Obama's Missing Narrative

Drew Westen at the New York Times has a lot to say on the subject of Barack Hussein (link courtesy of the indefatigable @Proudreader).  It is good to see an opinion piece like this in mainstream journalism; though the NYT is hardly a tabloid.

Westen maintains one of Obama's greatest failings as a President is failing to present a simple narrative to the voters and acting upon it. After the GFC,

"...Americans needed their president to tell them a story that made sense of what they had just been through, what caused it, and how it was going to end. They needed to hear that he understood what they were feeling, that he would track down those responsible for their pain and suffering, and that he would restore order and safety."

Westen blames Obama's failure to establish a dialogue with the American people (and therefore his broader failure to re-stabilise the American economy) on a raft of possible reasons. A misinterpretation of the lofty principle of bipartisanship is one. 

Bipartisanship for bipartisanship's sake is utterly ridiculous; a compromise between two groups of morons is likely to be, well, moronic. The reason our adversarial political system values bipartisanship so highly is not because we give a shit whether or politicians get along. It's because generally when the cycle of proposition and disposition is interrupted (something you certainly don't see from either the Republicans or the LNP much nowadays) it is because the issue at hand is so important not even their desperate instinct for nay-saying can override it. The beauty of being (a least somewhat) a successful bipartisan leader is not your ability to compromise. It's the fact that they must be doing the right thing a lot - why else is everyone agreeing with them?

Of course the last paragraph is there for purely academic purposes. Who wants the respect of the current Senate? As Westen succinctly puts:

"...400 people control more of the wealth than 150 million of their fellow Americans... the average middle-class family has seen its income stagnate over the last 30 years while the richest 1 percent has seen its income rise astronomically... only one side in negotiations between workers and their bosses is allowed representation... as political scientists have shown, it is not public opinion but the opinions of the wealthy that predict the votes of the Senate."

I've only scratched the surface of the article, it really is quite compelling. Linking it again for emphasis.