The Tipping Point?

I'm reading Bill Simmons' new book. Absolutely excellent, assuming you are a sports fan with at least a passing interest in the NBA. And I say that despite the fact that I fully expect Simmons will show his usual bias toward the Celtics (to be fair, that's easy to do).

But I'll discuss his book in detail some other time. What jumped out at me was that Simmons got Malcolm Gladwell to write the foreword to his book -- and Gladwell got me thinking of his most famous book. The concept of the Tipping Point is now pretty well-known, but I always think of it as similar to the boiling point, where you can no longer stop what will happen.

I'd argue that something similar occurs in politics -- there are points at which a particular policy becomes inevitable to pass (think McCain-Feingold in the wake of the Enron collapse), or when a particular candidate will win or lose an election (more difficult to identify clearly, but think Michael Dukakis in the tank, or George Allen's failure to reply effectively regarding the macaca issue). I believe that you can't usually identify the tipping point until much later within a political campaign -- for example, if health care fails to pass, I'm guessing the tipping point was the town halls, and if it does pass, it will be Pelosi's House vote. You could argue that there were any number of tipping points in last year's election.

It's strange now, thinking back on the 2008 election. I have friends who can testify to this point -- I pretty much thought Barack Obama was going to be unbeatable if he won the Democratic nomination, and told people this in 2007 if not 2006. I also figured McCain was the one candidate who had a shot at beating him, but I didn't think he would or could, short of some insane game-changer (like if Obama was revealed standing alongside Rev. Wright saying "Goddamn America!"). I even know friends who jumped on board the Operation Chaos bandwagon when they realized I was right about Obama (I never liked the idea of participating in Operation Chaos -- I'd rather have Hillary as President than Obama, but it's not my part to screw with the nominating process of a party to which I don't belong).

Why did I think Obama would win? Three reasons: W's unpopularity (which would attach itself to the GOP nominee like a lead anchor), the lack of distaste among GOP voters for Obama (which was the reason a GOP candidate could have beaten Hillary), and the way the media would fawn over Obama. The historical nature of Obama's candidacy was such that the media would trip over themselves trying to be nice to him, and it was borne out in the election campaign.

But back to the tipping point -- the biggest advantage any Dem had was being able to attack the President as proxy. I'd argue that President Bush's popularity went south for good (tipped over, as it were) following Katrina. That event, and the subsequent coverage, and the perception of it (leaving aside debate on whether the coverage was over the top or accurate, and if the perception was true or not), made Bush permanently toxic to a portion of the electorate that heretofore had been willing to stand with him at times. And W.'s toxic nature rubbed off on the GOP.

A year ago, following the election, it would have been hard to find someone who might buy into the idea that Obama might someday reach such a tipping point. Yet today, the Cook Political Report is describing the President as "beyond radioactive" in key swing districts.

I don't think Obama's there yet. But he's making frighteningly quick progress. And I bring this up because I spent the week watching the news at odd hours (because there was nothing else on, when you're five hours behind the East Coast). And I wonder if this week might not end up being a week that haunts Obama (and his party) down the line. This week, I saw the following big stories related to the President, in no particular order:

1. The President's Asia trip, with most of the week spent in China, but with no major announcements of achieving any progress with China on Iran or its currency.
2. The farce of the fake Congressional districts on Recovery.gov.
3. The continuing failure to reach any conclusion on Afghanistan policy.
4. The fallout from the decision late last week to try KSM and his colleagues in NYC, including Attorney General Eric Holder's testimony before Congress.
5. The debut of Harry Reid's healthcare bill, when the concept of healthcare reform seems to be getting less popular among the public.

At best, this wasn't a good week for the President. The only good news might be that the media's Palin fixation and her book tour nicely coincided to prevent additional focus on the above problems. And if I have time this weekend, I intend to post on each of the above items in detail. But before I get there, the thought occurs that Obama may be reaching a point where a major event could tip him over to where he ends up with much lower poll numbers -- and ones he can't recover from later. Independents have already sounded alarm bells about the economy and the unpopularity of Obama's policies in the off-year Gubernatorial elections in NJ and VA. They may flee the Dems in droves next year if Obama keeps this up.

Most importantly, take a look at that list above. Whatever the merits of the administration's decisions, they're not doing a good job defending their positions in #2-5 (although #2 is pretty much indefensible incompetence), and they didn't do a very good job lowering expectations for #1.

You know how they say you can learn a lot about a sports team when they face adversity? Obama and his team haven't really faced adversity yet. They're about to do so, and I'm not sure they have the competence to weather the storm.