Today the Worcester T & G carried Clive McFarlane’s column, Reversing Course To Disaster.

The only significant disagreement that I have with the column is his closing paragraph:

If this reversing of course is what the Republicans plan to do for the next two years, the president can only hope that the country in two years speaks the way Massachusetts voters spoke in this midterm election — that they may be afraid of the present and concerned about the future, but they are not stupid.

My response tried to show that stupidity on the part of the electorate is not the issue. The issue is the idea that the only thing President Obama can do is to hope for a sudden awakening.  Here is what I wrote:

The President said that the Republicans have been politicking for the last two years while he has been trying to govern.

For Barack Obama, that shows an unusually bad understanding of something so basic.

What the Republicans know that Obama doesn’t seem to grasp is that part of the job of governing is to get the electorate to be enthusiastic about your governing agenda.  Not only do you have to get them there, you have to keep them there.

For two years the Republicans have been aggressively selling their point of view, while Obama quietly went about his business.  With his lack of salesmanship, the following that he established in 2008 started slipping away.

For the majority of citizens who do not follow politics closely, the only message they get is the one that is most loudly thrust upon them.  If the message is one sided, you cannot blame them for succumbing to it.

I used to blame the media for not providing the balance.  All they seem to do is report what the various sides say.  Now I realize that the Republicans have figured out how to play in that environment while the Democrats have not.  So the blame really does have to fall on the Democrats for not knowing how the political world works.

If you want the media to represent your side of the issues, you have to say something about your side so that the media has something to report.  If you don’t say it, the media aren’t going to dig it up and feature it all by themselves.

Oh sure, the media might run the occasional story to set the record straight.  However the opposition is out there on a daily if not hourly basis trying to tilt the record in their favor.

This reversal in fortune shows how tenuous political accomplishments can be if you don’t foster enthusiastic backing from the electorate for the programs you put in place.