Assistant to President Obama talks about the power of the President’s voice | News, Sports, Jobs

Melody Barnes, former assistant to President Obama, speaks about the power of the president’s voice during her lecture Thursday at the Chautauqua Institution. PJ photo by Sara Holthouse

CHAUTAUQUA — The American presidency is crucial to Americans’ lives, but surprisingly, according to Melody Barnes, it is not always at the forefront.

Barnes is the founding director of the University of Virginia’s Karsh Institute of Democracy, an assistant to President Barack Obama, and former director of the White House Domestic Policy Council. She has more than 25 years of experience in public policy-making. Barnes’ talk Thursday morning at the Chautauqua Institution focused on the evolution of the modern presidency, continuing the week’s theme of how the presidency can shape lives.

“On this morning of the first presidential debate, we must ask the question ‘why?'” Barnes said. “Although often misunderstood and sometimes maligned, we can be sure that the presidency and the executive branch have, in some way, influenced everything.”

Barnes gave examples of things the presidency has touched, including coffee machines, streets and people others interact with in the office or in homes, and food. She said the power in the office of the president can and does profoundly affect lives.

Barnes talked about spending the first three years of Obama’s administration in the White House and calling her parents to tell them the news, which they were excited about but also confused about.

“When we entered the White House, we knew it could be a confusing place for people,” Barnes said. “We often drew a direct connection between our jobs and the jobs of Leo, CJ and Josh from the popular TV series ‘The West Wing.’ That’s how we understood what we were doing.”

Barnes said the office surrounding the presidency often feels opaque and less accessible to regular people. She went on to say that the topic of the American presidency is a timely issue right now as the country heads into one of the most contentious elections ever and people continue to lose faith in the federal government. She said only 20% of Americans trust the government, making it difficult or nearly impossible to solve problems. Barnes added that 1964 was the peak year in which people trusted the government the most. 69% of people blame this distrust on irresponsible leaders who do not protect democracy and want to get to power at any cost.

Barnes said this is causing people to question whether their voice counts, especially among young people and people of color. She said public opinion of Congress also continues to lose ground, quoting Stephen Colbert as saying, “Congress is less popular than colonoscopies.”

In the past, there have been frequent calls to abolish the Electoral College due to public discontent, after two presidents were elected without a majority vote in our lifetime. Although the Electoral College does not seem to reflect public opinion, Barnes said she understands the desire to abolish it, but wonders if it might also create vexing problems.

“Americans are dissatisfied with their representation, even though we expect a lot from our president,” Barnes said.

Barnes asked the audience to think about how the office of the president has evolved over time in the face of competing demands, why it matters, and in particular, what the job of the president is and should be, what his role is in advancing an agenda that addresses the needs of the nation, and whether an office of the president works in the 21st century.

Barnes answered these questions by looking back at some of the past presidents, back to those who helped draft the Constitution, such as Alexander Hamilton, and the role that presidents like George Washington, Teddy Rosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson played in establishing presidential power.

While working with Obama’s administration, Barnes said they were sometimes told to act more like Lyndon B. Johnson, whom she described as someone who turned American life upside down during his five years as president and who believed that government should act on behalf of the people. This was something Obama shared with Johnson, and he cited examples of Obama reading letters from constituents every day, interacting with children and passing the Affordable Care Act.

“Until 2008, nearly every president in the last 60 years had tried and failed to advance global health care reform,” Barnes said. “President Obama, pressured by the American public against the backdrop of a health care crisis, decided to use his political capital to do so. There were times along the way when we debated and wondered whether or not we should pursue comprehensive reform.”

Barnes said Obama told her colleague that if he listened to her, the thing would happen in small steps and take a long time, and they were doing it now.

The rest of Barnes’ talk focused on the executive power of the president and how he uses it. She said the power of the president’s voice and the way it is conveyed to the public changed with the introduction of television and radio. She also talked about the evolution of technology and social media and how social media allowed both President Obama and President Trump to harness that technology and use it to reach people in new ways.

Barnes said many of the problems the president is blamed for are actually Congress’s problems, and to fix the presidency, Congress must first be fixed. To function effectively, Barnes said, the presidency needs a functioning Congress.

Barnes concluded his speech with another example of the power of the president’s voice, citing Lydon B. Johnson’s speech following the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

“Every president must earn the trust of the people,” Barnes said. “Every president must be a leader. And to be a leader, you must attract people who are willing to follow you. Every president must develop a moral basis for his power, or he will soon find that he has no power at all.”

Barnes said the president’s moral authority is directly related to the development of the presidency. Presidents who are committed to touching people’s lives and meeting their needs sometimes find themselves in tension within the federal system, but Barnes said that tension can also be productive.

“These productive tensions, even within the presidency, may be exactly what the framers of the Constitution had in mind when they set in motion a system of collective self-government aimed at the common good,” Barnes said.