Maybe no one else will remember this one paragraph from this one speech. Then again, that’s what another president from Illinois said about a certain speech he once delivered, and it, ahem, turned out a bit differently in the end.
We should not underestimate the power of the bully pulpit to shape discourse and therefore, ultimately, both culture and policy outcomes. This can happen in a direct fashion, but the second, third and fourth level effects are the more interesting and potentially most powerful. By second level effect I mean the power to place an item on the agenda of the nation, as opposed to the (first level) impact of articulating a particular position on an existing policy question. By third level I mean the ability to frame the way the issue is considered. And by fourth level I mean the power to configure the very bounds of legitimate discourse.
For example, on the issue of gay marriage, a first level effect of the bully pulpit would be to take a pro position on the issue. This alone would have a considerable impact, and Obama has the capacity to cut a decade or two off the time it takes to bring this issue to fruition, notwithstanding the fact that the issue is taking off nowadays quite on its own (and quite without the help of the president).
A third level effect would have to do with the crucial matter of framing the issue. The question of the question – Is this an issue of preserving tradition versus one of basic human rights and justice? – is crucial to the ultimate matter of the policy’s political prospects. To use the most oft-quoted example as illustration, if you call it an estate tax, people support it. Reframe it as a death tax, and support plummets.
Finally, a fourth level effect of the bully pulpit provides for a kind of uber-framing that has the effect of legitimating or delegitimating certain kinds of discourse around an issue. Conservatives, following the pattern of Jackie Onasis, have semi-succeeded in redefining Ronald Reagan as some sort of demi-god, to the point where in America only political cranks could possibly have an unkind word to say about one of our greatest presidents. The fact that he was, in reality, actually one of our most destructive shows the power of this effect. Moving perceptions that far involves legitimating and delegitimating whole lines of thought. Imagine, for example, if Obama began a process of characterizing opponents of gay rights as people with a similar moral standing as slave holders, both of whom are profoundly about denying fundamental human rights to others. Were this ethos to take hold, it would instantly delegitimize the opposing position on the issue, making the legislative victories a cakewalk.
Obama cannot do everything, and without question he has an enormous agenda that has been thrust upon him. With the exceptions of Lincoln and FDR, I doubt any president has been more challenged walking in the door than this one. Moreover, it would do no good for anybody should he succeed on issues like gay marriage, but fail on the economic rescue or war crises. Say hello to President Jeb Bush if that happens.
It’s also absolutely the case that presidents have political capital no less limited than is real capital. What you spend on winning health care you cannot also spend on Iraq.
But, all that said, what if this president were to use the powers of his bully pulpit to reorient public thinking on major issues as dramatically as he began to with respect to life values in his ASU commencement address?
What if Obama profoundly changed the way we think about international relations, international law, international institutions, and America’s place in the world? So much of what we get wrong in this domain is premised on the original sin of thinking we are somehow morally superior to the rest of the planet, and therefore entitled to special treatment. So much of what needs to be done in order to reorient our horrid international politics could be unleashed by a new paradigm with respect to America’s place in the world, and the ensuring rights and privileges we assume should follow from there. A president could take us very far down these paths with thoughtful rhetoric alone.
If he was able to do this, he could also begin to talk sensibly about military spending, as well, particularly given the profound truth – merely waiting to be uttered again by a high level American official, fully fifty years after Eisenhower originally did it – that “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed”.
Of course, the military-industrial complex Ike warned against only got massively bigger and infinitely more clever at stealing from the hungry and the cold over the following half-century. Yet the power to correct this tragedy of greed – there is no other term for it – is magnified in the presidential bully pulpit. Obama may not be willing to spend the political capital to do so. Or – more unfortunate yet – he may not believe in the cause. But were he to take on the role of educator-in-chief on this issue, so much could be accomplished. It is not 1960 anymore, the Cold War is over, and young people in particular seem especially open to new paradigms at this moment.
Another major theme concerns the equitable distribution of wealth inside the country. The right has been incredibly successful at fomenting the Ayn Randian construction which worships selfishness in such great glory that it is enshrined in public policy. the result has been an incredible transfer of money over the last three decades, the decimation of the middle class, and a polarization of wealth that has put us now on par with any well-functioning banana republic one might care to choose. Obama seems completely disinclined toward moving the country on this issue, even away from the worst extremes of Reaganism-Bushism, but imagine what could be accomplished if he starter chastising the malefactors of wealth for their greed? Actually, we don’t have to imagine. It’s been done before, and we already know the salutary effects.
Campaign finance and electoral process is another domain that could produce enormous bang for every buck of political capital spent. By framing the issue as one of invigorating American democracy, Obama could generate enormous pressure leading to reforms it would be ludicrous to resist, generating wholesale enfranchisement of huge swathes of Americans today effectively blocked from voting. This could change forever the politics of this country.
Similarly, so much of where we go wrong in America is rooted in our system of campaign finance. As that screaming radical of the looney left, John McCain, once said, “America gets the best Congress money can buy”. Lots of Americans get enraged about taxes and pork barrel spending, but in doing so they (conveniently) miss the big picture. The problem is way deeper and way more fundamental. If a president were ever to lead on this, we could perhaps break the stranglehold that special interests have, not just on spending, but on policy. Almost every issue domain in American politics would turn out radically different if special interest’s interests were divorced from policy-making.
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