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Obama an elusive target for Republicans

Much of the scuttlebutt in the past week has been about Obama’s Nobel Prize and the predictable responses to it. Two other, more substantive developments suggest that—for all his so-called celebrity status—Obama may prove a more elusive target for Republicans than they anticipate.

The first are reports that General Motors, which had been written off for dead after a taxpayer-supported bailout, has stabilized its market share (approximately 20 percent in the U.S.) and made at least the first steps toward modernizing its corporate culture.  This probably won’t change anyone’s mind about the propriety of government bailouts—I myself recently bought a new Honda—but at very least it should help the Democrats in Michigan, a state they won easily last time but might not do so again.

The second is the debate on Afghanistan where Obama, rather than going with the extremes in either direction, is floating a “third way” trial balloon, suggesting that we might maintain (or even increase) our troop presence but focus on fighting Al Qaeda and perhaps even admit some Taliban presence in the Afghan government. Again, this may or may not be good policy—neither Al Qaeda nor the Taliban wear identifying T-shirts, and it’s not clear they can easily be told apart—but it is a creative approach different from that emanating from the ideologues in either party.

None of this means Obama was right about either decision, or that the GOP can’t, or shouldn’t, give him hell about both of them. The point is that an incumbent president can change the terms of the debate very quickly, and Republicans who were planning to run against one person, in 2010 or later, may find themselves running against someone different overnight.

Something to keep in mind as the barbs about the Nobel Committee and other amusing but insubstantial events keep flying.

October 13, 2009 at 1:53 pm

--Michael Livingston

Tags: Barack Obama

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