A Big Idea

Timothy Egan

Timothy Egan on American politics and life, as seen from the West.

Grow a spine. Flex some muscle. Man up!

In Twitter-speak, the advice to President Obama from his disheartened liberal base is to bulk up on the political equivalent of steroids, something to make this most cerebral of presidents more ripped and less reserved. They want “Bring It On, the Sequel”: let Republicans deny unemployment benefits for two million people at Christmastime while giving Mr. Potter and his ilk another tax break.

Then the president can get rid of “don’t ask, don’t tell” by executive order, just as Harry Truman integrated the armed forces. He can dare Republicans to dismantle a new health care law that prevents insurance companies from dropping people when they get sick. He can insist that the fledgling consumer protection bureau, the only bulwark in the federal government against predatory lenders and credit card carnivores, be fully funded and staffed.

Not. Gonna. Happen. One of the most revealing film clips from Obama’s past shows him at school when he became the first black president of a fractious Harvard Law Review. Young Obama, the college-age compromiser, looks eerily like middle-age Obama trying to be bipartisan at midterm. And there he was on Monday, giving in to tax cuts for all in return for a few favors for the middle class.

But if he can’t change his personal nature, he can change the master narrative of his presidency. To do that, he needs a Big Idea. One of the mystifying paradoxes of Obama is how this gifted writer, this eloquent communicator, has not been able to come up with a simple, overarching governing frame.

For Teddy Roosevelt, fighting monopoly capitalists at a time when the gap between the rich and everyone else was almost as great as it is today, it was the Square Deal — leverage for the little guy. Franklin Roosevelt expanded his cousin’s social contract with the New Deal, which carried enough populist punch to help a New York politician with a moneyed accent win the heartland four times.

John F. Kennedy had his New Frontier — pitch-perfect for the strutting Jet Age. And Ronald Reagan countered middle-class anxiety with Morning in America. Bill Clinton found his footing after the Oklahoma City bombings, rallying the country to oppose the forces of hate.

Loser presidents, the single-termers, stand for nothing, but have opinions on everything. Think of Jimmy Carter or George H. W. Bush and only mush comes to mind.

The verdict on Obama is still out. His approval rating is in the mid-40s, not bad for a man who took control during the worst economy since the Depression. Most polls have him higher than Clinton and Reagan at a similar time in office, and higher since the election revealed the heartless, corporate-owned face of his opposition. Truman’s party lost 55 seats in the House at midterm. Clinton gave up 54. They were dead men. One-termers. Until they weren’t.

Obama’s achievements — saving the auto industry, fixing much of the runaway financial sector, passing a health care law that, once fully understood, will be seen as historic — are not insignificant. They are monumental, even.

But presidents do not win their way into voters’ hearts with legislative triumphs. Most Americans don’t know that they got a one-time tax cut from Obama, or that the bailouts may end up making money for the Treasury. The near-term goals — a free-trade agreement with South Korea, a nuclear arms treaty with Russia — will do nothing to change views. Weekly up and down score sheets are for the political-industrial complex.

A Big Idea, understood by all, would provide a narrative framework for the upcoming skirmishes with Republicans, whose only idea is to keep rich people from paying their fair share of taxes. That, and denying Obama a second term.

What may have lulled Obama into his thoughtful stupor was the historic magnitude of his election. Yet being the first black president is not an idea. Hope is not a theme. Change We Can Believe In is not a governing principle.

The Big Idea does not need to be grandiose. Simple is better. It has to show that Obama is on the side of average Americans, who, in turn, must believe the country is moving in the right direction despite a painful economy.

He hit a few good notes on Monday in his speech to college students in North Carolina. Evoking American motivation to greatness after the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik in 1957, Obama said, “Our generation’s Sputnik moment is next.” What’s needed, he said, is “to do what Americans have always been known for: building, innovating, making things.”

The words, the sentiment, the right impulses are all there in the White House. It’s up to the writer-president to put them together.

This Op-Ed column appeared in print on December 7, 2010.