OPINION:
Americans may finally be tiring of “talking-point presidents.” For more than six-and-a-half years, this is what President Obama has been — telling Americans what they want to hear, while pursuing policies they do not support. Donald Trump has sought to capitalize on that legacy by pursuing it from the opposite direction. However, Mr. Trump’s attempt to be the “Republican Obama” is likely to work, and hopefully will show that the nation is ready for its leaders to move from rhetoric to real solutions.
Mr. Obama has been the talking-point president. For every issue, there is a ready response that exonerates him and damns his opponents. Whatever the crisis, it is someone else’s fault. Throughout his tenure, he has been playing the role but not accepting the responsibility, and seeking to sell with sound bites policies that Americans reject.
Last month’s AP-GfK poll of 1,004 adults nationwide shows the stark contrast between America’s perception of Mr. Obama’s style and his substance. The president’s favorability rating is only slightly negative — 46 percent favorable to 47 percent unfavorable. However, his rating on the issues is vastly worse.
By 64 percent to 35 percent, respondents felt the country was going in the wrong direction. On his job as president, 43 percent approved, while 55 percent disapproved.
On specific major issues, Mr. Obama’s ratings were no better. On the economy, 42 percent approved of his performance and 56 percent disapproved. On health care, 44 percent approved and 55 percent disapproved. On world affairs, the split was 39 percent to 58 percent, and on Iran in particular — 37 percent to 60 percent.
Mr. Obama has been able to survive America’s cognitive dissonance about him because of the reserve of good will he held when he took office. Mr. Trump has no reserve.
Make no mistake: If Mr. Trump is indeed a Republican, he is a Republican version of Mr. Obama. The businessman has a shoot-from-the-lip personality. Like the president, he has a ready answer for everything. And like Mr. Obama, his policies are flawed and unworkable. Therefore, Mr. Trump would also have to use Obama’s methods to govern.
At best, his initiatives would not pass Congress. At worst, he would — as Mr. Obama has during his presidency, to conservatives’ consternation — resort to further aggrandizing executive branch powers at Congress’ expense in order to realize them.
Yet while Mr. Obama and Mr. Trump share a talking-point approach to the presidency, Americans do not buy in to it. Mr. Obama’s favorable to unfavorable rating may be closely balanced, but Mr. Trump’s is overwhelmingly negative.
In the AP-GfK poll, Mr. Trump’s favorable rating was 28 percent, but his unfavorable was 58 percent.
That Mr. Obama’s approach does not resonate is a good thing — not just for the Republican Party that Mr. Trump is currently manipulating during his latest ego trip, but for the nation.
America’s early rejection of Mr. Trump may be evidence that a talking-point president is no longer acceptable to voters — a recognition that America’s problems run far deeper than shallow sound bites can solve.
America has endured a subpar economy for nearly on a decade. It is sapping our present well-being and threatening the future. It suffers from an appeasement foreign policy that obscures the obvious evil menacing us and our allies.
We have a doubled federal debt that is only further stoked by looming entitlement spending, which Mr. Obama only worsened with Obamacare. And we have a tax and regulatory structure focused more on social engineering than the economic growth the country desperately needs.
The problems are real and growing. They will not be solved by talking points. What is needed now is “thinking points.” Neither Mr. Obama nor Mr. Trump offers these.
Undoubtedly, Mr. Obama’s incompetence has created Mr. Trump’s candidacy. America’s frustration with Mr. Obama is as palpable as it is understandable. However, simply replicating Mr. Obama will not undo the damage the president has done.
Mr. Trump will burn out. But the problems his campaign embodies will remain, just as they have thus far during the Obama administration. Like Mr. Obama, Mr. Trump’s failing would not be in what he says, but in his refusal to seriously address America’s real problems. Instead, he too would exploit them for political advantage — and in the process exacerbate them.
To confront these real threats with sound bites — as Mr. Trump is doing — rather than sound policy would only mean continuing the worst aspects of the Obama presidency under a different rubric. Mr. Trump’s strong unfavorability hopefully means that the country is undertaking the hard work of discerning the right leader for the future.
• J.T. Young has served in the Treasury Department, the Office of Management and Budget, and as a congressional staff member.
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