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Just six months in, Barack Obamaâs political future is at stake on many fronts, according to the nationâs political press corps. To cite three examples pulled from yesterdayâs New York Times alone: Tom Friedman concludes his latest column on Afghanistan with the thought that Obama has âbet his presidencyâ on nation-building efforts there. Christopher Drew declares that Obama put âhis political capital on the lineâ by opposing new spending on the F-22 fighter jet. And Sheryl Gay Stolberg, in her update on the health care debate, states that Obama is at a âpivotal momentâ that âcould shape the rest of his presidency.â
âCould,â of course, being the operative weasel word. All this breathless coverage reminds us that there is, indeed, a lot of stuff going on in the world. And much of that stuffâhealth care reform, military spending, and the war in Afghanistan includedâreally is important. But the frame the media is applying here, in which every event and action is interpreted for the effect it might have on future events and actions, leaves a lot to be desired.
For one thing, speaking strictly as a matter of political strategy, not every issueânot even most issuesâcan be crucial. Media coverage can leave a reader with the impression that Washington, D.C. is the Lake Wobegon of politics, where every skirmish is of above-average significance. This tendency is part of the mediaâs commercial interest in hyping the issues of the day, but also of the natural human inclination to act as if the topics that matter most to us also matter most to everyone else. Iâm grateful that we have celebrity columnists like Friedman working to keep a spotlight on Afghanistan, and to be fair to him, most of his column yesterday concerned the merits of our new approach there. But is it really credible that Obama has âbet his presidencyâ on this issue? Americans seem to have other things on their mind at the moment.
Of course, it could turn out that a misguided approach to Afghanistan eventually undermines Obama. Or it could be that the outcome of the health care debate sets him on a course that lasts the next four, or the next eight, years. But thatâs the thingâwe donât know, and political journalists donât know any better than the rest of us, because they canât predict events in the future any better than the rest of us. Thereâs a theory circulating that if Obama doesnât win a decisive victory on health care, his presidency will play out much as Bill Clintonâs did. But the president who occupied the White House in between them offers a useful counter-example. In his first months of office, George W. Bush succeeded in getting his top legislative prioritiesâtax cuts and education reformâpassed in short order. Of course, the events that would define his legacy hadnât yet occurred. Will Obamaâs presidency play out more like Clintonâs, or more like Bushâs? Nobody knows.
All this tea-leaf reading might be harmless enough, a way for journalists to claim some bragging rights when some of their predictionsâas some predictions mustâturn out to be correct. But besides being of limited value to readers, this approach depends on an understanding of politics that canât really justify the exalted treatment we give it in our news media. To return to the subject of narrative, stories like Stolbergâs mark a point on the dramatic arc of the presidency. This event matters, they say, because it foreshadows what will come later. Itâs all part of the grand stage that is Washington. But the precise course of any politicianâs careerâeven a politician who commands the sort of public attention Obama doesâis ultimately the concern of a niche audience. The course of public policy (to use an unfortunately bland phrase), on the other hand, is a matter of wide importance.
To put it another way: whether Obama gets Afghanistan right matters for many reasons, but its impact on his presidency is among the least important of them. The outcome of the health care debate matters to the presidentâs political legacy, but it matters much more, in the aggregate, to Americans who need health care they can afford. And thatâs the reality that gets obscured when the press goes searching for pivotal moments.
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