Obama and the art of negotiation
Ever since Obama has become president, people have been giving him advice. It’s an odd phenomenon, as though they consider him a kid brother who needs a bit of assistance out in the big bad world.
Perhaps it’s because of his youth. Perhaps it’s because people realize he’s inexperienced. Perhaps it’s because (at least initially) people really wanted America’s first black president to be a success.
But all the good advice in the world won’t help if Obama won’t take it. Before the election of 2010, for example, he saw no reason to compromise—unless you define compromise as he defined it at the time, which is “you agree with me.”
November of 2010 changed that; now he feels more pressed to compromise in the usual sense of the word. How long that will continue is anyone’s guess.
This related article contains a Ronald Reagan quote that got me thinking:
“Before I took up my current line of work, I got to know a thing or two about negotiating when I represented the Screen Actors Guild,” Reagan famously said. “After the studios, Gorbachev was a snap.”
The comparison may seem laughable, and it was meant to be a joke. But Reagan did have negotiating experience, and what’s more he was pretty good at it.
And when you think about it, it’s one of the skills most important in a president. Even if the POTUS is fortunate enough to have, as Obama initially did, a strong majority in both houses of Congress and therefore not to require much negotiation there (at least theoretically; in Obama’s case it was the lagging Blue Dog Democrats who needed to be cajoled and bargained with), it’s still necessary in the foreign arena.
Obama’s towering self-confidence blinded many people, including himself, to the fact that he didn’t seem to have a significant amount of experience or skill in that arena. He also seems to have a marked distaste for it, and a personality unsuited to it as well.
[NOTE: Two other traits a president needs to have are the ability to make a decision without dithering unduly, and skill in choosing good advisers and then listening to them. Obama appears to lack these traits, too, and I think that even many of his previous and present supporters on the left would agree with that assessment at this point.]
What good are advisors to a man who thinks he knows it all already. Obama thinks of himself always as the smartest guy in the room. He doesn’t seek advisors. He seeks disciples.
“It would be the greatest mistake, certainly,
to think that concessions mean peace. Nothing of the kind. Concessions are nothing but a new form of war.”
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One of the basic conditions for the victory of socialism is the arming of the workers (Communist) and the disarming of the bourgeoisie (the middle class).
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Revolutionary Social-Democracy has always included the struggle for reforms as part of its activities. But it utilises “economic” agitation for the purpose of presenting to the government, not only demands for all sorts of measures, but also (and primarily) the demand that it cease to be an autocratic government.
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This struggle must be organised, according to “all the rules of the art”, by people who are professionally engaged in revolutionary activity.
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Attention, must be devoted principally to raising the workers to the level of revolutionaries; it is not at all our task to descend to the level of the “working masses.”
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…first ascertain exactly the position of the various capitalists, then control them, influence them by restricting or enlarging, facilitating or hindering their credits, and finally they can entirely determine their fate.
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We fully regard civil wars, i.e., wars waged by the oppressed class against the oppressing class, slaves against slave-owners, serfs against land-owners, and wage-workers against the bourgeoisie, as legitimate, progressive and necessary.
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Convert the imperialist war into civil war.
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A revolutionary class cannot but wish for the defeat of its government in a reactionary war.
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We Social-Democrats always stand for democracy, not “in the name of capitalism, ” but in the name of clearing the path for our movement, which clearing is impossible without the development of capitalism.
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Our Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks themselves share, and instil into the minds of the people, the false notion that universal suffrage “in the present-day state” is really capable of revealing the will of the majority of the working people and of securing its realization.
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The dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the organization of the vanguard of the oppressed as the ruling class for the purpose of suppressing the oppressors, cannot result merely in an expansion of democracy. Simultaneously with an immense expansion of democracy, which for the first time becomes democracy for the poor, democracy for the people, and not democracy for the money-bags, the dictatorship of the proletariat imposes a series of restrictions on the freedom of the oppressors, the exploiters, the capitalists.
— Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov
everything makes a whole lot of sense if you have read the people they admire, adore, adulate, celebrate, have remembrances, write about, talk among themselves about, etc..
guessing, is not working….
reading Martov, Plekhanov, Axelrod, is an eye opener too..
His mother worked as a journalist at PM, a left-wing 1940s newspaper. Axelrod’s parents separated when he was eight years old. Axelrod traces his political involvement back to his childhood.
actually thats a later axelrod…
after the name change Akselrod…
the one to read is Pavel Borisovich Axelrod
however, Davids father is thought to have committed suicide… wiki dont mention any of this, but you can dig and find about Joseph Axelrod
“My father was my best friend and hero. He was an immigrant who fled the pogroms of Eastern Europe.”
anyway, whats important is what Pavel said..
