too that when Obama said that voters carry guns and cling to religion because they are "bitter," he singled out Bush and Clinton as the causes of voter frustration. Because he was running against Hillary Clinton, Obama avoided saying anything positive about the Clinton-era, and he marketed himself as an anti-Clinton Democrat.

During the presidential campaign, Dionne never challenged this script in his many articles on Obama, and in many ways he affirmed it. As Obama has moved from candidate to president, however, Dionne has begun portraying him in more complicated terms. In other words, he has approached Obama with the distance one would expect from a journalist.

Isn't It Ironic: E.J. Dionne's Column on Politics, the Media and Obama

E.J. Dionne's latest column makes the interesting claim that conservatives Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich are "winning" national political debates because the right-leaning media regularly reports conservative criticism of Obama, while failing to give equal airtime to left critiques of the president. Dionne argues that this unbalanced news coverage legitimizes rightwing portrayals of Obama as a leftist, socialist, Maoist, Lenninist, Marxist, terrorist, . . . .[Dionne did not really say all of this, but it sounds familiar for some reason].

I describe Dionne's column as ironic because until recently, Dionne himself was an unwavering fan of President Obama. For over a year, Dionne, along with liberal columnists such as Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich, and Eugene Robinson could not find any fault in Obama from a liberal perspective. Meanwhile they heaved loads of critical commentary towards Hillary Clinton and, naturally, John McCain. Now, Dionne criticizes the media for making the same mistake that he and other columnists made in their past coverage of Obama.

I have always doubted and challenged the notion that the news media is liberal. Instead, I believe it is centrist and opportunistic. When Bush was popular, the media bashed Gore and, later, Kerry. When Clinton was popular, the media raked Bush, Sr., Gingrich, Dole, Limbaugh, and the "vast rightwing conspiracy" over the coals. When Reagan was popular, it knocked Carter and Dukakis. While Obama rode (and continues to ride) a wave of popularity, it trashed Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and Sarah Palin.

The media follows Nielsen ratings and money -- not ideology. Because unquestioned adoration of Obama has fallen in popularity, the media wants to stir up attention by citing to and covering conservative critiques of the president. It's all about the dollar, Dionne.

Does E.J. Dionne Believe President Obama "Manipulated" Him?

Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne ranks among President Obama's most ardent media fans. During the Democratic primaries and the national election campaign, almost all of Dionne's weekly columns praised Obama or criticized his political foes. Therefore, if Dionne criticizes Obama -- even if only subtly -- the moment warrants discussion. Dionne's latest column presents such an opportunity.

In his most recent article, Dionne discusses Obama's centrist politics. Dionne argues that in order to build a political coalition to support his policies, Obama employs multiple, perhaps conflicting, messages.

To support his argument, Dionne describes a gathering of media commentators at the White House prior to Obama's recent speech on national security. Dionne's portrayal of the event demonstrates that Obama intentionally retools his message in order to mollify all ideological camps (except for the far right). According to Dionne:

The disturbing aspect of Obama's effort to create [a broad political coalition] is that building it requires him to send rather different messages to its component parts. Playing to several audiences at once can lead to awkward moments.

Last Thursday afternoon, for example, the White House invited in journalists, mostly opinion writers, to sell them on the substance of the president's big speech on Guantanamo and the treatment of detainees.

Unbeknown to the writers until afterward, they had been divided into two groups, one more centrist with a sprinkling of moderate conservatives, the other more liberal. (I was in the liberal group.) The president made an unscheduled appearance at each briefing. As is his way, he charmed both groups.

The idea, as far as I can determine, was to sell the liberal group on those aspects of Obama's plan that are a break from George W. Bush's policies, and to sell the centrist group on the toughness of the president's approach and the fact that it squares with Bush's more moderate moves later in his second term.

Obama's coalition strategy sounds a lot like the "triangulation" moves by Bill Clinton that Democrats feverishly (foolishly?) condemned during the 2008 primaries and unlike the themes of transparency and change that formed such an integral part of his campaign narrative. Perhaps the orchestrated event proves that Obama, like other politicians, employs mixed messages and stages his appearances in order to broaden political support and to win votes and support.

The closing passage of Dionne's essay suggests that the President's secret maneuver caused him discomfort.. According to Dionne, Obama's efforts to maintain smooth relations with so many different ideological groups could backfire:

[E]stablishments have a habit of becoming too confident in their ability to manipulate people and events, and too certain of their own moral righteousness. Obama's political and substantive gifts are undeniable. What he needs to realize are the limits of his own mastery.

Dionne's essay comes across as a very subtle and diplomatic effort of an adoring fan to criticize Obama for manipulating people with shifting rhetoric. Dionne also seems to suggest that Obama needs to take more definitive and consistent stances on policy issues because the "two-step" strategy will have clear limitations. Dionne's analysis shows that scrutiny and support for a politician are not mutually inconsistent concepts. Perhaps other members of the media will soon discover this fact as well.