The problem when the president is the policy...

Wed, 07/08/2009 - 10:25am

You could tell it wasn't going well. The conversations with Medvedev and Putin were tense, the body language awkward. The speech at the New Economic School laid an egg. The press seemed bored with the visit of America's rock star president. And as for real results, well, there weren't any. 

Looking for explanations in an article Clifford Levy and Ellen Barry in today's New York Times called "In Russia, Obama's Star Power Does Not Translate," a range of possible answers were rolled out: Russians are jaded, Russians don't go for U.S. political posturing, Obama's speeches don't translate well, and, according to one person who ought to understand politics, a Russian circus designer, "Russians are the smartest people in the world." (A fact they have carefully hidden behind a veil of hundreds of years of economic and political catastrophe.)

Somehow, the formula that has been working for Barack Obama since early in 2007 suddenly seems to have gone cold. It is not enough simply to be him or to roll out Michelle and the girls (all of whom joined him in Moscow...unlike say, his top two State Department officials). What's more, it's not just Russia. Oh sure, the press still swoon in most corners of the world and crowds and political leaders still get all fluttery when first exposed to America's charming, thoughtful, intelligent, young president. But we are now starting to see what happens when being Barack Obama is not enough. We are now starting to see the shortcomings of the new administration's approach wherein the president has actually been the policy. 

He has said we had changed and offered himself as evidence. He has been what we have offered to friends in terms of visits, access and calls. He has been the headline grabber, the spokesperson, the new voice of America. He has enabled the administration to take inherited policies and wrap them in Obama-paper with Obama-glitter all over it and all of a sudden, the old was repackaged into appearing new. Where there have been differences, as with the concept of engagement, the change has been sold as a difference between him and his predecessor, with his speeches describing what was new and the possibility of interacting with him being the potential pay-off.

This played big during his early trips overseas, the novelty value was high and the eagerness to move on from the painful prior era was great. At the G20 meeting, at the Summit of the Americas, in Cairo, the concept of "president as policy" seemed to be working. But now we see where it is not. Not in Russia. Not with the Iranians who are happy to accept engagement and anything else that will be given to them but no strings, please Not with Hugo Chavez, who hammed it up with Obama in Trinidad but led his misfit chorus in reflexively hammering the United States after the coup in Honduras. Certainly not in North Korea.

It seems that having the president as policy works best with the people who are pre-disposed to like us and to some extent with the young and the disenfranchised. But with the hard cases, with our enemies, it falls painfully and dangerously flat. 

In these instances, the new president is discovering that something much more than personal diplomacy and smile from the genuinely appealing Obama clan is needed.  In these instances, we are going to need to go back to the drawing board and do the grunt work of foreign policy, the tough negotiations, the nuanced position changes, the threats, the cajoling. It's a very different game from American politics and, in fact, is often completely unconnected to it. What works here, very often does not play at all overseas.

There is a problem with this new reality. It requires a coordinated, multi-tiered, high-functioning foreign policy establishment. It needs the State Department to be in a central role. It needs the NSC to work both as a policy development and policy implementation mechanism and the National Security Advisor to be seen and respected...like the Secretary of State...as key advisors. It requires that the foreign policy of the United States is not centered too heavily either the president or the executive office of the president -- although the president will always remain the ultimate key.  It is perfectly appropriate for the president to be part of the product, part of the rewards offered, and the mastermind...but he needs to move beyond campaign mode to something new. It is much akin to the entrepreneur of a successful company recognizing that for the company to grow further, to become a mature organization, he is going to need a mature structure that depends less on him and more on delegation of power to effective lieutenants and their teams.

We're not there yet. The secretary of state and the State Department have been visibly marginalized.  She has become a kind of behind the scenes player. She's not on the Sunday morning shows. The president or the vice president handles the big media assignments (often not sounding exactly like they were on the same page). The National Security Advisor, for all his personal strengths, is viewed as a bit of a lost cause five months into the presidency. One of his predecessors in the job said to me when asked whether he viewed General Jones as failing in the job, "to me, on that issue, where there is smoke, there is fire." Tom Donilon, Jones's deputy, is seen to be managing the NSC process. Denis McDonough and Mark Lippert, Obama confidantes, are seen to be working closely with him and his inner office team (Rahm Emanuel, the VP, David Axelrod, Greg Craig and others) to play the leading role in shaping policy. 

Clearly neither Hillary Clinton nor Jim Jones is a weak person. But all power in the U.S. national security apparatus flows from the president. And there is no denying that, despite the fact that they show up at work every day and go through the motions, that their roles don't measure up to many of their predecessors and the structure that is emerging suggests problems to come. 

It's time to move out of campaign mode and into governing mode. It's time recognize that it really does take a big team of empowered leaders to make the complex foreign policy of the U.S. work and evolve in the right directions. It's time to recognize that it does not reflect badly on the president if we all agree he cannot transform the world single handedly, that however different he may be from his predecessors, that alone is not enough. 

