Obama Should Put on 'Manly Man' T-Shirt and Learn to Love Politics

The other day in Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus handed President Barack Obama what he called "a manly man T-shirt" from the 101st Airborne and told him, "No one will mess with you if you wear this." Talk about a well-timed gift. It just so happens that everyone -- Republicans in Congress, liberal activists, swing-state voters, foreign nations, Julian Assange – seems to be messing with Obama these days.

The new conventional wisdom is that Obama is weak and could lose in 2012. Larry Sabato, head of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, crystallized it in one Twitter post: "From economy to Wikileaks to deficit to China, Korea & beyond, USA starting to appear again like 'a pitiful helpless giant.' Danger 4 POTUS."

As so often has happened with Obama, events are starting to validate his approach. Part of what prompted Sabato's tweet was Obama's failure last month to deliver a South Korea trade agreement projected to increase U.S. exports by $11 billion and support 70,000 U.S. jobs. But Obama said Saturday that the "landmark trade agreement" is now complete and explained that the original deal "wasn't good enough."

Once dim Senate prospects for the New START nuclear arms treaty with Russia are somewhat brighter. The president also may win an extension of unemployment benefits and possibly even repeal of the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy toward gay soldiers. Then there are all his earlier successes – the $814 billion economic stimulus, the auto industry rescue, the health care and student-loan reform laws, the new financial and credit-card regulations meant to protect consumers and Main Street.

Love them or hate them, all of the above should be bolstering Obama's image as a strong leader – yet they're not. "There's a lot out there that seems out of control, like there's no captain of the ship," one Democratic strategist told me.

In the aftermath of the party's devastating midterm losses, some Democrats are beginning to sound like Hillary Rodham Clinton during the 2008 primary campaign and the Republicans who belittled Obama as a community organizer who had run nothing and achieved nothing before becoming president. They say privately that they see a leadership vacuum and they blame his inexperience.

I would argue that Obama does have leadership experience. The problem is, it's a type of leadership that suits his temperament but is not sufficient in itself for a president. I'm talking about the principles he learned as a community organizer. In that setting, the goal is to be a facilitator moving people toward common ground. You lead them and guide them and are essential to whatever they achieve, but they are in the spotlight when the TV cameras arrive.

Obama employed that low-key, non-bombastic style as a state and national legislator and in running his campaign, with good results. As Princeton leadership expert Fred Greenstein told me in 2008, with Obama, "it seems like nothing's happening, but somehow everything seems to work." But Obama is paying a price for leading that way as president. While the leadership part is all but imperceptible, we are seeing plenty of public confusion and screw-ups along the way to what are usually pretty decent results.

Democratic angst recently has centered on Obama's seeming lack of negotiating savvy. The bill of particulars includes settling for a too-small stimulus package that hasn't broken the recession, abandoning the public insurance option in his health plan and going soft on a pledge to end Bush-era tax cuts for income above $250,000.

The latest flashpoint is Obama's post-election announcement that he would freeze employee pay for two years to save $28 billion over five years. In the thick of battles to extend benefits for the jobless and end tax cuts for the rich, he gave Republicans something they wanted in exchange for ... nothing. "The Republicans have been behaving badly," one disgruntled party activist told me. "They are encouraged in their bad behavior by a president that doesn't hang tight."

Several federal workers who are Democrats said they are livid – not because Obama canceled their raises but because they believe he got rolled.

"If it was done rationally, in the context of other things, it would be fine," one of them told me. "I'm willing to pay my little piece of all of this. But it was throwing a bone, a random act. He got nothing in return." Another made the same point and concluded, "I am starting to see him as a one-term president, given his inability to fight for what [I think] he believes in."

That's an escalating fear among Democrats, and many of them offer up the same prescription. "He's got to pick some fights. He's got to show he's tough," one party strategist told me, adding wryly that it would be preferable if Obama picked the fights with Republicans – not fellow Democrats. Yet is it any wonder Obama is not up for combat? In his past experiences as a leader, his role was to build consensus and avoid confrontation.

Sabato said Obama needs to get over that. "He's going to have to do a lot of offending on the way to re-election," he said. "Part of being a leader is being strong, defining your enemies and going after them."

There's a lot of nostalgia among Democrats for hard-nosed veterans with thick skin, horse-trading expertise and an appetite for political hardball. They fondly recall the negotiating prowess of Lyndon Johnson and Tip O'Neill, or the time Bill Clinton got Republicans to give him 100,000 new cops – one of his signature campaign promises – in exchange for cutting the federal workforce.

The "professional left," as White House press secretary Robert Gibbs once dubbed the netroots, is beyond ticked. "GOP continues to make fool out of Obama," read a recent headline at Daily Kos. Washington Post columnist Courtland Milloy called it "downright embarrassing" for a black president to be such a milquetoast. "Save Obama's presidency by challenging him on the left," Tikkun editor Michael Lerner argued a few days later in the same newspaper. The rationale: He'll get pushed to the left and become a born-again, spine-of-steel populist.

I'm not sure that's the answer for Obama. He has described himself privately as a fiscally conservative "Blue Dog Democrat," according to The New York Times, and he is serious about getting a grip on soaring federal deficits and debt. When he froze federal workers' pay, he was not just giving in to the GOP or signaling that he had noticed the election results. He was also following his own inclinations.

Still, there are ways to be true to yourself without seeming like a wet noodle, over-reacting to the last election or the criticism of political foes. When Gibbs was asked why Obama imposed the freeze without negotiating for something from Republicans, he replied: "The president makes a series of decisions that he thinks are in the best interests of the country -- not as a bargaining chip or a bargaining tool, but because it was the right thing to do."

Did he mean to say Obama is above bargaining? That's very high-minded but not very shrewd. What if Obama had offered the federal pay freeze in exchange for three or five or 10 policies he also believes are good for the country? Why not try for as much as you can get, and win some respect along the way?

There are opportunities ahead for Obama to be a more public, resolute leader. Let's see what he gets in return for extending the high-end tax cuts, and how he handles the deficit commission report next year. Maybe he should start wearing that new T-shirt, too.

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