Obama Redefining What It Means To Be A “Strong Leader”?
It’s early days to reach a conclusion about this. But it’s a dynamic worth keeping an eye on, to see where it goes: Obama may be redefining what it means to be seen as a “strong” leader.
The latest ABC News/WaPo poll finds that a surprising 77% think Obama is a “strong leader.” Some 73% think he can be “trusted in a crisis,” and 56% see him as a “good commander in chief of the military.”
At the same time, the public seems to approve of Obama policies that his critics — most prominently, Dick Cheney — have tried to associate with weakness. Seventy one percent approve of his willingness to engage hostile foreign leaders. Fifty three percent back his release of the torture memos. A plurality of 49% support Obama’s decision to nix torture.
Meanwhile, ninety percent credit Obama with being “willing to listen to different points of view” — a sharp contrast with his predecessor, whose single-mindedness and swagger were often hailed by his supporters as a sign of strength.
At a minimum, the public sees Obama as a strong leader despite the fact that his policies and personal attributes are regularly derided by critics as signs of weakness. The question is whether the public sees Obama as strong because of those policies and personal attributes, and whether those perceptions will harden and endure — something that could redefine conventional media definitions of leadership strength.
Some related thoughts from Dan Froomkin.
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I think the real perception that’s hardening and enduring is that the Bush Administration was simply an aberration, not a true alternative governing style. 9/11 allowed them to run riot and do things that no administration had ever done — enshrine torture, mass wiretapping, and indefinite detention as official policy, declare that merely talking to opposing leaders was a diplomatic concession and a sign of weakness. Most of the country is old enough to remember that this was not ever the case before, and therefore is easily able to see how ludicrous it is for Bushies to demand that Obama act exactly like Bush.
Greg – you put your finger here on something of potentially profound importance, I think. In retrospect, if one wanted to create a national atmosphere or consensus which perceived steel-fisted aggressive militarist policies as detrimental to the fundamental values and goals of the majority of American citizens, and as contrary to their notions of what America is or has been or ought to be, then one might well have designed the last eight years to achieve this goal.
The Bush/Cheney administration forwarded, as a self-evident axiom, the idea that the height of leadership was marked by foreign policy machismo along with a relatively dictatorial domestic operation to aid in the realization of that machismo. For all the reasons we know, this strategy and the methods supporting it have been deeply discredited for most Americans.
That comic-book understanding of leadership (”Beware Evil-doers” is a line from The Masked Avenger in Woody Allen’s “Radio Days”) has a very limited shelf-life for anyone not male and 13 years old. Had Bush run an administration more like his father or even like Reagan, it seems certain that this shift in citizen consensus would surely have been delayed.
The Bush/Cheney administration (aided by the extremisms forwarded by movement conservatives and talk radio) have opened the door wide to another version or understanding or definition of capable AMerican leadership of the sort that Obama (or Lincoln or FDR or even Eisenhower for that matter) represents.
This seems to be a quiescent thread, but I want to jump on anyway with a comment about Obama’s leadership. There’s been a lot of distress from the left that he hasn’t been instanteous in going for torture prosecutions and doing a whole host of other things. I think he must be trying to assess the country’s mood and respond accordingly. It’s occurred to me that it’s a little as if we’ve been in a hostage situation for eight years and we’re still not sure it’s really over. We’re nervous–left, center, and right–and he isn’t doing anything sudden that would cause a frightened reaction. Meanwhile, he keeps putting the pieces together to stabilize things and make it possible to rectify a lot of what’s crazy. And people see a constant leader they perceive as strong. It’s calming, which I think bodes well for the long term.
AllButCertain – “Calming” seems as perfect a word as one might choose. And I think it is worth considering how it (and related notions) describe another version of “manliness”. To use some movie cliches (this is American mythology, after all) the slow and quiet Gary Cooper thing as contrasted with the frenetic, loud and boastfulness of Chuck Norris doing Kung Fu. Or, straight ahead as opposed to flying in all directions at once.
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The first has intimations of a responsible, knowing and purposive father while the second carries strong intimations of an angry bully not really very sure of himself. That second set of notions suggests a juvenile level of maturity and it verges on the hysterical, which is perhaps the most classic feminizing derogation (and that tells us why Rove and others have tried to forward the notion that Obama is “trying to do too much at once” and is getting overwhelmed).
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I popped in here to note a headline in the NY Times this morning and point it out as a marker as regards the very interesting thesis Greg advances in this discussion. Your contribution above fits perfectly…. “Obama’s Stand in Auto Crisis Shows Early Resolve”
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The key term there is “resolve”. There were maybe three or four adjectives which the PR types in the Bush white house pushed continually in order to craft a set of notions about Bush and “resolve” was one of them. To see the Times use it to describe Obama seemed very noteworthy to me.
Can always count on you for a thoughtful or useful comment, Bernie. Or a funny one, which is also useful.
Sam Stein put up a good piece on Huffpo early this morning http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/29/obamas-first-100-days-10_n_192603.html about 10 Obama achievements that have largely flown under the radar. He ends with the tone he’s set, mentions the improving poll numbers on the country’s direction, and says, “Minus that calming influence, these numbers don’t exist and neither does the Obama agenda as we know it.”
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