This word ‘communicator.’ I do not think it means what you think it means. #rsrh

There was something about this Susan Estrich column on the death throes of the health care rationing bill that bugged me – and no, it wasn’t its basic point:

So what went wrong? Every Democrat I talk to has a different answer or, rather, a different person to blame. It was Nancy Pelosi’s fault or Harry Reid’s or Rahm Emanuel’s. Should have made a bigger show of reaching out to Republicans; shouldn’t have cut those deals behind closed doors. It is, I am told every day, a communications problem.

Years ago, when I was working in politics, I had a meeting with our pollsters that I’ll never forget. After a particularly detailed (and negative) survey, one of the guys who had been polling for years leaned over to me and said, “We have a very big problem. People just don’t like our candidate.” Not an ideological problem. Not a problem with his experience or positions. They just didn’t like him.

Of course, you can’t tell your candidate that the people don’t like him. So we looked at each other and shook our heads. There is only one way to translate that result. Candidate, we said to him, the people don’t know you.

The White House is trying to treat the problem with its health care proposal as a communications problem.

I happen to agree with the basic point, you see.  At any rate, I finally figured out what was bugging me about it, and it was this sentence:

Barack Obama is a great communicator.

As somebody once said of Pompey the Great: ‘Great’ as compared to whom?

Technical skill at reading a speech I’ll grant – although if I hear one more version of the Why I Am The Synthesis of The Two Sides To Whatever Problem Is Bugging You People This Week I may start a tequila IV drip – but he doesn’t particularly impress when it comes to off-the-cuff remarks, unscripted conversations, or just plain personal moments.  I’m not even sure if he’s had any of the latter where we could see him.  For that matter, the President has consciously adopted a policy of simply not being available to communicate, even with the White House press corps.  Declarations and pronouncements, sure.  Two-way interaction?  Not so much.

If I were still of the President’s party, this would trouble me.  Since I’m not, I’m just going to not put a copy on this directly on RedState and hope that’s enough to keep the Other Side from really noticing the problem.

Moe Lane

Welcome to the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, Susan Estrich.

Getting hate mail for this yet?

Well, it’s still pretty early in the morning.  Plenty of time for your compatriots to address your heresy properly:

Mother Knows Best

The president is “not familiar” with the bill. No one can explain how it will work yet, as Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., told a contentious town meeting. There are various plans, and negotiations are still in the early stages.

But whatever it is, we should be for it.

Am I missing something?

Yes. He won, he knows best, so “shut up.”

Moe Lane

PS: No, actually, this is precisely who you voted for, Susan Estrich.  While you were all the while mocking the people who were telling you differently.  So if you’re annoyed, first be annoyed at yourself for your incredulity, then at the administration for taking advantage of it – and then go back at being annoyed at yourself, rather than bring my side into the summer of your discontent.  Enabling you is no more on our agenda than it is on the President’s.

Crossposted to RedState.

Shorter Susan Estrich: ‘Save us from ourselves.’

Susan Estrich is very unhappy that apparently nothing stands between the Democrats and their desires right now:

Imagine how different things might be right now if there were a Republican Party. I mean a party like the one led by Ronald Reagan, George Bush or Newt Gingrich; a party with a program, a single set of talking points, and the technological and communications advantages to get their message across. That kind of Republican Party. The kind that doesn’t exist right now.

…which is particularly funny, given that she’s been actively trying to put the Democratic party in this position for the last decade or so. Not that this was exactly what she wanted: what she wanted was probably more like the 110th Congress, only with a Democratic President. That way those awful Republicans would still be in a position to block the Democrats’ worst enthusiasms, while still gnashing their teeth over all that legislation being sent over by the White House. Put another way, she clearly still wants anything besides the Democratic party to take the blame for the current mess; alas for her, if 2008 demonstrated nothing else it demonstrated that the Republican party is not in charge. And it’s been remarkably united in refusing to take on responsibility without also taking on an equal amount of power.

As for vacuums… nature abhors them, and what Estrich is “complaining*” about is a self-correcting feature. What’s confusing her on that point is probably that ‘populist’ movements on the Left are exclusively a top-down affair these days (the recent CWFP embarrassment is a pretty good example of same): artificially creating a popular response to a perceived outrage pretty much requires that somebody organize the community from the start to get the desired response. The concept that the true leaders of a movement would naturally come from the movement themselves is just too tainted with free market thinking for our academic and pundit classes… which causes them to discount societal trends that are not being shepherded from the start. Essentially, everybody’s looking in the wrong place.

No, not “everybody except me is looking in the wrong place.” I don’t have a clue who the new leaders of the Republican party for the 2010 elections are going to be, either. It’s just that I’m going to wait a bit until it actually becomes steam engine time. Whether or not a Democratic pundit wants to nag my party into solving her problems for her.

Moe Lane

*Scare quotes because if the economic situation resolved itself tomorrow she’d jump up and down for joy at our supposed destruction. She’s only concerned now because she’s afraid, not to mention as pessimistic about the ability of the Democratic Party to fix things as I am.

Crossposted to RedState.