Is Obama better at being the underdog?
OPINION - As the economy recovers over the next year, the president can be well-positioned to take credit for the peaks and troughs of the business cycle...
In the game of poker, the way you play depends heavily on the size of your chip stack. The player with the most chips has the power, and can change the game in any way he wishes. If you’re the one with the short stack, you must carefully negotiate your way through difficult terrain in order to avoid being crushed. Some players, illogically, are more comfortable with a short stack of chips. So, even when they’re leading, they slowly allow more aggressive players to eat away at them until their timid behavior becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
In 2008, President Obama had all the chips. As a Democratic president with a Senate and House being controlled by his own party, he was fully prepared to dominate the game. His liberal base expected nothing less of their political champion, hoping he could make his way through Washington with a sledgehammer.
Instead, Obama tiptoed where he should have stomped. He backed down where he was expected to stand strong. He compromised where he should have been a bit more stubborn.Now, the liberals are angry at him for it, and the Republicans have seized the opportunity. His kindness has been taken for weakness, for his uncompassionate enemies (who wouldn’t give unemployment benefits to the poor unless they received tax cuts for the rich) smell blood in the water. By expecting Republicans to be fair, Obama underestimated the degree to which he has been thrust into the middle of racial and political warfare.
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This creates a brand new reality for President Obama as we enter 2011. As the poker player who is most comfortable with the fewest chips, our president is now in the position he would have probably been happy with from the beginning: He has no choice but to compromise, and his “reaching across the aisle” skills will be tested like never before. Simply put, he must work with a Congress that doesn’t like him very much and deal with a group of politicians who’ve built an entire political base by disrespecting him.
The problem is that President Obama is in terrain unexplored by any president before him. No one has ever been the first black president of the United States, particularly during one of the toughest economic crises in American history. The brand of hard ball Republicans are playing with President Obama is not something that would have been allowed during the Clinton administration. Republicans will continue to use his race as a weakness, as they attempt to paint President Obama as the most radical president in history.
The Republicans may also work to portray the president as a corrupt politician. Coming out of the questionable political terrain of Chicago, there’s surely something in President Obama’s background that the Republicans can use to smear him as he approaches re-election. Given that Republicans now have the power to issue subpoenas, don’t be surprised if some kind of “Obama-gate” controversy emerges within the next few months.
But in politics as in poker, there is a benefit to being the underdog. President Obama has spent most of his life making a dollar out of 15 cents. He is an expert at building bridges. If there is anyone who can make calls to key Republicans and emerge as the balanced centrist our nation loves to elect, it is Barack Obama.
Also, as the economy recovers over the next year, the president can be well-positioned to take credit for the peaks and troughs of the business cycle. If Obama were a white man, he’d be a shoe-in for a second term, but we all know the rules change when you are black.
I spoke with Professor Miriam Harris, an Associate Professor of American Studies at Macalester College, who feels that President Obama must temper his desire for re-election by remembering his commitment to those elected him in the first place.
“Moving to the center might make sense in this new environment. But he should be cognizant of his base,” said Professor Harris. “I don’t think anyone from the Republican Party is going to support him in 2012, and he might lose Democrats. That’s real.”
This is going to be a tough year for President Obama and he knows that. Newfound Republican power is an opportunity for the president, given that the energy that got Republicans elected in the mid-terms is not likely to continue into the 2012 presidential election. After watching the Republicans continue the same gridlock that plagues Capitol Hill on a regular basis, voters will hopefully come back to their senses.
For President Obama, the Republicans have a package of political trickery reserved primarily for a black president. The world already perceives black men as being deviant, radical and incompetent. So, the public’s capacity to receive and believe negative information about our president is higher than it would be if he were a white guy. So, given that Obama’s chips are down, the terrain has changed, and Republicans are newly energized, we can expect 2011 to be a year unlike any other.
Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition and the initiator of the National Conversation on Race. For more information, please visit BoyceWatkins.com>
