I went walking with a friend last night and we got to talking about Obama’s polling numbers and the general uselessness of trying to project forward to 2012 and his political fortunes. So I went looking.

John Woolley and Gerhard Peters have an excellent site where they publish their work on The American Presidency Project. It’s an absolute treasure trove.  To the subject of approval ratings, we find that Obama’s numbers have moved from a high of 69 points early in his administration to the mid 40s 19 months in (currently 44%).

And what of W?  He entered office with much lower approval numbers, due in large part to the legal fracas surrounding his losing the popular vote but winning the Supreme Court vote: 9/11 handed him a popularity coup sending his approval ratings soaring to 89%.  19 months in his approval ratings had settled back to 68% and by the mid-term elections were closer to Obama’s current numbers at 48%.  At the end, only 34% approved of Bush’s performance.

Clinton, despite his manifest personal troubles entered office with a 58% approval rating and left with a 66% rating, astonishing given the rise of the conservative attack machine during his administration. Only Reagan and Bush the Elder managed the same trick. 19 months in his approval rating had also dropped, oddly to 42%, essentially the same as Obama’s.  At the time of his re-election, his approval ratings stood at 58%.

Bush Senior’s popularity curve looks like a roller coaster.  He entered office at 51% and left at 56%.  As was true with his son, his ratings soared to 82% during Desert Storm, seemingly proving that America loves a tough guy, at least for awhile.

And what of the Lion of the Right?  Reagan took over from a President suffering 34% approval ratings, due to many things not the least of which was the Iranian Hostage Debacle.  Despite the fact that Reagan won the electoral vote going away, he entered office with an approval rating of 51%.  At the 19 month mark his approval ratings stood EXACTLY where Obama’s do, 44%.  At his re-election, his popularity stood at 61%, roughly the same as Clinton’s.

Conclusions?  The first is what investment prospectuses always tell you: Past performance is not indication of future performance.  This has to be one of the most common, most insidious decision-faults going: looking at data about the past (data, by definition is always about the past) and using it to project the future.  Project is actually an apt descriptor, as it is an exercise in projecting our hopes, dreams, fears, fobias, and preconceptions on the future based on what we see in the past.

A second possible conclusion is the lesson of Bill Clinton: It’s the economy stupid.

It’s been an interesting ten days for Obama (and the rest of us) . . .

Oil rig blows up, sinks, and unleashes a torrent of oil. It is Obama’s fault because he authorized offshore drilling and / or he didn’t respond quickly enough or in the right way.

A couple of FBI guys blow the tail on the Times Square bomber and Emirates doesn’t read their email. Still, in 54 hours we grab prime suspect number one before he leaves the country, manage not to read him his Miranda rights (that will never happen again) and more arrests have begun in Pakistan and elsewhere. It is Obama’s fault for not being in Time Square to personally apprehend the guy and/or direct the bomb squad, because the FBI lost site of the guy, and because Democrats are soft on terrorists.

“Ahmand in the dinner jacket” comes to town in the middle of the once every five year nuclear non-proliferation summit and makes a spectacle. It’s Obama’s fault for letting him in the country, for suggesting that talking to the guy made sense, for not allowing the Israelis to bomb Iran, for not being tough enough, and for not figuring out a way to isolate Iran even though Russia and China, and we know they do what we want, won’t go along.

Arizona detonates the national debate on Immigration (among other things). It’s Obama’s fault for not being born here, for being a socialist, for not having an answer, for not being able to tell Congress what to do and get them to do it, and for being a racist.

Lindsey Graham throws a shoe, first on Climate / Energy and then on Immigration. It’s Obama’s fault for being partisan, for not being able to work with the GOP, for not letting the GOP run everything even though he was the one that got elected by a landslide, for not being born here, and for having an agenda.

American Idol turns in another dumb week, ratings suffer, and Simon Cowell is even harder to fathom and stomach. It is Obama’s fault because Idol is on Fox and everything is Obama’s fault on Fox.

The only thing Obama and the Administration knew they were going to have to deal with going into last week was the UN. They could guess on Arizona. And I didn’t mention all the other inconsequential things like running two wars, trying to figure out if Europe and the Euro are going to incinerate and launch a full scale sovereign debt crisis, hosting the Navy football team, and the hundred other things that show up on his daily briefing that none of us know about.

