AZspot

To say that the American people are angry is an understatement. The political brain of Americans today reflects a volatile mixture of fear and fury, and when you mix those together, you get an explosion. The only question at this point is how to mitigate the damage when the bomb detonates in November. The bad news is that it’s too late for Democrats to do what would have been both good policy and good politics (and what the House actually did do), namely to pass a major jobs bill when it was clear that the private sector couldn’t keep Americans employed. The “Obama Doctrine” should have been that Americans who want to work and have the ability to contribute to our productivity as a nation should have the right to work, and that if the private sector can’t meet the demand for jobs, we have plenty of roads and bridges to fix, new energy sources to develop and manufacture, and schools to build and renovate so our kids and workers returning for training can compete in the 21st century global economy. From having spent much of the last four years testing messages on a range of issues, from immigration to taxes and deficits, I can say with some certainty that nothing John Boehner or Eric Cantor could say could come within 30 points of generating the enthusiasm — particularly among swing voters — of a message that began, “We don’t have a shortage of work ethic in this country, we have a shortage of work.” That message resonates across the political spectrum. And it isn’t even the strongest message we’ve tested in the last weeks or months that beats back the toughest deficit-cutting language the other side can muster. Drew Westen ☀

To his credit, the president pushed through a stimulus bill that prevented us from falling off the cliff. But he refused, as FDR had done, to brand the crisis that had occurred as the direct result of Republican ideology and governance. He refused to explain to the American people why deficit spending in times of a crashing downward spiral is a virtue and not a vice. And he refused to call out — let alone even answer — Republican politicians attacking him from his first days of office for deficit spending, although they had just created as much debt in 8 years as in the previous 200-plus with enormous tax breaks for the wealthy and a trillion dollar war “off the books,” neither of which they even considered paying for. As a result, he got little credit for having prevented another Great Depression, and now there are two competing narratives, that the stimulus saved us and that it was a waste of taxpayers’ money. With all the talk of hope and change, the American people were expecting something very different from the new Democratic majority. The president insisted on bipartisan solutions for problems Republican “solutions” had created, for which the imaginary bipartisans on the other side have not, and will not, cast a single vote. Making matters worse, at a time when Americans are — and should be — deeply suspicious of big business, these “bipartisan” solutions consistently seem to gravitate toward that golden mean between the public interest and the special interests (in this case, of the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries). Drew Westen ☀

And I’m tired of the pseudo-psychological explanations about sex addictions that can be cured with a few weeks of rehab, the same way every politician who gets himself caught diddling with an intern or another man suddenly discovers his inner alcoholic, sexaholic, or whatever he can find a brief course of “rehab” for so he can earn a second chance. Just for the record, you can Google the science behind those “addiction” programs (my personal favorite is the guy who gets caught for dallying with male prostitutes and checks himself into an alcoholic rehab center — as if getting drunk brings out your inner homosexual), and you won’t have an easy time locating it. The whole “sex addiction” literature is a scientific shambles. Drew Westen ☀

The White House allowed the health care narrative to be all about process, and the process the American people saw wasn’t pretty. It scared seniors, who worried what would happen to their Medicare. It scared workers, who worried about what would happen to the plans their unions had negotiated so hard for in lieu of salaries. It scared middle class Americans with good health insurance plans, who had—and have—no idea whether their plans will be deemed—if not today, in three or four years—Cadillacs, which will first be taxed and then discontinued, leaving them with exactly what Frank Luntz told them it would leave them with: a bureaucrat between them and their doctor. And worst of all, it seemed to most Americans that the reason they were being asked to make such potentially big sacrifices was so that health insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and millionaires wouldn’t have to. It seemed not only risky but unfair. Drew Westen ☀

The “Cadillac tax” is a bad idea, both as policy and as politics, for one simple reason: because it isn’t a Cadillac tax at all. It’s a Taurus tax. Quality health insurance plans that give people genuine choices are not a luxury for the rich (although most people who can afford them elect them when given the chance—which perhaps should tell us something). They are the plans business owners and university benefits officers choose for themselves if their organizations can afford it, and they are the plans workers negotiate if they have a union behind them. Why? Because Americans want choice, and they want good care, and the only way to get good care is to be able to choose where you go for that care. And that’s precisely what this tax is designed to take away. Drew Westen ☀

Somehow the president has managed to turn a base of new and progressive voters he himself energized like no one else could in 2008 into the likely stay-at-home voters of 2010, souring an entire generation of young people to the political process. It isn’t hard for them to see that the winners seem to be the same no matter who the voters select (Wall Street, big oil, big Pharma, the insurance industry). In fact, the president’s leadership style, combined with the Democratic Congress’s penchant for making its sausage in public and producing new and usually more tasteless recipes every day, has had a very high toll far from the left: smack in the center of the political spectrum. What’s costing the president and courting danger for Democrats in 2010 isn’t a question of left or right, because the president has accomplished the remarkable feat of both demoralizing the base and completely turning off voters in the center. If this were an ideological issue, that would not be the case. He would be holding either the middle or the left, not losing both. What’s costing the president are three things: a laissez faire style of leadership that appears weak and removed to everyday Americans, a failure to articulate and defend any coherent ideological position on virtually anything, and a widespread perception that he cares more about special interests like bank, credit card, oil and coal, and health and pharmaceutical companies than he does about the people they are shafting. Drew Westen ☀

