The bad news: Barack Obama has begun to believe his own spin about his biggest problem in 2010 being a lack of opportunities to explain himself. The good news: 2011 looks like a banner year for the Obamateurism feature here at Hot Air. Not only will Obama spend even more time campaigning in the upcoming year, but he will also keep the same Cabinet in place that helped provoke voters into kicking his party out of control of the House:
Don’t expect major shake ups in the Cabinet next year as President Barack Obama gears up for his reelection campaign, senior White House advisers said Sunday.
“I don’t expect, quite honestly, big changes,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” He added, “We’ve had a — a very capable and — and good cabinet that has helped move the president’s agenda forward. I think there’s obviously a lot that has to be done at Treasury to implement financial reform [and] at [the Department of Health and Human Services] to implement health care reform. And I think we have a very talented team.” …
But top adviser Valerie Jarrett said Obama will take a different approach to governing in the new year, spending more time mixing and mingling with the public.
In an interview on NBC’s “Meet The Press,” Jarrett said Obama is concerned that he’s spending too much time in Washington.
“He often says that this is his biggest regret is that when he took office, because of the crisis that was presented to him, he had to spend almost every waking hour in Washington focusing very hard on finding a resolution. And what he missed sorely was the engagement with the American people,” Jarrett said.
Obama didn’t exactly have a drought of face time with the public. Whether he appeared on The View, Oprah, The Tonight Show, or on scores of television news interviews as well as actual campaign appearances, Obama made himself nearly ubiquitous in the media. Instead of connecting with the electorate, the constant media appearances left voters with the impression of a dilettante presidency, one in which the Chief Executive allowed the White House to operate on auto-pilot — or worse, Pelosi-pilot.
One might have expected Obama to prepare for the 2012 election campaign with a show of executive energy, taking the reins and demonstrating leadership. The White House provides a forum of strength for incumbents, after all, and it would allow Obama to appear above the relative bickering of the various Republican hopefuls for the 2012 nomination. Instead, Obama will dive right into the same morass and let himself descend into the campaign fight a full year earlier than necessary, while at the same time perpetuating the impression he has left so far that he’d rather do anything than actually govern.
Likewise, Obama is missing out on an important opportunity for a clean start with voters by keeping his Cabinet intact. The midterms obviously showed that the American electorate has been highly dissatisfied with the first two years of Obama’s term, even if his job-approval ratings didn’t already make that clear. Changing the team not only acknowledges that political reality, it gives Obama a chance to look and act presidential, while refining his policy direction after the stinging rebuke delivered in November. This looks more like a shrug, as if Obama doesn’t really care what voters think of him or his administration, or can’t be bothered to act on it. That reinforces the notion that Obama has little interest in actual governance — and that perhaps his Cabinet officers are really running the show and he can’t afford to switch horses.
If these strategic decisions are a result of putting David Plouffe back in charge of the political operation at the White House, then it shows that Obama should have reached for more experienced hands in his political crisis.
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