The motivation of my idealism, of all my public activities is that the relative progress of human nature is infinite. It may appear curious, but the more clearly I recognize the fallibility of human nature in the present time, the more passionately do I long for its future perfection, even though it may take millennia. It doesn’t matter to me that the distance is nebulous and seemingly endless. For it is just that aspect, coupled with the “supermen” of the future that serve as a strong incentive and source of enthusiasm. I think this strange phenomenon is rooted in a kind of religious feeling, which I’m unable to characterize, except to say that my devoted respect for thought, conscientiousness, and spirit may be paralleled with fanaticism.
If there is no God no creator of the universe, then may God be praised for His nonexistence. For we can behead kings, but we would be powerless against a despotic Jehovah. If there is no God, then we must prepare for the arrival of earthly gods, of beings, omnipotent because of their reason and energy of will capable of comprehending the knowledge of the world and of their own selves, and of embracing and dominating the world by virtue of their spirit.
In an earlier stage of life, I sold 994 automobiles. I agree that understanding negotiation is important. It helped me understand and practice exercising my own principles. It helped me exercise my courage muscle. It helped me look at the other person: really look at them. They were telling me things beyond what was coming off of their tongue: in body language, and in the way their reasoning was formulated and expressed.
I believe there is truth behind Reagan’s joke about negotiating in Hollywood. In Reykjavik, Reagan knew to walk out when even his own advisors were freaking out and wanting to take the deal. Reagan understood his principles, he had courage, and he understood what Gorbachev was telling him beyond the words which were coming out of Gorbachev’s mouth. Like many human understandings: Reagan’s understandings were likely honed over time. He was practiced and accomplished at negotiation.
Maybe some human beings are innately brilliant at negotiation. That was not my experience. I had to learn, and to become better, over time and with exposure and with repetition.
It’s now a kind of socialist bible (among other writings that are not commonly read)
community/tribe/collective
Any of these ideas sound familiar?
How about as reformed by saul alinsky?
Could be why we are not allowed to entertain conspiracies which then would have us notice these undemocratic games for what they actually are…
By necessity…
And so this is where the term “professional left”, “professional revolutionaries” comes from that the collectivists are now using…
They know, that you’re not going to read this and they know that without reading it, you wont get it, and wont believe anyone who says something…
Professional revolutionary “Che” Guevara is executed in Bolivia
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/professional-revolutionary-che-guevara-is-executed-in-bolivia
left liberal paper Spike has an article that we should consider sam adams the first professional revolutionary…
and just so you know that obama knows..
Ché¡vez’s gift to Obama
What’s to be made of Lenin’s What Is To Be Done?
http://www.isreview.org/issues/66/rep-lenin.shtml
And
I think President Obama is giving us a checklist of what we need in a President. We add to this checklist every time we see him needing a skill that he doesn’t have.
The ability to laugh at himself, and to deal gracefully with others laughing at him, is another failing of his. (Heck, the ability to deal with anything gracefully would be nice. We have now seen that he doesn’t win gracefully and he doesn’t lose gracefully.)
And Democrats are finally seeing the truth of our ‘President Teleprompter’. The accusation was that Barack Obama is lost without scripted words in front of him, implying that he doesn’t have the core principles to fall back upon when forced to improvise.
We saw this when he took months to dither over the military advice offered by his hand-picked commander in the field. We saw this when he promised to close Guantanamo (when somebody should have advised him that GWB had good reasons for not doing so), and then, when faced with the need to take action, changed his mind (and wasn’t honest enough to admit that he was changing his mind). We saw this when he changed his mind about civilian trials for terrorists, which made his Guantanamo flip-flop look good by comparison. And we’re seeing it again now, when he accepts the deal offered him by the Republicans without getting much of anything in return… thereby completing the task he started in 2008, of alienating every single last American.
Personally, I think he’s never really had to develop core principles. He was never put into a situation difficult enough that he couldn’t wing it, and he was forgiven his mistakes when he flubbed even those. Now, for the first time in his career, he has to make actual decisions with actual consequences for real people… and he can’t do it, because he doesn’t even have the skills of lower management.
I’ve said before that this will be his political epitaph:
“I like being President. And it turns out I’m pretty good at it.”
— President Barack Obama, late February 2009
respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline
Well, Sen. McConnell should have learned better, and learned more, from Mr. Reagan. He apparently does not know how to push in negotiation, to extract the maximum from the other side. I believe Mr. McConnell pushes back from the table with an agreement sufficient, but only just, to be able to sit down amicably with said opponent again in the future.
But perhaps the Dems, in their class warfare fervor, will undo what is a poor deal for Repubs and for the rest of us.
