Today it was announced that a week after delivering something akin to the State of the Union on Health Care, Barack Obama is going to be a guest on David Letterman (a very popular American night-time comedy and talk show) and will grant interviews to practically every Sunday morning political talk show in America. Link
Not many people realize that the President of the United States really does not have that much power when compared to Congress when it comes to law-making. The President’s law-making ability is basically limited to issuing executive orders and appointing unelected political puppets to positions of power (czars). Obama seems to have a lot of power at this moment on the outside because he has a very compliant Congress with Democrats having virtually a veto-proof majority in the Senate and control of the House of Representatives.
The main way American Presidents try to influence law-making is to influence public opinion by giving speeches and interviews in hopes that public opinion will be moved to the point that lawmakers will have to comply with the President and the public’s demands. In fact, political scientists often refer to American Presidents as “public opinion leaders”. Given an American President’s stature, they are given opportunities to speak about issues that concern them and opportunities to receive press coverage. However, American Presidents do not have unlimited opportunities to sway public opinion because the media and the public will grow tired of hearing the President speak. Therefore, American Presidents typically try to be cautious when they call for a primetime press conference, grant interviews, and when they make public appearances to give speeches about public policy.
The degree that Obama has given speeches, primetime press conferences, and “exclusive interviews” to push an overhaul of the health care system these past few weeks and appears to be willing to do this upcoming week is remarkable. These public appearances and the frequency of them is a clear indication that he desperately wants this national health care bill passed.
Why in the world would I write all of this to state the obvious? The reason I mentioned all of this is that Obama is making a huge political sacrifice right now. Obama is sacrificing his ability to influence law-making through influencing public opinion to push an overhaul of the health care system at the cost of being able to influence law-making through influencing public opinion in the future. He is hurting his ability to push other policies in the future because all of these current appearances are making people tired of hearing him talk (for instance, television viewership for his primetime press conferences is declining these past few months). When people get to the point that they will simply stop listening Obama will no longer be able influence lawmakers by influencing public opinion. Believe me, people will stop listening because they can (at this point in time) choose what they listen to and media companies will stop giving him so much coverage because they want to maximize viewership, listenership, or readership.
Right now Obama probably thinks that the benefits he would derive through controlling the entire American health care system are worth the sacrifice and probably thinks he will still be able to push his policies with a potentially compliant Congress after the 2010 elections.
Personally, I think the political sacrifice that Obama is making will not be worth it and will cause him to have very little power after the 2010 Congressional elections. More on that in the coming days and weeks…