Genuine leadership means setting the agenda. It means taking tough stands. It means telling people the truth forcefully and evocatively in a way that makes them want to listen and act. It means drawing lines in the sand when you must, and refusing to compromise your values even if you have to compromise on some of the policies born of those values when you have no other choice. It means fighting for what you believe in and taking on powerful vested interests when people’s lives and livelihoods are at stake. And it means looking backward at the past so you don’t make the same mistakes, looking sideways at alternatives so you know your options, and using that vision to move the nation forward. Leadership is a quality Barack Obama showed on the campaign trail. It is a quality he has failed to show as president. Drew Westen ☀

…I wouldn’t mind hearing about values from our current president. And more importantly, I wouldn’t mind seeing him act on them, whatever they are. No, compromise doesn’t count as a value. And personally, I’m over “let me talk about personal responsibility in front of a black audience because everybody likes that.” It was inspiring the first couple of times, but it’s starting to reinforce white people’s stereotypes that all black people need a talking-to about personal responsibility. Speaking of personal responsibility, let’s set aside for a moment the fact that Obama brought on the fellas who crashed the economy to fix it and hasn’t fired or investigated anyone who caused the Great Recession or who continues to suck bonuses from the blood of our 401(k)s. That would be looking backward, and we’re supposed to look forward. And forget about the wiretapping, the extraordinary renditions, all that civil liberties stuff. That would be looking forward, and we’re supposed to be looking away. No one really knows why he’s taken the positions he has on those issues because the reasons are all either classified or locked up in some jail cell in some country far away with duct tape over its mouth. Drew Westen ☀

The scientific data suggest two strategies that are, however, effective in addressing unconscious prejudices that can turn up the volume on other concerns. The first is to remind people of their conscious values, which tend to be our better angels on race. The average American strongly agrees with the sentiment that, “In America, we don’t discriminate against anybody because of their color, ethnicity, or anything else”—whether they see that as a statement of actuality or aspiration. And they mean it—and will act on it, as long as their conscious values are active and guiding their behavior. The second is to speak directly to the conflict between those values and the attitudes we hold at some level that we wish we didn’t—like the way most of us would respond to the immigration issue if it were about pasty Englishmen instead of brown-skinned Mexicans. It’s about talking to people like grown-ups. That’s the message the White House and Democrats should have taken away from the speech then-candidate Obama delivered last March in Philadelphia that saved his candidacy, rather than pretending that Jimmy Carter doesn’t know what racism looks like. Drew Westen ☀

The American people did not vote for “bipartisan” solutions that split the difference between the failed ideology of the last eight years, which continues to cost thousands of people their jobs and homes every day, and the change the President and the super-majorities they elected in both houses of Congress promised. Drew Westen ☀

When it comes to paying for health care, if someone’s taxes need to go up, Americans have a much easier time imagining it being the super-rich who have benefited disproportionately from the massive redistribution of wealth that has occurred over the last 30 years, or the artificially low capital gains rate on those of disproportionate wealth rich who have not only been paying less for speculating than for working but for speculating with our security. And they have a much easier time imagining taxing products such as fast foods and cigarettes that bear a direct relation to the cost of health care in America, and demanding concessions from the industries that have led to the spiraling costs of health care in the first place, most importantly the pharmaceutical and health insurance industries. Drew Westen ☀

The President is offering the public a series of stories that are all missing half the plot and half the characters—namely, the part of the plot that says how we got where we are (e.g., 50 million without health insurance, half a million losing their jobs every month, 1 in 8 homes foreclosed or in danger of foreclosure, 70% of our energy coming from regimes hostile to us and gas prices on the rise again even as demand has fallen)—and the characters responsible for those gaps in the stories. He is trying to sell health care reform without calling out the drug and insurance industries, whose profits have soared at our expense. He is trying to sell financial reform without pointing his finger squarely at the banks and speculators who bankrupted us. He is trying to sell energy reform without blaming the oil companies who racked up record profits as Americans racked up record debts paying for their gas. And he is trying to sell all of these essential reforms without mentioning that there’s been a party—not just nameless “naysayers”—that has been fighting every one of these reforms for decades. When the President does feel compelled on occasion to mention the people who not only put their interests above the public interest but are now funding the lobbyists and attack ads aimed at derailing his agenda, he speaks in passive voice about how “mistakes were made,” or refers to unnamed “naysayers.” The President’s hero is Abraham Lincoln, but it is the Lincoln who penned the Gettysburg Address, not the Lincoln who ordered Union troops to fire. Drew Westen ☀

On every issue we have studied, from abortion to immigration, a well-refined progressive narrative, designed to speak to the hearts and minds of the American people in their language, not the language of activists and advocates, can beat the strongest of conservative messages nationally by 15-20 points. Even in the Deep South, where I live, we can win by strong double digits with common sense, center-left messages on issues such as abortion. There is no reason for progressives or Democrats to play defense on these issues. We should be playing offense, putting Republican ideologues on the ropes, where they are used to having Democrats. Drew Westen ☀

…the events of the last few months should have etched indelibly on the national psyche the conclusion that laissez faire, robber-baron capitalism—the Great Idea of the conservative movement—has proven a dreadful failure. We have painfully relearned in this century the lesson our grandparents learned during the Great Depression of the last, that the appropriate alternative to an oppressive state is not a negligent, impotent one. George W. Bush and the Republican Congress did not abandon the legacy of Ronald Reagan. They fulfilled it. Reagan branded in the popular imagination the notion that “government is the problem, not the solution.” Bush and his ideological counterparts in Congress took that philosophy to its logical conclusion, dismantling as many of the safeguards and safety nets put in place since the New Deal as they had time to dismantle. They preached the gospel of unregulated greed, arguing that what’s good for unscrupulous lenders and multinationals en route to Dubai is good for America, and we all paid the price. That should be the Great Lesson of the first Great Depression of the 21st Century. Drew Westen ☀