President Obama's Post "Shellacking" Speech

The White House YouTube channel not only has the entire speech and press conference from the day after the midterm election, but an interactive transcript. Wish I'd seen that before I started trying to transcribe what the president was saying. Here's the video in its entirety:


One of the parts I found most telling came at the 50 minute mark. The reporter asked the president "Are you willing to make any changes in your leadership style?" This is what the president said:

Folks didn’t have any complaints about my leadership style when I was running around Iowa for a year and they got a pretty good look at me up close and personal. They were able to lift the hood and kick the tires. I think they understood that my story was theirs. I might have a funny name and I might have lived in some different places, but the values of hard work and responsibility and honesty and lookin’ out for one another that had been instilled in them by their parents those were the same values that I took from my mom and my grandparents. So the track record has been that when I’m out of this place, that’s not an issue. When you're in this place it is hard not to seem removed. And one of the challenges that we've got to think about is how to I meet my responsibilities here in the White House which requires a lot of hours and a lot of work but still have the opportunity to engage with the American people on a day-to-day basis and give them confidence that I’m listening to them.

So the president admitted what many of us have been saying for years -- that he is a better campaigner than he is a president. He admits that he was successful in Iowa, shaking hands and giving speeches, but not as successful in the White House. Interestingly, this seems similar to his experience in Harvard Law School, where he first showed his talent at campaigning and also showed that, once elected, he leaves the actual work to others.

Unfortunately, while we have a political system that requires a person be a good campaigner as a prerequisite to getting into office, we will often have people running the government whose talent stops at the point that they are sworn in. It would be nice if we as a voting public weren't so swayed by personality and charm and poise and looks, but we are. We often wrongly conclude that if you are good enough and smart enough to run a good campaign, that will translate to your talent once you've taken office. But as our current president has proved, this is a false syllogism.

Barack Obama had no policy ideas, no plans for America, no solutions. What he had was the ability to tap into the national zeitgeist at just the right time. Plus, the Republicans helped him out with a lackluster campaigner in John McCain and a divisive lightning rod in Sarah Palin. And George Bush did much to inflame the anti-Republican passions with his disconnected affect and inability to articulate. This plus the excitement that Obama engendered led to his big win in 2008. But this win was misinterpreted as a shift to the left in America -- and the election Tuesday confirmed that the country does not want to move in that direction.

Many in America have been feeling buyer's remorse since Obama was sworn into office and Tuesday was the first chance to demonstrate that dissatisfaction. They had believed his campaign rhetoric about change only to discover that their trust was misguided. His was as one-sided an administration as Nixon's, distrustful and rejecting of the other side, patronizing the opposition, full of hubris. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid thought they could belittle and marginalize the Republicans and restructure the government in their image, regardless of what the American people really wanted.

Their liberal agenda received the shellacking -- his word -- that it deserved. Now it's up to the Republicans to take their mandate and turn it into some real change in government. Go back to the original Republican values that were abandoned during much of the Bush administration. Bring spending down, help businesses create jobs, streamline the government, and keep our nation safe. They have two years to make good on their promises and to justify the faith the American people have placed in them.