The Feats of Barack “Houdini” Obama

The crippled U.S. president moves with quick strides towards the middle and, with great interest, studies how his predecessor Bill Clinton rose from a similar popularity level in 1994.

They were in the best of spirits, the two men in pinstripes. Greg Brown and David Cote, the chief executive officers of Motorola and Honeywell, respectively, their faces beaming, as they discussed their conversation in the Oval Office. Fun with Barack Obama? Ah well, that’s what the newspapers should have reported. We know how much to appreciate, how bluntly one can talk to this president, they explained.

It was not so long ago that Obama spoke angrily of “fat cats”. Staccato. Before Christmas he met with 20 CEOs in four-hour rounds. It’s about harmonious group building, the optimistic evidence of a turnaround. For months, law professors suggested that he doesn’t understand business, that he was the economic enemy landlord who resided at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Now he pulls the rudder with grand gestures — a president who strides rapidly to the middle.

It borders almost on self-denial, how Obama urges the Democrats in Congress to quickly put together a new tax package. For a long time he was against it, the continuation of the low rates of the George W. Bush era. He wanted to cash checks from the richest Americans in January, so that the record deficits don’t grow and grow. For obvious reasons, he bent to the increasingly strong conservatives in the new congressional balance, far faster than those on his left would have liked. They were one of the first who supported him in the primaries against Hillary Clinton. Today, they feel let down by the man they supported.

Obama takes the scolding into account; in his quiet time he probably celebrates the rebellion in his own ranks. Barack “Houdini,” as he is referred to, in reference to the escape artist and magician Harry Houdini (1874–1926), has thrown all political ideology overboard. He gives the pragmatists power, they who disintegrate politics, so much that only pieces of his reform agenda is left over. He doesn’t come from “religious purists”, who would rather feel good than help the people, he says.

He allows the Republicans their sacred cow, especially low taxes. They return the favor with a yes-vote allowing openly gay soldiers in the military. Quid pro quo, a plus point for the party with the elephant mascot, one for the one with the donkey: So has Obama existed since before December.

It could be his leitmotif, noted the historian Robert Dallek. An experiment with unknown outcomes. “Perhaps he wins his authority back, his believability as a politician, hits the nail on the head,” commented the professor from Boston. “Perhaps he shoots himself in the foot, loses his power and makes the impression that he allows himself to be walked over by the conservatives.”*

The possibility of changing the direction is zero point nothing, as the Democrats in power have already demonstrated. It was Bill Clinton who moved his party in the 1994 election beating. After that he was dubbed the “Comeback Kid,” merging the concepts of both sides into new formulas. His “triangulation” would become a model for Tony Blair’s New Labour Party and three different European Social Democrat parties. So Obama’s attempts to come out of the shadow of the Clintons leads him to copy them 100 percent today.

His plan for 2011 sounds different, at least when measured against American pomposity. He wants to simplify tax laws, to modernize infrastructure and eliminate debt. The inspiring rhetoric of departure, the slogans from environmental protection propaganda, the promise to soon close Guantanamo — everything is forgotten. The difficult health care reform is propped up, and it is only about jobs, jobs, jobs.

For Obama, it means using every free minute to read up on how Clinton came from behind, to climb out of the popularity hole. Fresh in the press bunker of the White House, he leaves behind the gray podium of his predecessor’s predecessor, bound with the witty remark that gets his temper up, when he and First Lady Michelle Obama wait even longer to leave. “If we had five percent growth, then we could have had us a Texas showdown,”* remarked the former president. In a fragile economy, painful deals are always better than deadly standstills. It sounds like marching orders for the next two years.

*Editor’s Note: These quotations, though accurately translated, could not be verified.