Where It All Went Wrong

Ron Suskind's new book and the competing theories for Obama's collapse.

Theories about Obama's failings are currently in seasonWhy is the White House so desperate to take down Ron Suskind's new book? The juiciest early leaks from Confidence Men, Suskind's history of the Obama economic team's first shambling years, have been dribbling out for years. The White House as a "boy's club"? ABC News was there in 2009. Larry Summers belittling Christina Romer? Jonathan Alter, no enemy of the administration, had that in The Promise, published in 2010.

Still, it is Ron Suskind who gets a full-on rebuff from the White House press secretary—Jay Carney accusing the author of lifting from Wikipedia! In 2011, shocking tales about What Went Wrong for Obama have become the norm. Confidence Men wouldn't bruise so blue if the White House hadn't spent the last several months reading theories of how its decisions have wrecked the economy and, not incidentally, the Democratic Party.

This season of wistful Obama time-warping was kicked off by two articles. The first: Frank Rich's July 3 cover story in New York, accusing the president of missing a "true populist moment" and failing to prosecute Wall Street crimes. The second: Drew Westen's Aug. 6 New York Times column about the president's missing "passion." All other What Went Wrongs flow from these two epics. (Sorry, Taibbi.) Suskind's book is the third epic and the one that makes the most sense. Examine the three big What What Wrong arguments and you see why.

Why didn't he tell more stories?

Westen, a professor of psychology at Emory and author of The Political Brain, focused on rhetoric, diagnosing Obama the way Westen has diagnosed Democrats for years: Obama didn't tell stories. He didn't name villains. Westen suggested a speech:

This was a disaster, but it was not a natural disaster. It was made by Wall Street gamblers who speculated with your lives and futures. It was made by conservative extremists who told us that if we just eliminated regulations and rewarded greed and recklessness, it would all work out. But it didn't work out.

"He really bungled it in 2009," muses George Lakoff, the influential linguistic adviser to Democrats. "He didn't understand how communication works." A million forehead-slapping progressives read Westen, wept over their coffee, and asked why Obama never did this. Well, at the crucial moment, he did. And there were a lot of crucial moments. On Jan. 29, 2009, he called Wall Street bonuses "shameful." He again criticized high executive compensation on Feb. 4. In a speech about housing on Feb. 18, he complained about "dishonest lenders who acted irresponsibly." Before a joint session of Congress on Feb. 24, he said: "This time, CEOs won't be able to use taxpayer money to pad their paychecks or buy fancy drapes or disappear on a private jet." On Feb. 25, he said that "executives who violate the public trust must be held responsible." In a town hall on March 18, a town hall on March 19, a press conference on March 24, and a town hall on March 26, he condemned … well, you get the idea. The point is, he thwacked de-regulation and Wall Street almost weekly in his first three months.

One former White House adviser tells me that Westen's column hit home because Obama could have hit harder. Sure enough, when he attacked business greed, Obama liked to use a particular phrase—"Wall Street and Washington"—to name the enemy. That was less direct than Westen suggested, but it was also accurate. No fair description of the crisis could leave out the role that swollen and crooked Fannie and Freddie played in letting it happen. Obama basically gave the speeches progressives wanted him to give, but presidential speeches don't matter like they used to.

Why didn't he work around Congress?

This critique brings the right and left together in song. "Nobody—and I mean nobody—was talking about how weak the presidency supposedly is before Barack Obama was inaugurated," wrote Salon's Glenn Greenwald in August. Obama let the stimulus be "larded" by Congress, wrote Michael Barone. Obama left the health care bill up to Congress, which led to Sen. Max Baucus blowing deadline after deadline. There was supposed to be a bipartisan Baucus bill by May 15, 2009. That bill came out of committee on Oct. 13. The slow-walking of health care reform meant that Scott Brown could campaign against it, win, and end the brief era of the Democratic supermajority in the Senate.

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