Part of me hopes Barack Obama does not deliver yet another soaring, masterful speech for his maiden state of the union address tomorrow. For one thing, that Houdini schtick is getting old: Obama in a hole, his enemies circling and then, with one bound of rhetorical genius, he's free. For another, it's possible that a little less of the elegant oratory and a bit more plain speaking might actually help him get his message across. More importantly, we now need to see a different Obama: one rougher at the edges, more interested in deeds than words, impatient to roll up his sleeves and act.
The pressure is obvious. It was delivered a week ago by the voters of Massachusetts, when they decided to fill what Democrats had come to presume was "the Kennedy seat" with a Republican former centrefold, Scott Brown. Obama will speak in the shadow of that defeat.
As a result, plenty of Washington wise heads are comparing this moment with January 1995, when Bill Clinton came before Congress humbled by landslide defeats the previous November that had swept away Democratic majorities in both the house and Senate. A contrite Clinton bowed before the new Republican masters and promised to change his ways. "We bit off more than we could chew," he said. A year later he delivered his most famous recantation: "The era of big government is over."
Some in Obama's party have concluded that he must now do the same, rushing to the centre to win back the independent voters who backed him in 2008 but who switched in Massachusetts to Beefcake Brown. After all, they say, the US remains a nation of the centre-right – in which 40% define themselves as conservative, 40% as moderate and a meagre 20% as liberal – and that is where the votes are. Accordingly, Obama should dump healthcare reform, which seems to have scared off the folks in Massachusetts, and dedicate himself to slashing the deficit by cutting public spending. An early sign came today, with word that Obama plans to announce a three-year freeze in all non-military domestic spending.
Let's hope that doesn't mean Obama has bought the full 2010-is-1995 thesis, because it's wrong. First, Obama has suffered nothing like the blow of 15 years ago: he still enjoys substantial majorities in both houses of Congress. All that's happened is that Democrats have lost their filibuster-proof super-majority of 60 in the senate, but they still have a hefty 59 seats out of 100. To concede defeat now, as Clinton had to in 1995, would be a gross overreaction.
Second, the Clinton precedent is hardly encouraging. True, he was re-elected, the first Democrat to earn that distinction since Franklin Roosevelt, and he presided over a period of prosperity and surpluses – not nothing given that for six of his eight years he faced a hostile Congress. But next to, say, Lyndon Johnson, the record is thin: the ground-shifting actions that would constitute a Clinton legacy are not there. Obama would have every right to feel disappointed if he leaves office the same way.
Besides, it's not even certain he could pull it off. Clinton had just the right skills for the short-term, trench-by-trench combat that a Capitol Hill in enemy hands required. He was good at bobbing, weaving and triangulating, winning each 24-hour news cycle, tying the Republicans up in knots. It was politics as martial arts, and Clinton was a master. But Obama is no Clinton, for both good and bad. His ambition is larger; he has said that he aims to be, like Ronald Reagan, "transformational". He is a man of the big picture, not the daily skirmish. He is not cut out for the latter, and probably not that good at it.
So he needs to look for a different strategy. He might be tempted to make his mark in the one area where presidents have relatively free rein, without the meddling interference of Congress: foreign affairs. I heard one cynic mutter that if Obama wants to reassert himself he should start a war. Trouble is, he already has two on his plate.
A more appealing strategy would have Obama realise that radical troubles call for radical answers – and that his only hope lies in bold, decisive moves.
First, Democrats have to finish what they started. It has been pathetic to watch so many throw their hands up in defeat at the first setback. The historian Tony Badger, author of an outstanding study of FDR, is unforgiving: "Democrats have forgotten how to legislate, they've forgotten how to govern." Now Obama has to push them to use whatever procedural trick it takes to pass healthcare reform: probably the house voting on the bill already approved in the Senate and making minor changes later. Sure, that bill is flawed. But it's better than nothing. This is what some Democrats don't seem to have clocked: that they will be slammed in November's midterm elections as the do-nothing Congress if they drop a bill that has obsessed them for a full year. They are blamed for the unpopular bits of the bill anyway – simply for advocating it – so they might as well get the benefit of its upsides. Electorates prefer strong leadership, even in a direction of which they disapprove, to no leadership at all.
With healthcare out of the way, Obama should recall the most famous bit of Clinton advice: It's the economy, stupid. Here action associated with the left has far wider appeal, which is why it's so encouraging that the president's first response to Massachusetts was a direct attack on the banks, demanding they no longer play the roulette tables with their depositors' money. He should keep up the fight, whether tightening regulation or capping bonuses. Let the Republicans filibuster that, holding up the Senate day and night for the sake of the bankers. If the Republicans want to fight the 2010 elections as Wall Street's chums, go ahead.
It's reassuring too that tomorrow's speech is set to emphasise jobs. Perhaps this should have been the focus for the last year; it certainly should be now. Badger's advice is to learn from FDR, who made sure that ordinary Americans could dip their hands in their pockets and feel dollar bills that came from the federal government – thereby winning himself increased majorities in his first midterm elections in 1934. Right now, Americans suspect the sole beneficiaries of Obama's spending have been bankers. He has to make sure Americans on Main Street know that an estimated 1.2m jobs have been saved by his stimulus and that there's more to come. If that means restoring some fiscal credibility first – with a partial freeze in some areas – then so be it.
While he's at it, Obama could take on the Republican abuse of the Senate rulebook, whereby the minority party now routinely uses the once nuclear weapon of a filibuster. The congressional scholar Norman Ornstein tells me Democrats have a "nuclear option" of their own: after the midterms Vice-President Joe Biden, as chair of the senate, could threaten to eliminate the 60-seat supermajority rule altogether, forcing the Republicans to negotiate a new modus operandi that would allow the Democrats – and Obama – to get things done.
And of course Obama will need to change himself. He needs to rebuild the coalition that took him to the White House, to re-engage those who came together online, to re-inspire the young. For a year he has been the chief executive of an administration. He needs to be the leader of a movement once more. And that work starts tomorrow night.