America's Talk Show President

Adam Boulton, Times March 26, 2009

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Where am I?

Barack Obama has become a regular fixture on US television. The President knows that he still has enough novelty value and star power to get the networks to clear their airtime and he's grabbing every chance to dominate the agenda from the bully pulpit.

It is a class act. Although at official events Mr Obama's message is usually scripted and read from teleprompter screens, he can talk his way out of trouble. I was moved to see the President win over US Marines at Camp Lejeune, although he opposed the Iraq war in which 4,000 of their comrades-in-arms lost their lives.

For now, his talk is invariably about the economy. Mr Obama is the most visible new president - not only because he's a great communicator, but because Europe is blaming America for the global economic crisis and looking to Mr Obama to lead the way out it. The President's ubiquity is designed to tell the US that it is in control of its own destiny. He must win this argument if his presidency is to succeed.

Even when the Administration doesn't have the best arguments, or gets badly mauled, the checks and balances of the US Constitution ensure that the country's options are debated at length; considered decisions emerge by a process of attrition. Take Mr Obama's eye-watering, budget-busting budget. It will look very different by the time that Congress has exercised its “power of the purse”, to approve, veto or impose spending and tax proposals.

It is all so different in Britain. When the financial crisis erupted we were instantly reminded that our parliamentary democracy does not entail genuine consultation about what to do. From nationalising Northern Rock to the merger of Lloyds TSB with HBOS and the fiscal stimulus, decisions are enacted by fiat - either thanks to Labour's decisive parliamentary majority or the Governor of the Bank of England's right to intervene. There was nothing to be done once the announcements were made. Public attention moved on to the next emerging danger.

When the credit crunch threatened to topple Anglo-Saxon capitalism in the autumn, the discretionary power enjoyed by the British executive looked like an advantage. Gordon Brown could act while America dithered. It seemed incredible that Republicans in Congress could hold up their President's economic rescue plan.

But Mr Brown's pronouncements did not reverse the recession in spite of the dramatic metaphors thrown around. Meanwhile, the American body politic recognised something that others didn't: this crisis is not an earthquake, Pearl Harbor or even 9/11. The clocks have not all stopped. This is a systemic sickness with unexpected symptoms that will take years to express themselves and be treated. All of us are threatened, but not all in one blow. There is time to talk.

And talk is what America is doing. A cacophony of politicians, officials, economists, business executives, media commentators and cable news channels constantly debate what went wrong, what needs to be done, and whether what's been done is working.

The big reason why John McCain is not president now is that when he suspended his campaign in September at the height of his post-Palin popularity and called the nation to attention to debate the economic situation, he then found nothing to say. Mr Obama shifted his campaign from inspirational rhetoric to battling economic troubles in his acceptance speech in August. He hasn't stopped talking since.

In only two months the new Administration has signed into law the $800billion stimulus package, published a budget that raises the federal deficit to new heights and set out policies for healthcare, housing and the banking system.

The President conceded in advance that not all his plans would work. In particular, proposals from the US Treasury have looked tentative and weak. But there's no hiding failure and on Monday Tim Geithner, the Treasury Secretary, was forced to pacify Wall Street and revisit the Troubled Asset Relief Progam.

The Administration is also taking full ideological advantage of a crisis that calls for big government cheques. As Rahm Emanuel, Mr Obama's chief of staff, warned in November: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste...Things that we had postponed for too long, that were long term, are now immediate and must be dealt with.” Much of the new spending is only loosely linked to boosting the economy now. If not quite ushering in the United Socialist States of America gloatingly detected by some right-wing radio hosts, the President is shifting the economic balance, redistributing wealth by taxing the rich to expand central government support for health, education and welfare.

With anti-spending Republicans to the right of him in Congress and spendthrift Democrats to the left, Mr Obama cannot smuggle his plans through. So he goes on television to argue his case with conversational eloquence.

In Britain, it took until the run-up to Tony Blair's third election victory before new Labour would even use the R word - “redistribution”. Mr Brown has equal difficulty with today's R word - “recession”.

Unlike Mr Brown, the President is not implicated in the decisions that led to this mess and he can shift the horizon convincingly from the pessimism needed to get his stimulus package passed to this week's optimism that “America will emerge from this stronger”.

Having left Mr Geithner to make his first, disastrous TARP presentation on his own, Mr Obama did not make that mistake again, bookending the Treasury Secretary's testimony on AIG, the failed insurance giant, earlier this week with an appearance on 60 Minutes and a White House news conference. Even if the worst happens and Mr Geithner's memory lets him down over approving executive bonuses as it did over paying his taxes, his loss would be a sideshow - in no way comparable to, say, the loss of Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, whom the Prime Minister has left to front the nasty bits of this crisis on his own.

Mr Obama is leading a great American conversation on the economy - jobs, homes and banks. He won't win all the arguments. But this voluble President, and the wisdom of the founding fathers, are together helping the American people to take ownership of their fate with credible plans that have been tested by exhaustive discussion. Britons, meanwhile, must sullenly await what their political masters choose to throw at them.

Adam Boulton is on special assignment for Sky News covering President Obama's first 100 days

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