ALEXEY DRUZHININ/AFP/Getty Images

David Rothkopf | Permalink | | Comments? Login or register
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Does Campaign Mode Have an "Off" Switch?

by Zathras on Wed, 07/08/2009 - 2:47pm

Can President Obama move out of campaign mode?

I have wondered that since he was a candidate. He was, in fact, a candidate for some office or other longer than he was an officeholder himself. I understand and appreciate electoral politics, well enough to realize how all-consuming a business it is at the national level today. That is the world Obama comes from. It was also the world George W. Bush came from. Actually, the last President who didn't live in that world at least half of the time was Ronald Reagan, who with an actor's confidence in his personal appeal floated above it even during his campaigns.

John F. Kennedy told Dean Acheson after his election that he'd spent so much time with people who could help him become President that he didn't know enough people who could help him be President. Kennedy's formal campaign for the White House lasted less than a year; Obama's lasted more than two. On one level, it's jarring to see the White House send David Axelrod, a professional campaign operative, to the Sunday talk shows to explain (or at least to evade questions about) American policy toward Iran. Not even Bush used Karl Rove for that kind of thing. The problem is that Obama knows Axelrod, likes him, trusts him as a comrade in the defining episode in his public life, his Presidential campaign. Hillary Clinton, not so much.

The fact is that Obama does know plenty of people who can help him be President. He's just not using them. It occurs to me that much media commentary about Obama's self-confidence is really about his self-assuredness. These two qualities are not the same thing. Obama does indeed project a calm, unruffled demeanor nearly all the time, but that doesn't mean he is confident at all in his ability to direct a large group of people he does not know well, in policy areas he does not know thoroughly himself, and produce policy that reflects his view of himself. He has ample talent and experience as a coordinator, but has yet to display the gift of command.

A final point: this isn't just about Obama's comfort level with the various people in his administration. A lot of it is about his image -- how important its care and maintenance is to him, compared to the other things he has to worry about as President. The evidence we have to date is that Obama's image is not only extremely important to him but is something he doesn't trust to people or departments out of his sight. This orientation served him well as a candidate, because message and image discipline is all-important in American electoral politics. As a President, though, Obama may not fully appreciate that the impression he makes on the American people will depend on how well the country is doing. That's something no amount of personal attention from him or his trusted campaign aides can control.

All reports indicate it was a

by blue13326 on Wed, 07/08/2009 - 8:08pm

All reports indicate it was a fairly miserable failure, and it's hard to believe we have a guy in charge who is so naive as to fall for the Medvedev/Putin good cop/bad cop routine; that doesn't even work on cop shows anymore.

And with the economy crumbling along with Obama's approval ratings (under 50% for the first time in bellweather Ohio, consumer confidence hitting record lows), I bet a lot of people are wondering what's so important about cutting nuclear stockpiles with everything else that's going on. The battle over the second stimulus is going to be very interesting.

David has plainly

by MDrew on Wed, 07/08/2009 - 11:45pm

been itching to publish this one for a while. So is your unnamed ex-NSA Rice or is it Hadley? As for Clinton, she should assert herself. Tough, though, when you have to negotiate those uneven White House front steps.

Sorry, I forgot.

by MDrew on Wed, 07/08/2009 - 11:49pm

It's probably Kissinger.

Or maybe...

by djrothkopf on Thu, 07/09/2009 - 7:39am

There are lots and lots of ex-national security advisors to choose from. Buy my book, "Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of America Power." They are all listed in there.

Or maybe

by MDrew on Thu, 07/09/2009 - 3:56pm

you could name your source or not print anonymous bromides.

