Confidence and Obama

Ron Suskind at a lecture this evening at Chatham House believes Obama lost his confidence following a dispute with his advisers on how to handle the banks. Initially Obama had relied on people like Paul Volcke for advice on how to handle the banks. Volcke and his cohorts had advised that the banks should be nationalised and brought down to size. No longer should they be too big to fail and neither should they be allowed to be both a commercial and investment bank. Unfortunately Obama was persuaded to change advisers with Tim Geithner as Treasury Secretary. Geithner and his cohorts both supported the status quo in the banking sector and bank bail outs and, despite Obama requesting a Swedish as opposed to a Japanese solution for the financial crisis, Geithner and co. wore him down to the point where he gave in. All the research carried out by Obama which had led him to demand his advisers prepare a Swedish style plan was for naught. In Suskind's opinion this took the stuffing out of Obama to the extent that he lost his confidence with the result that he simply failed to engage with a confident Romney in the first televised debate. Obama will likely do better in tonight's debate as he has a better grasp of foreign affairs than Romney but Suskind's guess is Obama is likely to fail in the third debate. It does not seem to matter what a politician does or says that wins him votes but how he presents himself. A candidate who comes across as confident in what he says will win more support than a candidate who appears hesitant or uncomfortable or who lacks confidence. It is possible Obama will hide his lack of confidence in the third debate but according to Suskind Obama is not an actor and can only be true to himself.