I am not at all persuaded this deal proves Baraq a bad negotiator when viewed from the perspective of the next two years’ struggle. Successful, A-plus negotiating means giving a little to gain a lot. McConnell & Repubs did not achieve that; Baraq did, relatively speaking, though he may be too obtuse to recognize it—-calling the Repubs “hostage takers” afterwards.
Paraphrasing “storming” Norman opinion about Sadam
Hussein one can say about Obama:
He is a lousy negotiator, he doesn’t listen to his advisers,
he can’t select good advisers, he is not a unifier, his social policies stink, his economical policies stink, his international policies stink, he is detached from Americans – but otherwise he is a great president.
God help us all.
Obama is an arsenic based life-form.
Marek wrote:
“G-d help us all.”
G-d did not vote that shmuck into office!
Spoken quickly, the words confidence and competence can sound a lot alike. Alas, as traits, they don’t always go together.
Old topic gets new life:
“[Obama] was not born here,” Scott asserted to Answer Man in the session’s last segment. “That’s my belief. I was born here. If someone accuses me of not being born here, I can go – within 10 minutes – to my filing cabinet and I can pick up my real birth certificate and I can go, ‘See? Look! Here it is. Here it is.’ The man has dodged everything. He dodges questions, he doesn’t answer anything.”
Luke Scott talks Nugent, hunting and Obama origin
http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/blog/big_league_stew/post/Answer-Man-Luke-Scott-talks-Nugent-hunting-and?urn=mlb-292970
Fact is, Obama doesn’t know jack about anything having to do with being president and he doesn’t have the character to deal with contingencies that are not possible to swot up in advance.
Other than that….
Obama in negotiation mode:
“The look on his face, his demeanor, his posture all denoted a man out of control of his emotions. Spiteful, sarcastic, hateful – it was a remarkable performance.”
I got to know a thing or two about negotiating when I represented the Screen Actors Guild,” Reagan famously said. “After the studios, Gorbachev was a snap.”
George W. Bush probably got the same sort of experience as co-owner of the Texas Rangers.
Nice poems on your site, ELC. I emailed them to my daughter, an art major. I know, I know. But what are you gonna do?
Obama is running over the Democrats now just like he did the Republicans on health care. This is all about him goosing the economy with another stimulus package to save his butt in 2012. The 50 or so Dems who walked the plank are just collateral damage for his career. He doesn’t care if the Dems are pissed. The House is lost and the Senate jammed up. He doesn’t need them any more.
@ Curtis: thanks! 🙂
@ Mr. Frank: it sure looks like Obama is very upset about having to go for this deal. (That seems to be the consensus, anyway.) If this is part of some long-term strategy of his, as you seem to think, then he would not be upset. I for one don’t think he has it in him to look upset when he’s not upset.
So, what is Obama upset about?
Oh yeah, ELC, and I am looking forward to reading some of that great poetry of the priest.
On another note:
“WH warns tax defeat could trigger new recession.”
Obama is tacking to the middle. This is going to be good for him and the nation.
Whew! It took alot of beer to say that!
What incentive does Obama have to learn how to negotiate? All his life he has been handed whatever he wanted — he doesn’t need to negotiate or compromise. All he needs to do is ask for what he wants and it’s given him. Oh, except for the elections he won, and those were won using illegal, unethical or immoral gimmicks. Does not sound to me like a person who needs to negotiate. F
Obama is pissed that the Republicans checkmated him on the tax cuts for the rich and that the Democrats have questioned his manhood. He doesn’t take criticism well. Letting all the tax cuts expire would have tanked the economy. Mitch McConnell played a game of chicken and won on the tax cuts.
The net effect of the agreement will be to throw a lot of money at the economy which could help Obama in 2012.
Two possible items of interest:
1. I’m reading Vince Flynn’s “Term Limits,” copyright 1997, on my new Kindle, and the parallels to Obama are amazing (as far as I’ve gotten). Kindle is a perfect device for reading lightweight thrillers, and Vince Flynn is a master of the political novel. The President is more like Clinton than Obama, but the tea party spirit is there with a darker edge. Rahm Emanuel is portrayed beautifully.
2. I saw a brief clip of Obama on “Mythbusters” introducing the myth/or not of destroying an enemy fleet using solar reflectors. I can’t stand the man, so I switched to a show on top snipers and how they kill terrorists and other evil creatures. My question is: WHY did Obama appear on this show?
Was he trying to show us how smart he is because he remembered some story from fifth grade? Is this part of his “fool” persona?
the ability to make a decision without dithering unduly,
“One mark of a good officer was the ability to make quick decisions. If they turned out to be right, so much the better.”
