Obama: the Policy President

David Broder, the conventionally liberal senior political commentator at the Washington Post, has a column offering real insight into how the Obama administration may work. Broder credits his conclusions to an article by William Schambra [picture], director of the Hudson Institute's Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal. According to Schambra, the "sheer ambition" of Obama's legislative agenda and his centralizing authority under a strong White House staff replete with "czars" are evidence "Obama is emphatically a 'policy approach' president.”

For Obama, governing means formulating comprehensive policies that give rational form to large social systems. Long-term, systemic problems such as health care, education, and the environment cannot be solved in small pieces. They must be swallowed whole.

Schambra says this approach began with late 19th-early 20th century progressives who were battling classic interest-group forces. Progressives believed they could apply the new social sciences wisdom to the art of government, and use facts to overcome the ideologies of narrow constituencies. There’s one true path, and the progressives would find it for us.

Obama—a highly intelligent elite university product—isn’t the first president to subscribe to this approach. Jimmy Carter, and especially Bill Clinton, attempted to govern this way. But Obama has made it even more explicit, regularly proclaiming his determination to rely on rational analysis, rather than narrow decisions.

"In one policy area after another," Schambra writes, "from transportation to science, urban policy to auto policy, Obama's formulation is virtually identical: Selfishness or ideological rigidity has led us to look at the problem in isolated pieces. [We must instead] take the long systemic view; and when we finally formulate a uniform national policy supported by empirical and objective data rather than shallow, insular opinion, we will arrive at solutions that are not only more effective but less costly as well."

Broder shows how Obama’s policy approach on energy and health care ran head-on into the politically motivated agendas of his congressional allies, causing Broder to conclude, “Democracy and representative government are a lot messier than the progressives and . . . Obama, want to admit. No wonder they are . . . frustrated.”

To me, it’s a joy to have Broder realize how the Obama group’s supposed monopoly of good planning, of facts, of the truth, might fall before the popular will, as expressed through their democratic representatives.

Government of the people.