August angst

The August Congressional recess provided lawmakers with time for fact-finding missions to Australia's Great Barrier Reef and many other places. Our courageous members of Congress braved the wilds of places such as Munich, Saint-Tropez and Hong Kong. Exactly what facts need finding in Munich that a senator or representative would be capable of finding?

Travel to Tokyo, Rio and St. Petersburg reduced the amount of time lawmakers spent back home. That meant fewer townhall meetings with constituents, which cut down on the shouting, the pushing and shoving, and the too frequent flighting and arrests. Taxpayers benefitted indirectly through reduced police overtime costs.

Missouri law enforcement officials forced the cancellation of a townhall meeting after bloodshed at an earlier meeting. Who knows how many noses were not bloodied because the local congressman was in Mumbai and not Massachusetts or Oslo and not Oklahoma?

The most unpleasant fact found in August was that President Obama and the Democratic leadership have lost control not just of the healthcare reform debate. They have lost control of the destiny of the Obama administration. A Maryland congresswoman shouted that her constituents are fascists. A Michigan congressman labeled protesters as being affiliated with the "Ku Klux Klan." Several lawmakers accused their constituents of a variety of nefarious motives. The speaker of the House claimed that people protesting over healthcare were "un-American."

These devils ARE in somebody's details

Democratic and White House spokespersons claimed that most of the concerns that constituents were shouting about were not part of the legislation being considered. But almost all of the supposedly extreme provisions were in some healthcare reform plan, somewhere, still floating around and supported by one or a few fringe lawmakers. Because the Democrats have not agreed to a single bill - and the House bill is largely a product of the left-leaning House leadership - these noxious provisions hang on and grab the attention of the extremists on the other side. The debate breaks down into charges, counter-charges and recriminations between the loony left and the wacko right.

When that happened last month, the Democratic leaders and their constituents broke apart. The constituents (who suddenly become known as voters in election years) decided to hold off, to let things cool down, to wait to see exactly which claims are valid. The Democratic leaders decided to push ahead, to get this issue behind, to force a vote through parliamentary procedure if Republicans will not yield.

Bush presidency parallels?

After Hurricane Katrina, I wrote that the myth of President George Bush's management skills - which underpinned the public's tentative support for the war in Iraq - had been washed away with the flooding of New Orleans: "Where was President Bush in the critical first hours? Does anyone believe that President Clinton would have been silent? President Reagan? In the end, far fewer may have died than originally feared. The federal rescue effort may have been faster and better than in previous hurricanes. State and local authorities may have caused most of the problems. But we all saw helpless people and we did not see Bush leading. The momentum of the Bush Presidency has been slowed to a stop by the flooding of New Orleans."

The momentum of the Obama presidency has been slowed to a stop by the townhall meetings during the August recess.

Whether the Obama presidency suffers the slow, agonizing downward spiral of the Bush presidency is still to be determined. But the skyward soaring has been brought to earth with a thud. Unless Obama can pull off a remarkable political reinvention, he is headed into a frustrating period of declining influence. People will still admire him. He will still carry hope and the ability to inspire. But he has been unmasked as a president unable to control his own agenda and his own party.

The gap between campaign rhetoric and governing is growing wider, with voters asking questions, raising concerns and wanting Obama to be more cautious. People are asking whether the massive spending plans are necessary or, perhaps, simply ideological?

Denial will be the first reaction. What will follow?

Like Bush, he will not believe it. He will push ahead. And as they did with Bush, people - in their role as voters - will give Obama less leeway. The president will encounter resistance to his efforts sooner than he did just a few months ago. When that happened to Bush, the White House just pushed harder and sought ways to accomplish Bush's goals without public scrutiny and pushback. That worked in Texas.

Obama may adopt Chicago methods and try to bludgeon things through. But what was acceptable intimidation a few months ago will become less and less successful. In Washington, the threat of a beating that is never meted out is more powerful than the beating itself. When you administer a political beating to a guy in Cook County, you threaten his family and their payroll jobs and their friends' jobs, too. The guy almost always gets back in line. Once you beat up a guy in Washington, he starts consolidating his power back home, which is probably not Chicago. There are just not enough congressmen from Chicago to make the bludgeonings work.

Like water dripping out of a leaky bucket, the public's tolerance for intimidation as a tactic will drip away.

The change of heart among the voters back home will come as a too-slow realization to the people in the White House and even more slowly to the men and women on Capital Hill, who must hold the world record for delayed reactions to changes in political direction.

The time for derring-do is over. This is the time for damage control.