Different Perspective

by Mark Morris on Thu, 07/09/2009 - 9:41am

While I believe that there is a kernel of truth to what Mr. Rothkopf has written here, there have been some real successes in the president's policy toward Russia. First, in spite of true Russian skepticism of the American mindset, there has been a distinct change in tone towards the US with the new (US) administration. Front and center in this is Russia's willingness to allow transit over Russian soil of US troops bound for Afghanistan. This is a groundbreaking development, not unlike Russia's willingness to allow international oversight and funding for radioactive material and disposal in the nineties - and yes, I do know how that went - it's not a perfect program by far. The fact is, one year ago, Russia's tone toward the US was almost warlike. I would describe the relationship between the US and Russia during the Bush administration as being tense at best, almost cold-war like at worst. The fact remains that no matter what Obama does or says and no matter how good of a diplomatic chess game he brings to the ground in Moscow, the Russians are now 20 years into their latest socioeconomic experiment - hypercapitalism. It has been more corrupt than the American system, it has definitely been less democratic than the US, but even while that wild west was going on both in Moscow and to a much more limited degree, the US, Americans were pushing for less government intervention into financial markets and more freedom for corporations to do what they want and it has been an absolute disaster - wars, vanishing assets, astronomical scandals. Do Putin and Medvedev care about "freedom" and "democracy" in the short term? Of course they don't... not really. They're part of the Russian elite in a grab-all-you can free-for-all system. Just keeping some semblance of a lid on it is an impressive feat. On the other hand, I believe that they do love their country and they are looking for a long term economic and political model that will launch Russia into greatness. To American taste, that might be a swaggery, mustachioed, testosterone-fueled type of greatness, but they do want to build a more capable country. Quite frankly, the American model just doesn't deliver on that account if you look at the successes of China and the Pacific rim in recent years - not to mention our own corruption and selling ourselves out. While the US does value political and social freedoms, we got that part right - it's going to be a while before Russia is developed enough to bring that into some sort of loose equilibrium. In the meantime, they want to assemble political and economic systems that work. They look at the US and they see Wall Street collapsing, Hollywood shallowness and rampant corruption in a country that other people can only dream about. How can they love us if even we don't respect ourselves (and again I cite Wall Street, Hollywood, overall political and social paralysis in the US) President Obama is just one person. He can't undo some of the things that I just discussed here. Meanwhile, with some of the key foreign policy decisions that Russia is faced with - dealing with breakaway republics (which they have done in a ham fisted manner) and facing anti-missile batteries that disturb the Nash equilibrium of MAD (you would be twitchy too if your country has been the country of choice for every loose screw military dictator to invade for the last two thousand years). These last two critical foreign policy factors are core to our mutual relationship and the fact is, we're never going to agree on them. Arms reduction? Check. US troops traveling through Russia? Impressive check. Overall tone of meeting- could be improved, I just don't see how it would matter...

Little of Substance Here

by Dan Kervick on Thu, 07/09/2009 - 11:54am

I'm baffled about the substance of this post. What is it about? Were there preliminary expectations that this Russia trip was going to produce more results than the two agreements on nukes and flyover rights? Those two agreements were prepared through precisely the kind of "grunt work" David Rothkopf extols. I see no indications that the White House was planning to bowl the Russians over either with Obama's big crowd "star power" or small group personal charm, so the alleged failure of charisma effects to produce results seems to be only a failure toward a goal of Rothkopf's own construction.

Indeed, the fact that Obama spent the last night with his family instead of having dinner with Putin seems to indicate that the White House approached the trip with a deliberate strategy of avoiding the Bush mistake of relying too much on personal connections, and tried to keep things on a fairly businesslike plane. Obama was not out to schmooze the Russians.

Shaw's reflections on the body language of the meetings underline the impression that Obama never intended to approach his relationship with Russia through a charisma onslaught. As Shaw implicitly indicates, there are reasons to be reassured that Obama's foreign policy toward Russia does not appear to be based on the establishment of some kind of mystical bro-love bond between Obama and Putin or Obama and Medvedev.

Part of the purpose of this trip, I imagine, was for Obama to acquire an in-person sense of the nature of the power relations between Medvedev and Putin, and of the people around them, and to set a good initial tone for the next four or eight years of US-Russia relations, during which time any initial rock star allures of interpersoanl war fuzzies can be expected to fade rapidly. It wasn't about the Obama rock star "tour", although that might have been the expectation of some in the traveling US press corps.

The rest of Rothkopf's complaints about the organization of Obama's foreign policy team sail over my head. It stands to reason that now that the presidency is filled by a strong and competent leader rather than a weak, confused and ill-equipped door mat like George Bush, we are not going to see the devolvement of US foreign policy into the radical delegation of authority and embarrassing public scheming, infighting, battling and manipulations of prima donna subordinates that were characteristic of the Bush presidency. There are Obama policies I support and policies I don't. But given what I understand to be Obama's agenda, he seems to be moving that agenda along at a reasonably healthy clip. What precise failures is David Rothkopf complaining about? Does he think the SoS and NSA should have a more prominent role just for the sake of appearances, or because the administration would have accomplished more of its goals if they took a larger role?

Isn't it obvious?

by MDrew on Thu, 07/09/2009 - 5:41pm

It's about what a complete zero-substance lightweight pretty-boy Obama is and how they have absolutely no serious foreign policy agenda or process and how ridiculous he and his entire team are for thinking they can just go around to different countries and get whatever they want just by force of his personality and personal narrative! God, can't you read?

The problem when the president is the policy...

by Jeffboste on Thu, 07/09/2009 - 1:39pm

Has Obama lost his magic touch?

http://www.youpolls.com/details.asp?pid=5705

.

hmm. i see the

by jjh722 on Thu, 07/09/2009 - 2:07pm

hmm. i see the point--obviously most countries actions won't be determined by barry's smile, but i dont think he's going to move out of campaign mode. they are so focused on the message and visual presentation of the president that they might as well be campaigning. however, i think they have taken to the idea that he can project a message to the publics of the world and have a major effect over the span of 4 or 8 years. that's why they're unlikely to let go of the public message. that doesn't mean they shouldn't allow that state dept shouldn't be moving forward on negotiations wherever they are needed.