By
Dayo Olopade
Barack Obama’s second news conference as president,
held in the East Room of the White House
tonight just six weeks after
the first, did not provide new, meaty policy prescriptions, or
one-liners that make for good primetime television—but it did further
the sense that, in America, there is a man in charge, and he—to
paraphrase a zinger he let rip on one nagging reporter—“knows what he’s
talking about.”
Those who have questioned Obama’s “overexposure” should by now have realized that the president is in the business of leapfrogging inner-Beltway logics and addressing the American people directly. This time around, the president even allowed followup questions from the press corps—another nod to transparency that provided for a bit more clash. On more than one occasion, Obama stood up for himself in the face of confrontational rebuttals, and proved to be as thoughtful and expansive a thinker as we've come to expect—especially in the wake of the intellectually flat-footed President George W. Bush.
Reporters focused primarily on the state of the economy and the president’s budget, which faces a vote in Congress by month’s end. At the end of his remarks—trying to soothe both markets and worried families—he compared the United States, with its complex, often frustrating impediments to legislative action and political reform, to a lumbering ocean liner: “It’s not a speedboat,” he said. “It doesn’t just turn around right away.” That much could also be said of the president's speaking style (lugubrious at times and repetitive at others).
Still, Obama managed to squeeze in the list of his budgetary priorities no less than six times: Health care reform, energy action, investments and reforms in education and an attempt to crack down on long-term government expenditures anchored his “expectations” for the Democratic-led Congress. The real question in weeks ahead is whether the vote on the budget will be framed as a part of the reconciliation process, which bypasses a potential filibuster, or standard procedure, which would require the same, stubborn 60 votes in the Senate (Ezra Klein has a good rundown here).
Congressional arcana aside, that calmly progressive agenda is practically a revolution given the political climate in which America found itself just a year ago. Here was Obama’s key message: "At the end of the day, the best way to bring our deficit down in the long run is not with a budget that continues the very same policies that have led to a narrow prosperity and massive debt. It’s with a budget that leads to broad economic growth by moving from an era of borrow and spend to one where we save and invest."
In a climate where the Dow swings and frantic mattress-stuffing continue apace, it is strange to hear a president speak so confidently about investment. But, while America's fiscal house may be in poor order presently, four or six or eight years down the road, the mess could be even more catastrophic if the US isn't put on the path toward economic strength. Obama claims that includes better educating our children for the 21st century, removing the crushing cost of health care from middle class families and small businesses, and freeing the nation from dirty and dangerous energy consumption. That sentiment—explained repeatedly and well—is driving the White House's actions, and is proof that elections have consequences. At one point, the president tweaked his opponents for not presenting an alternative to his budget because "they know that the biggest driver of long term deficits are the huge health care costs out there that we’re going to have to tackle." That’s right—the notion that health care is a major crisis is, in Obama’s Washington, now the point of departure for political debate.
With that, Obama signaled that the American ocean liner may be just as big, and have just as many rusting parts as it used to, but that the ocean itself is entirely different.
From the fluency with economic policy to the unusual selection of reporters called upon, it may be that the once unthinkable has become routine at the White House. Obama said as much in response to a question about the role race has played in the 60-some days of his presidency. “Right now, the American people are judging me exactly the way I should be judged,” he responded. Just as we've come to accept, without much fanfare, the walking and talking and yes, lecturing of a black president, we may come to expect a measured, adult presence on American television screens, boldly explaining that the government is ready and right for action, and that a little patience—or, to borrow Obama's diction, "persistence"—goes a long way.
—DAYO OLOPADE
Comments