I love this, Genghis. Maybe my favourite thing you've done. YES, the need for a story. YES, the damn fool abandoned his storyline - which would've been incredibly powerful, if continued. 

The only NO, is to the storyline you floated. Not in its substance, so much as its terms. Any storyline that's gonna grab, especially in America, has to have movement. It can't be positioned at the edge of something, teetering, for very long - we've got to jump across or race away. If we're building a bridge, it has to be because we're going somewhere. Like Oxy Mora said, a journey. And bloody Obama HAD that. He was drawing on that sense of movement every time he quoted the great voices from the past, and somehow, the black white thing made him appear to EMBODY a new stage on the journey.

And then... well, he came out as a banker.

But YES again to the fact that he can grow, that he gets another act. Like I said 2 years ago, I'd vote for him because of who he can BECOME. That he might BECOME the leader needed by the times. Fingers crossed.

Story telling is not Obama's problem, action is. I think that Obama had talked a good presidency and hasn't been able to deliver on it. Now without Congress he may have missed his chance for good. This is a situation that a "natural" politician like Clinton could handle, but that someone so lacking in emotional intelligence: empathy and warmth, as Obama is may not be able to surmount.

Obama couldn't deliver because he doesn''t know how. My problem with Obama has always been that I saw nothing in his beautiful story that led me to believe he could manage anything: as far as I can see Obama never even managed a Boy Scout troop before entering the White House. And just like with the Tea Party candidates, his lack of experience was seen as a virtue not as a defect.

Again, Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas practically since he got out of college, he was very experienced in building and running teams and in solving endless problems of governance. Being a governor of a state or a mayor of a large city or even serving for many years in the Senate, gives some idea of a person's management skills and political footwork, without so much story telling needed. There is a "record" not a story. Observed from a distance Americans have become increasingly obsessed with story telling to the detriment of action. Why not elect Aaron Sorkin president?

Do not agree with Seaton Obama is "is distinctly "un-gifted" with people, distant without much empathy", he is very good off the teleprompter and has the time for people, he remembers names, he is a 'get along with people' kind of person.

He was a 'community organizer', the Republicans are more like MAFIA dons, who work the community for all they can get.

What Obama does not have is the ruthlessness and political jujitsu to go after those who oppose him, like Ted Kennedy used to do on the Senate floor. That is why the Republicans can so easily take advantage of him. He needs to, for instance, point out that it was he who got the money out of BP for the businesses in the Gulf, while the Republicans were at the same time apologizing to BP, saying 'accidents happen' no 'extortion' from a corporation!

He needs to, but probably won't, realize that the GOP does not want to be 'civil' or 'honest' and work to solve the problems this country faces, they will have to be dragged kicking and screaming to even put the nations problems on their radar. The GOP wants to slit his throat, give him concrete boots and sink him to the bottom of the Potomac. The GOP is 1st, 2nd and 3rd about politics, all politics, they think the economy will solve itself, and their tax cutting, values BS never changes. They are not civil and not honest, except with the big money players who back them.

The fact is the GOP would just as soon serve him as the main course at the little dinner get together that Obama has scheduled for later this month. These guys are like hungry sharks with the taste of blood. Obama needs to know that story.

I'm a bit late to the game here, and haven't read the comments yet, but I will say that I read the entire post at CNN today on my lunch hour and was blown away by it.  I'll eventually catch up with my thoughts and comment further but just wanted to say, Genghis, that this is one of your best.

First and foremost. Congratulations on the CNN placement! Right on!!!!

But sadly, to me your story was not one that is particularly compelling. The narrative feels like Obama's typical "can't we just get along" with superimposed CGI special effects. And as with Obama's narrative, there is no real villain that can actually be vanquished - you are still fighting an abstract.

I propose setting up the conflict as a question weather we are going to PROTECT and, dare I say, even expand benefits for America's embattled Main Street (and elderly, both current and future) or are we going to continue to protect the greed and excesses of those who don't even want to pay taxes while they live off the fat of the land and their countrymen starve. Are we going to lose our way chasing the phantom fears of deficits in the midst of crisis or are we going to embrace investment in our great Nation and move forward to a bright economic future that will allow us to banish the specter once and for all?