Point one: To all the people who think Obama isn’t acting fast enough or up to your liking, get a clue. It’s been a bit of a week. In retrospect, the same could possibly have been said about W at Katrina but I still say he handled that one poorly (and there was advanced notice and a lot of it). Yeah, he signed up for the job but if you have to admit there have been a few things vying for his attention.

Point two: Everything is not Obama’s fault. Increase the budget and resources 100 times and a couple of flat foots can still blow a tail (just to pick one item). They got the bad guy. Yeah, not on the first trip wire but the backup systems worked. The same cannot be said for BP. Not to be too tart here, but in response to the conservative meme that government can do nothing well, and certainly nothing as well as private enterprise: I would score this one Government 1, private enterprise 0 in the overall competence category, at least in the HOLY %&^! category for this week.

With great care I draw your attention to an article by Lee Siegel called The Zero-Sacrifice Presidency.

Obama tells us that we can have quality, universal health care without increasing the deficit. He tells us that he intends to have the 9/11 detainees given a fair trial in a civilian court but assures us that the trials will end in convictions. He declares that he will wage war in Afghanistan, but pledges to start bringing the troops home in 18 months. And everybody nevertheless takes these contradictory, irreconcilable statements seriously, as they parse, analyze, scrutinize Obama’s every word for some kind of coherent meaning. The president is like the character Chance in the novel and movie Being There, whose every fatuous utterance was celebrated for its profundity.

Some of Obama’s defenders chastise his exasperated listeners for their inability to detect the president’s “complexity.” But a fantasy of universal popularity that panders to every conflicting interest simultaneously is not the same thing as “complexity.” It is complexity if I tell my wife that I have to move to another state where I know I can find work, but that I realize the strain it will put on our marriage, and that I know the effect it will have on our child, and that I am aware of the consequences of such an attempt if I don’t find a job, having spent so much money on moving and establishing myself in a new place. It is not complexity if I tell my wife that I have to move to another state where I know I can find work, but that I will be back next week, and with lots of money.

In the spirit of full disclosure, my caution is based on two points.  The first is that I was and largely still am an Obama supporter (though I fully admit my reasons may not be rational).  The second is that I made a promise to myself that I would stop writing political screeds. So why this? [Read more →]

It is surely the height of arrogance to propose an expert point of view on Afghanistan unless you have the relevant information.  I don’t have foreign policy or military expertise, but I do have a point of view on decision making, so at the risk of hubris, here goes . . .

One of the problems I see (already I’m in trouble) is that there is no shared problem definition.  That’s pretty typical of a class of puzzles many refer to as “wicked problems.”  No surprise here but this is where the problems begin. In the case of Afghanistan, it’s easy to spot the following problem definitions or frames:

According to one piece I read recently, the problem as defined by Sec Def Gates is, “How do we signal resolve and at the same time signal to the Afghans as well as the American people that this is not an open-ended commitment?”

The problem that General McChrystal sees relates specifically to the mission he’s been tasked with, which is to fight an insurgency.  Current Army doctrine on that topic says protect the civilians from the bad guys, kill bad guys, and work on building a civil society.

The problem many politicians see is “How do I position myself to score political points?”

The problem that many US citizens see is a pointless war.

The problem that many who think about these things see is how to not destroy the finest military our country, and maybe the world, has ever seen because of eight years of nonstop war.

You see where I’m going with this and you can further appreciate that each of these problem definitions, or “frames,” lead the honest thinker in different directions, both in terms of the alternatives you would consider and the trade-offs you might make.

What is true is that the collective we will not arrive at a common definition of the problem.  There was a time that could have happened, indeed did happen, but that time is now long past.  The question President Obama and his aides are asking is both geopolitical as well as simply political: Balancing the perceived need to continue to prosecute two wars in the Middle East while keeping the general populace onboard.  None of the alternatives are appealing on a good day, and it’s no longer a good day.

As a citizen, I have a point of view on what I think should happen.  As someone that thinks daily about quality decision making, I am annoyed by those who think Obama is dithering or prevaracating.  His predecessors had the dual luxury of having starting this war when the public was with them as well as an ideological lens that eliminating competing points of view and the alternatives that came with them.  Obama is not an idealogue when it comes to foreign policy and is genuinely trying to make a quality decision.  What must trouble him is the abiding fear that despite his best intentions, the outcomes will most likely not be good.