Field of Dashed Dreams
By MAUREEN DOWD
August 16, 2011
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The president was in “Afternoon of a Faun” mode, a rural deity playing on his
panpipes in the woods. Then, suddenly, he stood very still as he sensed
electoral danger.
After assuring Obama that she was a supporter, an Iowa mother named Emily asked
the president at a town hall at the Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah what had
gone wrong.
Standing in a setting that was Martha Stewart-perfect — a red barn with an
American flag, surrounded by white pines, red cedars and pink zinnias — the
president looked breezy in khakis and white shirt. But he seemed to tense up as
Emily spoke.
“So when you ran for office you built a tremendous amount of trust with the
American people, that you seemed like someone who wouldn’t move the bar on us,”
she said. “And it seems, especially in the last year, as if your negotiating
tactics have sort of cut away at that trust by compromising some key principles
that we believed in, like repealing the tax cut, not fighting harder for
single-payer. Even Social Security and Medicare seemed on the line when we were
dealing with the debt ceiling. So I’m just curious, moving forward, what
prevents you from taking a harder negotiating stance, being that it seems that
the Republicans are taking a really hard stance?”
The president defended himself with a tinge of resignation: If the crazed
bullies put a gun to your head, you must surrender.
“Now, I know that people would like to say ‘Well, just do something to get
these guys under control,’ ” he told Emily, adding: “You don’t want to reward
unreasonableness. Look, I get that. But sometimes you’ve got to make choices in
order to do what’s best for the country at that particular moment.”
The answer must have seemed lame even to Obama because, on the spur of the
moment, he felt backed into doing what many in his White House and party wish
he had done long ago. He told Emily he would put forward “a very specific plan
to boost the economy, to create jobs and to control our deficit.” (But not
until September.)
Driving through Midwest cornfields in his opaque, black, custom-made, $1.1
million “Matrix” bus, our opaque president found himself in The Field of Dashed
Dreams. If you don’t build it, they may not come.
Dubuque’s Telegraph Herald published a front-page editorial, suggesting to the
president that he could have skipped the campaign-style trip and “sent the
savings to Dubuque County and Northwest Illinois, which were inundated by flash
floods less than three weeks ago” but didn’t get federal assistance.
Obama spent Tuesday here in Peosta squirreled away in rural economic forums; he
said afterward that they talked about such things as cows grazing next to solar
panels and “helping farms manage manure in creative ways.” The president made
his sobering case that America is still great while Gov. Rick Perry barreled
past on his own bus, breaking creative new ground in volatility.
As Obama did dressage, Perry galloped through Iowa like an unbroken stallion in
danger of cracking a leg.
The Texas governor called the president “the greatest threat to our country”
and questioned his patriotism and sense of duty. The former Air Force pilot
said the military and veterans would prefer a commander in chief who had been
in uniform.
Perry said Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, would commit a
“treasonous” act if he “prints more money” and threatened Lee Marvin justice.
“We would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas,” he said.
Why do conservatives always have to brand people traitors? Why can’t they just
say “You’re mistaken”?
By the end of the day, it was a barroom brawl, with Karl Rove telling Fox News
that it was not “presidential” to call the Fed chief, appointed by the second
President Bush, a traitor. (When Team W. calls you a yahoo, you’re in trouble.)
Obama batted away the Texan, as did Jay Carney, the White House spokesman, who
told me: “We may disagree with our political opponents, but we certainly think
they’re all patriots — even those who wanted to secede from the union.”
While Perry was playing the retro trigger-happy cowboy, Obama was playing the
retro henpecked husband.
In Cannon Falls, Minn., the president compared negotiating with House
Republicans to negotiating with his wife.
“In my house,” Obama noted, “if I said, ‘You know, Michelle, honey, we got to
cut back, so we’re going to have you stop shopping completely. You can’t buy
shoes; you can’t buy dresses; but I’m keeping my golf clubs.’ You know, that
wouldn’t go over so well.”
In Decorah, he said: “Everybody cannot get 100 percent of what they want. Now,
for those of you who are married, there is an analogy here. I basically let
Michelle have 90 percent of what she wants. But, at a certain point, I have to
draw the line and say, ‘Give me my little 10 percent.’ ”
Maybe Michelle should be the one negotiating with the Republicans.
