The Whirlwind of Obama's Ambiguity - David Paul Kuhn

January 6, 2010
The Whirlwind of Obama's Ambiguity
By David Paul Kuhn

Barack Obama has long compared himself to a Rorschach test. Liberals saw a progressive savior. Moderates saw a practical change agent. Americans saw promise of a post-partisan, post-racially divisive era. The projection was notably always considered positive.

But Rorschach tests were meant to measure a negative condition. And after nearly one year in office the Rorschach politician is, as president, facing the whirlwind of his ambiguity.

We still don't know this president's core. His guiding maxims are elusive. He has refused to draw principled redlines on the big fights or invest himself deeply in those fights. We have yet to see the grit in the man.

As liberal New York Rep. Anthony Weiner put it to Politico, Obama failed to express "at the outset" his "values" on some of the "important issues" of the times, like health care. Consequentially, "most people in the country don't know what you want and don't feel they should rally to your side."

Candidate Obama did not need to define those values. He won the presidency as the disciplined surfer on a wave of discontent. But that wave has shifted against him. And without a clear sense of Obama's core principles, he is nearly rudderless to push on against the tide.

The enigmatic politician was once a magnet for nebulous emotions like "change" and "unity." Obama is now a president complicated by competing senses of "disappointment" and "division." Obama has struggled to consummate the very themes that rocketed him from a state legislator to president in four years. And that failure has shifted many voters to the polar view. It's often this way with unfulfilled expectations. So goes the modern political sausage grinder. But Obama's team insisted he was different. He was "change you can believe in."

Leaders from almost every bloc of Obama's base—black, gay, labor, Hispanic and liberal constituencies—now increasingly accuse Obama of failing to fully champion the change they most desire: from gay rights to immigration reform to Obama's refusal to fight for a more progressive health care bill.

-snip-

Yet Obama's 2008 image is not lost, only sullied. The Pew Research Center found last month that 53 percent of adults still believe Obama has a "new approach" to Washington politics. But two-thirds believed in that "new approach" last February. Importantly, independents belief has fallen from 62 to 48 percent over that period.

-snip-

The American mind cannot escape the gap between expectations and reality. And because of Obama's Rorschach persona, neither has he.