Playing It Safe

What do the first six months of Barack Obama's presidency and his agenda's loss of momentum tell us? Perhaps that Americans who seemed so gung-ho for change in 2007 and most of 2008 subtly shifted gears last fall -- and nobody noticed.

Voters demonstrated in the 2006 midterm elections and again last November that they were angry at President Bush and his party and wanted regime change. Republican presidential nominee John McCain, for all of his many fine attributes, wasn't offering what voters wanted. But the electorate's specific appetites -- what the public wanted in terms of change -- may have evolved during the middle of that campaign, not affecting the outcome but transforming the political and public opinion climate in which the new president would have to maneuver.

Last fall, the Lehman Brothers default, the worldwide credit freeze, and the stomach-wrenching stock market plunge created a seminal turning point in modern political and economic history. For years, Americans had heard scolds tell us that we, as a nation and as individuals, were spending too much, saving too little, and hastening the day when the economic sky would fall.

Regardless of what triggered last autumn's financial trauma, it seems to have prompted some significant behavioral changes. Suddenly, Americans are spending less, saving more, and taking a more measured approach to change. One of the most remarkable findings in the last two NBC News/Wall Street Journal polls is that 58 or 59 percent of Americans are more worried about larger deficits and are willing to skip another economic shot in the arm, even if it means a slower recovery; in contrast, only 35 or 36 percent think that the president and Congress should be more worried about boosting the economy, even if it means creating larger budget deficits.

Polls clearly show that Americans want to overhaul our health care system and take measures to combat climate change, but their preference is for the Obama administration to slow down and proceed more methodically. The public's go-slower attitude is coming through not just in surveys but also in focus groups, such as one that Democratic pollster Peter Hart conducted in Towson, Md., recently for the Annenberg Public Policy Center. Columnist Mark Shields, who watched that focus group of a dozen independent voters from behind the glass, notes, "Even those who are rooting for Obama think that he is moving too fast. They feel the nation needs a time-out. They urge him to slow down." Shields quoted one participant as saying, "I hope he has learned that everything does not work at the speed of light," and another as advising that the president "needs to develop a bit of patience."

Another theme that emerged in Hart's focus group was a disenchantment linked to concerns about Obama's leadership, about whether he is strong enough in dealing with others. Hart asked participants to characterize the president's backbone in one word. Strong Obama supporters predictably said "metal" and "steel," but others offered "plastic," "bamboo," "wood," and even "sand."

Those characterizations reminded me of a comment I heard recently from a Democratic lobbyist, who said that Obama had seemed to "outsource" his policy agenda to Congress, specifically to Democrats in Congress. Although that approach is certainly a boon to lobbyists, average Americans see it as meaning that the president is unwilling to roll up his sleeves and dive into the nitty-gritty of getting his agenda enacted into law. Nevertheless, even though the president's job-approval ratings have dropped into the mid-50s, they are still more than double those of the institution to which he delegated his agenda.

To this day, Obama is paying a price for the fact that his economic stimulus package ended up larded with enough questionable goodies to discredit it in the minds of many Americans; for a budget in which he refused to insist on the removal of earmarks; and for a health care package that, to the public, he seems to have only a tangential role in crafting. Americans don't see Obama as taking charge but rather as sending requests.

Americans' tolerance for risk and bold innovation dissipated about 5 million lost jobs ago and when the Dow dropped last fall from almost 12,000 to below 8,000, flattening the retirement savings of millions of people. Now the public's message to Obama seems to be that he should more firmly take charge but at the same time right-size his initiatives to adapt to the realities of a country that has grown both up and more cautious.