What's Wrong with the Obama White House?

When a president's numbers drop, suddenly everybody becomes an expert in political strategy.

My latest column for CNN.com looks at Obama's drop in the polls and considers whether a new political strategy is really what the president needs.

When a president's numbers drop, suddenly everybody is an expert in "messaging." They confidently announce (as the NBC morning tip sheet said last week), "This White House is no good at communication and politics" -- and then equally confidently offer their bold communications strategies for turning things around.

In every other aspect of competitive politics -- from fundraising to get-out-the-vote -- nonprofessionals will acknowledge professional expertise. But everybody thinks they can do the job of a David Axelrod or a Karl Rove.

They are wrong, and in two important ways.

First, they misunderstand what a David Axelrod or a Karl Rove does, when the Axelrods and the Roves do their work right. When the man on the next bar stool tells you about political "strategy," he usually ends up discussing political tactics: the micro-maneuvers that fascinate the daily cable shows. But these maneuvers make little impression on a more general public that pays little attention to political details. Political strategy is slower and steadier.

Focusing Bill Clinton's hyperactive attention on small-bore political initiatives that expressed his concern for middle-income families, and keeping at it year after year: That's a political strategy.

Identifying George W. Bush as a down-home man of faith who would do whatever it took to keep America safe: Ditto.

Same with Barack Obama's self-invention as a post-racial healer trying to overcome the divisions left behind by the Bush and Clinton years.

It's not hard to devise such narratives. It is tremendously hard to stick to them, to resist the temptation to chase after every twist and turn of the polls.

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