~Larry Niven – “Ringworld”
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Adam Savage is a big-time San Fran lib. He gave money to Duh Won’s campaign. So one might call Obie’s appearance on the show a quid pro quo.
http://www.newsmeat.com/celebrity_political_donations/Adam_Savage.php
I think many of the posters above had put their fingers on an important part of the situation–Obama has all his life been told how smart he is, how insightful, etc., and he’s come to believe it. Most of us would, too, under the same circumstances. Valerie Jarrett’s embarrassingly fulsome remarks about how Obama is really just too smart for the rest of us and he’s bored by the stuff that the rest of us have to deal with is typical. If I’d spent my life hearing that sort of thing I’d come around to accepting it. (No one has.)
On a side note, we keep hearing how penetratingly intelligent he is–where’s the evidence? He’s clearly a bright guy but that he’s a rare intellect? I am not saying he isn’t but I don’t see it.
With the exception of the Harvard Law Review, Obama has never held a leadership position where he had to manage others and was responsible for the outcome. This is why we never heard about his accomplishments during his presidential run. All we’ve heard about is his job titles, his personal achievements (as is “He got elected”), not his accomplishments in a particular job. For example, what did he accomplish for the community as a community organizer? What did he accomplish with the distribution of the education funds for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge? What legislation did he spearhead in the Chicago Senate? And I agree with RickZ – what proof is there of his intelligence?
In fact, he has a history of choosing not to choose when it comes to tough decisions (voting “present”, blaming others for mistakes) as well as winning be eliminating opponents before the election. Why on earth would we expect him to suddenly learn leadership skills, such as negotiation, being decisive, seeking out and heeding the advice of expert advisers?
The Left depicted Reagan as just a dumb actor, but as you pointed out, he had leadership experience with the Screen Actors Guild and a Governor.
Above, Alex Bensky (7:11) wrote:
” . . but that he’s a rare intellect? I am not saying he isn’t but I don’t see it.”
I would offer that the evidence to date indicates that he’s simply NOT that smart.
For someone who’s supposed ot be so worldly he refers to the Austrian language, cites an incorrect U.S. motto, bows incorrectly to foreign leaders (and even to an Asian-American citzen). He presents himself as a student of history and consistently makes the kind of gross historical errors one expects of an uninformed high school student.
He publicly and intentionally refers to his political opponents (American citizens all) in terms that you would only expect to hear at an unguarded moment on an unknown live microphone (enemies and hostage-takers). He ignores the primary problems of his term (the economy and job creation) to ram health-care down the throats of an unwilling public, and the list goes on.
Not only is evidence for his “superior intelligence” lacking, I would submit that the evidence point to a rather mediocre intelligence which is notoriously uninformed.
These are simply NOT the actions one can expect from an intelligent
(sorry), last sentence frag should be dropped.
On a side note, we keep hearing how penetratingly intelligent he is—where’s the evidence?
This brings us back to Neo’s original comment:
Ever since Obama has become president, people have been giving him advice. It’s an odd phenomenon, as though they consider him a kid brother who needs a bit of assistance out in the big bad world.
Does that seem like a contradiction to anyone else? He’s the smartest president ever, we’re told, but he needs our constant guidance. He’s The One who will save us all, but editorial writers across the nation think he can’t do it without their advice.
I suspect that many hard-core liberals know, in their hearts, that he does need the help, in spite of their claims that his lack of experience didn’t matter, and that his high intelligence didn’t need proof. The internal contradiction there must be difficult for some people to take.
Must have been difficult, perhaps I should say… because it seems that many people, across the nation, are coming to their senses. Barack Obama has routinely betrayed anyone who stood in his way; it was only a matter of time before his core supporters were thrown under the bus too. (And not only did he cave to Republicans on tax-cut extensions, he had the temerity to lecture Democrats about it! Insult added to injury.)
It’s possible that President Obama will pull things together between now and 2012, but frankly I don’t see it. I don’t see him governing from the center with any success or sincerity, and I don’t see his supporters forgetting his betrayals of what he said they were voting for.
And I don’t see him doing what needs to be done. The American people are tired of being called racists, or being told that Bush/Rush/Fox/etc. is to blame for everything — but Obama continues to use those tricks, because they’re all he knows. What we need is a President who can govern… and it’s become clear to all by now that President Obama doesn’t know how. So how smart is he, really?
respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline
Aw shucks, D-i-B, he went to school just a few miles from you, so you know he’s smart. Misundereducated, though.
When you are all-knowing and all-powerful, why would you even think about negotiating?
Remember………. “I WON!”
Does it occur to anyone that Sarah Palin, as evidenced by her dealings with the oil companies in Alaska, has negotiation skills in spades?