Stars

I agree with Matt Yglesias: Mark Halperin's list of things Obama is doing "worse than you think" is lame enough that anyone reading it would get the conclusion that Obama is actually doing quite well.  (And what kind of "report card" is centered on listing things that one is doing better and worse than everyone thinks, anyway?  Gosh, Mrs. Citizen, everyone thinks that Nancy is great at math but really she's only getting an 85 in that subject -- but look!  We all thought she was flunking reading, but she's getting an 80!  That one goes on the "good" list, right?).

At any rate, Matt's comments are on Halperin's "doesn't give me good parties to go to" portion of the list.  I'll tackle #5, "Creating Stars."  This is, oddly enough, not a timely reference to the Arthur C. Clark clunker 2010 or the awful movie made from it, but a complaint that:

There are lots of talented, experienced people across the board in the Executive Branch, but almost no one has emerged as a figure of national standing to help the President convey his agenda to the public.

To which I'd say: as opposed to which administration?  Every once in a while a cabinet secretary achieves some public standing that she didn't have before serving in that role, but mostly the national stars, such as Powell for Bush, Cheney for G.H.W. Bush, or Clinton for Obama, are already nationally known going in.

 

Mostly, however, this is just a silly category.  If policies are successful, anyone will be able to sell them to the public; if they blow up, no amount of "national standing" will help.  That's the story of Donald Rumsfeld.  By the time of "Mission Accomplished," Rumsfeld appeared to be a star of the Bush administration -- but when things went bad in Iraq, his star power turned out to mean squat.  More generally, Haleperin's items are heavy on p.r. (three or four of the five bad items), which is almost entirely ephemeral.  Obama won't be popular or not because of how well he and his team spins; he'll be popular or not based on reality: does the economy recover?  Are terrorist attacks successful?  Are Americans being killed in Afghanistan and Iraq?  In the long run, presidents may be able to manage expectations about these things to some extent (and they may be punished or rewarded for real events over which they have little or no control), but good public relations really isn't what makes or breaks a presidency.