Presidential Debate No. 1 : Obama's Regal Style Exposed

It's the day after the debate and the pundits are analyzing and dissecting the whys and wherefores of Obama's poor showing in his debate with Mitt Romney.  It's that he didn't face his opponent.  It's that he felt he was in the lead and he just wanted to sit on that lead.  Obama is really uncomfortable having another person responding to his statements, he much prefers giving a speech.  He didn't want to appear too aggressive.   Mr. Lehrer, the moderator, allowed Mitt to walk all over him.  Etc. etc. etc.

I think they were a little hard on Lehrer, but they may well have been correct in their other observations.  But, I'd like to add one other observation I didn't hear being offered by any other political analyst; namely, the exposure of Obama's imperial style.  In the course of this his first debate in 2012, Obama said something, to the following effect:  If someone has a good idea that they want to bring to his attention, he's willing to listen.

That, in a nut shell, exposes the greatest flaw in Obama's presidency.  He views himself as the regal commander.  Should someone in his realm bring something up that he wasn't aware of, or something that he hadn't considered, or a new approach to some existing problem, he'd be willing to listen.

What Obama doesn't seem to realize is that that's not how our American system works.  We know the problems; namely, high unemployment, a huge and growing federal deficit, a creaky and ineffectual system of education, a tax code that's inefficient and unfair, and a system for delivering health care that's unsustainable.  And, we know that solving these problems, either by Republicans or Democrats will be daunting.  And, we do want a president who recognizes the problems and is prepared to take up the challenge.  But, he's got to do it within the American system.

We don't have an opaque bureaucracy like China's, we don't have one-man rule like Russia,  and we don't have a king like Morocco.   Also, while I respect the British parliamentary system, it's not our system.   In America, our political parties may have very different ideas of how America should be governed and very different ideas as to how our problems can best be solved, but at the end of the day the two parties have to work together and compromise in order to get the job done.  We don't have a king who knows best but is willing to allow his subjects to offer suggestions as to how to improve his master plan.  That's just not the American way.

And, this explains why our three branches of government, when divided as to parties, actually works best.  In his first two years in office, Obama had a Democratic Senate and a Democratic  House of Representatives.  He used those two years to push through his Obamacare, a deeply flawed piece of legislation.  When Eric Kantor, a Republican offered his thoughts, Obama told him, in essence, elections have consequences and we won.

Technically, Obama was correct.  The Democrats had a clean sweep.  And, quite true, from those facts did follow numerous consequences.  But, it wasn't a good for America.  If they could have jointly hammered out a healthcare program acceptable to both sides, America might have begun to solve one of its most intractable problems.  In short, when both sides have skin in the game, the outcome is invariably better.  It's a lesson both parties must soon get to learn.  It's a lesson Romney learned in Massachusetts when he served as governor.  It's apparently a lesson you don't learn in Chicago.