Austerity for me and a return to taxation parity for thee isn't the sort of thing to stir passion in anyone's loins - regardless the snazzed-up presentation. There is no way out of this. It is indeed a class war. We can't fix what is wrong in America unless the top 1% lose, and lose big. Any other narrative is a delusion.

Thoughtprovoking blog. I read it, and loved it, but like others wasn't convinced by your final proposal for a substantial narrative. I dropped back in to see what others were suggesting, and it all seems pretty thin gruel, no? Are we all so lost, we don't even know what we want from this presidency, in what direction we imagine and wish it to flow? One suggestion I was mulling over was the idea that he should rip off the Tea Party's preferred narrative: he ought to pilfer their 'taking back our country' line. He ought to just readjust it a bit - it's not about taking back our country from the evil big government, but rather taking back our country from the Big corporate cartel. He's already taken a couple of swings at it - in his SOTU swipe at the Supreme court, in his on and off populism on the banks, the health insurers, in the recent campaign against the Chamber of Commerce.

It is also a nice fit with the limits of his power now. Look, lets get serious - nothing, at least nothing good, is coming out of Congress for the next two years. All the action will be in foreign policy and in the regulatory agencies. He should pick some fights through HHS, through the SEC, have the DOJ come down hard on the anti-trust front, pump up the labor department, throw out GEithner and use Treasury to push for a harsh interpretation of the FinReg legislation. All of it, tied together with a nice F*ck-the-corps bow...

Just an idea.

Obama has a great story to tell: "The thirty year experiment in Trickle-Down Reaganomics has failed!"

He can point out that - contrary to the popular meme that neither side is willing to compromise - the Dems have consistently compromised over these last thirty years in effort to modify, but not obstruct, this experiment in a top-ordered economic system that has failed the American people. He can then point out that the Dems have compromised to the point of themselves being compromised, surrendering their defense of economic justice for the middle class and the poor in an attempt to make this experiment work.

He can point out the statistics that show wealth aggregating upwards in unprecedented fashion over these last thirty years. He can show how the tax rates have shifted onto the backs of the American people and away from the privileged elite. He can show how a "business-friendly government" has relaxed regulation or failed to administer regulations altogether in ways that have directly led to the deaths of the roustabouts on the Deepwater Horizon and the miners in West Virginia. And he can show very directly how this economic experiment led directly to our present economic crisis. (For openers, it's pretty much obvious in retrospect that you can't maintain a consumer-driven economy if you continually rob the worker-consumers of their income and their wealth by moving their jobs overseas and trashing the value of their biggest financial asset, their homes.)

He can then point out that every effort that has been made to fix this failure has been met by an insistence that we must continue more of the same policies that got us into trouble in the first place. A Keynesian stimulus? No, sayeth the Repubs, unless you include more tax cuts for the rich. A mortgage cramdown? No, sayeth the Repubs. Far better to just give the money to the banks and let them decide what to do with it. When that doesn't work? Well, sayeth the GOP, just give the banks more money and pass out another $700 billion in tax cuts to the wealthy.

The President needs to address the American people with a sense of urgency. He needs to at last declare that the Dems are ready to stick a fork in Reaganomics as the bloated carcass of unsustainable greed and corruption that it is. And he will sound the alarm that we need to get moving on this quickly and forcefully, before the "anonymous contributors" purchase any more elections for their wholly owned subsidiary, the GOP. 

This election left me feeling as though we are on the verge of being "relieved" of our responsibilities that attend self-governance to instead be delivered to the feet of Wall Street and the corporations. To the victor goes the spoils, I reckon, but we don't have to like it. Obama has a story to tell, alright. And it needs to be told in certain terms that, at last, we are prepared to stand up and fight. Reaganomics has failed, and the American people are suffering because of it. There is an alternative. Let the GOP cling to their failed policies. Let them continue as the party representing the interests of those who remain untouched by - and even profit from! - the disastrous policies that have caused such pain and misery for most Americans. And let the Dems lead the charge to restore sanity in our economics and lead us out of this mess. Let the Dems be the party that tells the wealthy and their GOP minions to "Get the fuck outta' the way! It's time to try something different, and this time we're going to put the interests and the financial stability of the American people first."

Drew Westen's The Political Brain (2007) was interesting and entertaining, I thought, on narrative in politics, and still, after 3 whole years, highly pertinent.  Whether one likes his suggestions or not.  He has interesting things to say in analyzing actual speeches of both successful and unsuccessful candidates.