Let me be clear. I agree with President Barack Obama’s statement on Tuesday that “regardless of circumstances … we still get an American prisoner back”—emphasizing that the principle of leaving no man behind applies, “Period, full stop.”
And I agree with the Wall Street Journal that, any other issues aside, making the deal to get Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl back is the commander in chief’s call to make, not Congress’ call.
Even if the Army later decides that Bergdahl deserted, I think Obama did the right thing.
But where Obama—and team Obama—fell down on the job in this situation was in their initial inability to clearly explain why the president did what he did and, apparently, to anticipate that his actions, even if they made sense, wouldn’t be universally applauded. It’s a message problem that has dogged Obama since day one.
It’s true, as The Root’s Peniel Joseph writes, that most of the president’s GOP critics will oppose whatever he does simply because it’s him. They're ripping him now, but it wasn't too long ago that they were urging Obama to bring Bergdahl home.
But it’s not just Republicans who are up in arms this time. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee—who served as co-chair of Obama’s inaugural committee in 2009—is sour on the president’s handling of the deal. And former members of Bergdahl’s unit have expressed their displeasure—if not with bringing him home, then at least with the way it was handled: with a Rose Garden ceremony for Bergdahl’s folks and National Security Adviser Susan Rice going on the Sunday talk shows and saying that Bergdahl served with “honor and distinction.”
This, despite reports—going back years—that Bergdahl walked away from his unit.
The point isn’t to prejudge Bergdahl. Far be it from me—or anyone else who’s never been in combat—to second-guess him.
But it’s hard to understand why the White House tried to turn this into a photo op or victory lap. They could have brought Bergdahl home, announced it without bringing his parents to the White House and shelved Rice, who’s already a target for Republican barbs after her Sunday-show appearances in the aftermath of Benghazi. Instead, they made it easy for Obama's opponents.
My only guess here is that it’s the same kind of inability to anticipate pushback that resulted in Obama’s iffy response to the Veterans Affairs controversy last month, when the president went before cameras three weeks too late and essentially said, “We’re looking into it.” It was an underwhelming response that had congressional allies like Rep. David Scott (D-Ga.) on the House floor exclaiming, “Mr. President, we need urgency!” and led, a week later, to Obama having to jettison embattled VA Secretary Eric Shinseki.
It’s part of a running pattern on issues as seemingly trivial as Obama vacationing in Martha's Vineyard—the bougiest spot in America—three years in a row in the middle of an economic downturn, to his team taking its eyes off the ball on the cornerstone task of rolling out HealthCare.gov.
At numerous flashpoints in his presidency, Obama's team has failed to apprehend the moment when they were about to lose people on a particular issue and then failed to act quickly to regain their confidence. It has made it unnecessarily difficult for them to then go out and win over public support on issues ranging from payroll taxes to Syria.
They’ve got a bad habit in the administration of making announcements and rolling out initiatives with the assumption that the majority of folks will simply take it on faith that they’re making good decisions. But that’s not how it works. The president has to make the right decisions—and then effectively explain them. Otherwise, he’s not fully doing his job.
This isn’t a knock on the president overall. Hell, I’m the guy who recapped 2013 with a list of the five things he did right.
But if Obama keeps allowing himself to get worked over by his opponents in these kinds of arguments, he’ll spend the rest of his tenure backpedaling and remediating instead of tackling what’s left of his agenda. And the odds that he’ll get anything proactive done in his second term will get slimmer every day.
David Swerdlick is an associate editor at The Root. Follow him on Twitter.
David Swerdlick is an associate editor at The Root. Follow him on Twitter.