Let's face it: President Barack Obama let his opponents get the better of him when he accepted, with inappropriate hubris, the renaming of the Affordable Care Act as Obamacare. As Dutch political philosopher Soren Kierkegaard said, "Once you label me, you dismiss me."
Once he accepted the label, his opponents were able to focus the opposition on everything the president stands for by centering on his signature achievement, health care reform.
It matters not that the idea of mandating universal purchasing of health insurance plans was a Republican one. Republicans have adopted repeal of Obamacare as their motivational mantra, blaming it for sluggish job growth and excessive national debt, in addition to their original cries of "socialized medicine" and "death panels."
The problem is that the incessancy of their anti-Obamacare chants have blurred the ability of the average voter to focus on the positive accomplishments of this same president. That is a shame, but it is Obama's shame, because of his own reluctance to fight back. In his world, facts matter, and rationality prevails. Unfortunately, in the real world, repetitive ridicule is more potent than professorial probity.
The last time a U.S. president was as vilified and de-legitimized as Obama was nearly 70 years ago, when Harry Truman couldn't catch a break with the Republicans, even if he bought them all winning lottery tickets. The only solution to regain his lost footing and get back into the game is for Obama to channel some of the Truman persona, and "give 'em hell."
Former Vice President Dick Cheney recently opined on the Fox News Channel that Obama, in proposing cutbacks in the post-Cold War military budget, was not driven so much by world circumstances as by budget considerations. "He'd much rather spend the money on food stamps than he would on a strong military or support for our troops," Cheney said on the Feb. 24 Sean Hannity show.
That kind of hyperbole must not go unanswered. Obama should hold a news conference and call out Cheney on his duplicity and demagoguery. He should demand an apology, and hold Cheney's record up for examination.
There comes a time when you just can't take it lying down anymore, and for Obama that time should have long since arrived. Would that he would show some sense of indignation, or outright anger, toward his less-than-civil critics. They continue to label him and dismiss him. He should no longer let them do so with impunity.
He needs a strong defense, as well as a good offense, politically speaking, both of which seem to be lacking as a result of his ponderous temperament. Long, boring factual dissertations simply do not cut it in this facts-be-damned, Fox News-saturated world of pious platitudes, pungent sarcasm and pontificating punditry. Obama needs to sharpen his rhetoric and his elbows, if he is to get back in the game and make a real difference.
The other option is to leave a lackluster legacy in place of the luminescence that might have been.
Here's hoping the president will saddle up and ride the rest of his term with the rough-ridering bravado of Teddy Roosevelt and the common man's common sense courage of Harry Truman. It's worth a try.
The writer is a former mayor of Oswego and was co-chairman of the state Democratic Party from 1995 to 1998.