To avoid irrelevance, Obama needs to learn from Bush

The day after the 2006 congressional election, Mr George W Bush admitted Republicans had received a “thumping”. President Barack Obama called his 2010 humiliation at the hands of the Tea Party a “shellacking”. Another noun may be called for today when Republicans are likely to regain control of the United States Senate.

People assume Mr Obama will then face two long years as a lame-duck President before he is finally put out of his misery. Yet, with fresh blood and a new approach, the final quarter of a presidency can also become its redemption. Mr Obama should take a leaf from Mr Bush’s book.

The President has spent much of the past six years defining his administration against that of his predecessor. Mr Bush launched a misguided war of choice in Iraq, mishandled the one of necessity in Afghanistan, passed generous tax cuts for the wealthy at a time of falling blue-collar incomes and questioned the notion of man-made global warming. But when Mr Bush was bloodied by US voters in 2006, it appeared to knock sense into him. He embarked on a course correction that went some way towards retrieving his presidency.

At its heart was a change of personnel. The day after Democrats regained control of Capitol Hill, Mr Bush fired Mr Donald Rumsfeld, his pugnacious Pentagon chief, and brought in Mr Robert Gates. This proved a big improvement. Mr Gates handled a successful US troop surge in Iraq and restored relations with “old Europe”. A few months before the mid-term disaster, Mr Bush had replaced Mr John Snow, the beleaguered Treasury Secretary, with Mr Hank Paulson, who became the President’s most pivotal Cabinet member.

Mr Paulson helped launch the Group of 20 leading industrial nations, declared global warming to be real and was central to the disaster management after Lehman Brothers collapsed in September 2008.

Perhaps the most critical change had been to elevate Mr Joshua Bolten, an effective political manager, as White House Chief of Staff a few months before. Mr Bolten helped restore lines of authority to the Oval Office after Mr Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, had spent years circumventing normal channels. Mr Karl Rove, who was Mr Bush’s controversial chief strategist — Turd Blossom, as he was sometimes nicknamed — was also sidelined. Mr Bush’s administration finally began to function properly.

CAN OBAMA CHANGE HIS WHITE HOUSE?

Mr Obama might also study Ronald Reagan’s final two years after his mid-term setback in 1986. Most people thought Reagan was a dead duck. Like Mr Bush, Reagan’s renaissance hinged on finding a new Chief of Staff, Howard Baker, who had the authority to shake up a besieged White House — and did so effectively.

Against the odds, Reagan emerged largely unscathed from the Iran-Contra scandal, passed an immigration reform Bill, hit it off with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and left office with high ratings.

Could Mr Obama do the same? Not unless he radically changes the way his White House is run.

When he took office in 2009, Mr Obama said he was aiming for an Abraham Lincoln-style “team of rivals”, as depicted in the best-selling book of that name. On the surface, that is what he did by making Ms Hillary Clinton Secretary of State and keeping Mr Gates at the Pentagon.

In practice, however, Mr Obama’s White House has always been run by a small coterie of insiders, chosen for their loyalty rather than experience. Instead of picking skills that made up for those he lacked, Mr Obama built an inner sanctum around them.

The “team of loyalists” model has been even truer of Mr Obama’s second term, so far, than it was of his first.

The President runs the most centralised administration in memory. Yet, his ability to shape events in Washington and beyond is severely limited by his reluctance to delegate authority. At the inner circle’s core is Ms Valerie Jarrett, a White House senior adviser as well as close friend to both the President and the First Lady. Ms Jarrett is the protector of the Obama flame.

Disaffected aides dubbed her the “night stalker”, as there have been occasions when decisions supposedly taken in the day have been unpicked by Ms Jarrett after hours.

Former insiders say it is unlikely Ms Jarrett will return to Chicago (where she held various appointments) until Mr Obama has left office. They add that nothing is likely to change unless she does. In addition to Ms Jarrett, there is Mr Denis McDonough, Mr Obama’s Chief of Staff.

Mr McDonough is central to everything Mr Obama does on foreign and domestic fronts. There is also Ms Susan Rice, Mr Obama’s National Security adviser. Like Mr McDonough, she has been with Mr Obama since the start. Each is talented and decent. Yet there is a limit to what loyalty will buy you.

Many in Washington believe Mr Obama has already checked out of the job. As Mr David Rothkopf, editor of Foreign Policy magazine, puts it, Mr Obama is not so much the “decider” — as Mr Bush described himself — as the “presider”.

With a reset, Mr Obama could still achieve a lot in the next two years. Big trade deals with Europe and the Pacific spring to mind. As do immigration reform and a nuclear deal with Iran. But he will need to change the way his White House does business. To carry on as he is now would be to invite irrelevance. On this, if little else, Mr Obama should try to emulate Mr Bush. The Financial Times

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Edward Luce is the Washington columnist and commentator for the Financial Times.