It’s not easy pitching
a nation of angry
voters, fixed
opposition and
scattered media.
Not when you’ve
made yourself hard
to define.


RICHARDW. STEVENSON ESSAY

WASHINGTON

ON THIS MUCH, President Obama’s friends and foes could agree: He eludes simple labels.

Yes, he’s a liberal, except when he’s not. He’s antiwar, except for the one he’s escalating. He’s for bailouts, but wants to rein in the banks. He’s concentrating ever-more power in the West Wing, except when he’s being overly deferential to Congress. He’s cool, except when he’s fighting-hot.

In a world that presents so many fast-moving and intractable problems, nuance, flexibility, pragmatism - even a full range of human emotions - are no doubt good things. But as Mr. Obama wrapped up his State of the Union address on January 27 with an appeal to transcend partisan gamesmanship, he was plaintively testing a broader proposition: Is it possible to embrace complexity in a political and media culture that demands simple themes and promotes conflict?

The president, whose hallmark has been ideological eclecticism, would clearly like to think the answer is yes. But a year into his presidency, Mr. Obama has lost control of his political narrative, his ability to define the story of his presidency on his own terms. And the main reason is that his story is no longer so simple or easy to tell.

That is no small thing. Presidents have long cultivated thematic definitions of themselves to shape the way their choices are perceived. A strong, clear narrative helps a president connect with voters and explain the journey he is leading. The lack of one invites opponents to craft a less flattering portrayal. As he tries to absorb the lessons of his first 12 months in office and push ahead with his agenda in an election year that holds great peril for his party, Mr. Obama faces a narrative vacuum.

The novelty factor has worn off, along with the power of his positioning as the not-Bush. He is confronting an opposition that has remained remarkably unified in trying to block him at every turn.

Substantively, he has failed, so far, to pass his signature initiative, a health care bill. Voters could be forgiven for not being more impressed with his biggest legislative accomplishment, passage of the $787 billion economic stimulus bill, given that the unemployment rate remains in double digits.

Right now, he’s at risk of his default narrative being: He saved the banks.

“You’ve got to have a clear, easy to understand story,” said Mark McKinnon, an image-maker for George W. Bush’s two presidential campaigns but a professed admirer of Mr. Obama. “Obama’s story is getting very complicated and confusing for voters. Obama is trying to do it all and appease too many constituencies. Voters like him and think he’s smart. But they’re not exactly clear whose side he’s fighting on.”

Mr. Obama rode into office on one of the most elegant stories in recent campaign history: that he was the embodiment of hope and change. It caught the national mood, yet remained vague enough to mean pretty much whatever a voter wanted it to mean. The challenge became more difficult when it became clear late in 2008 that Mr. Obama’s initial agenda would not be one of his choosing. With the financial system melting down, Mr. Obama actively supported crisis steps being taken by the Bush administration and carried them forward.

Suddenly, as the presidential historian Richard Norton Smith put it, “the candidate of change became the president of continuity.”

John Podesta, who runs the Center for American Progress, a liberal research group that advises Mr. Obama, said: “Obama campaigned on a critique of what was wrong with the American economy and an idea of how to restore a sense of progress and opportunity. He needs to reestablish that narrative. The public has shifted in a very dangerous way to thinking he cared more about dealing with Wall Street than he cared about dealing with their problems.”

The White House largely dismisses the warnings.

“The president has had a consistent political narrative since the day he stepped on the national stage in 2004,” said Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director. “The interpretation of it is cyclical.”

Yet Mr. Obama acknowledged in his State of the Union address that voters had grown doubtful about his promise of hope and change. Polls suggest he is losing support among independents, and his liberal base is agitated over his Afghanistan policy, his budget and his willingness to compromise on health care.

His recent approach has been to offer something to everyone. There was a promise to move ahead on a measure to allow gay men and women to serve openly in the military, reassurance that the war in Iraq is coming to an end, reassurance that he would fight on in Afghanistan, and proposals for tax cuts for small business, tax credits for families with children, a tax on banks and a freeze on a portion of domestic spending. To Republicans, there was a promise that he would listen to their ideas.

The big question is whether voters perceive him as post-ideological and pragmatic or inconsistent and pandering.

Even defining himself more sharply might not help Mr. Obama because the fragmentation of media and the quickened news cycle means any president has much less power to shape his own narrative.

“If you look at the way the media has been transformed and the way the White House is covered,” Mr. Smith said, “the bully pulpit itself is in danger of being drowned out by talk radio, cable and now Twitter.

EDEL RODRIGUEZ