Karl Rove Looks Askance At Obama's 100 Days

I was baffled by what Karl Rove seems to regard as a key weakness of Obama's presidency, to date:

Another emphasis in the Obama 100 days talking points is that the president is a decisive leader. However, Mr. Obama is enormously deferential to Democrats in Congress and has outsourced formulation of key policies to them. He appears largely ambivalent about the contents of important legislation, satisfied to simply sign someone else's bill.

On the $787 billion stimulus package, he specified less than a quarter of the bill's spending and let House Appropriations Chairman Dave Obey decide the rest. On cap and trade, Mr. Obama is comfortable to let Democratic Reps. Henry Waxman and Edward Markey write that legislation with virtually no White House guidance. On health care, the White House is providing very little detail. Mr. Obama tees up an issue, but leaves its execution to congressional Democrats.

This leadership style may be a carryover from his Senate years, when he was unusually detached from the substance of legislation. Mr. Obama's focus on broad descriptions of a goal will produce laws, but handing over control of the process may produce deeply flawed products.

...Democratic congressional leaders are ecstatic about Mr. Obama's willingness to outsource major legislation to them. They thrive on sausage making and, with the president's popularity high, they appreciate that his strengths are not their strengths. Yet Mr. Obama clearly did not gain their respect for his legislative abilities during his Senate years.

Mr. Obama is a great face for the Democratic Party. He is its best salesman and most persuasive advocate. But he is beginning to leave the impression that he is more concerned with the aesthetics of policy rather than its contents. In the long run, substance and consequences define a presidency more than signing ceremonies and photo-ops. In his first 100 days, Mr. Obama has put the fate of his presidency in the hands of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. He may come to regret that decision.

In many ways, though, Obama's approach is simply the traditional, old-fashioned way of doing things in Washington, D.C. Obama is the executive: he doesn't have to know everything about what's in the legislation and he certainly doesn't have to treat Congresspeople as errand runners.

Leave sausagemaking to the sausagemakers par excellence! The ones in Congress, not the ones in the White House! Legislation can be tailored and targeted better when Congressional representatives actually write the stuff, and because they now have a personal stake, they fight for it better too! That's the traditional American way! Teamwork!

More importantly, legislation done the traditional way tends to endure. "Decisive leadership" produces "substance and consequences," but it's all ephemeral unless it can be made to survive at least a decade.

(Methinks Karl Rove took the example of the 20th-Century Imperial Presidency just a wee bit too far....)