7/31/14, 10:40 AM Barack Obama and The Fundamental Attribution Error | TIME.

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Barack Obama and The Fundamental Attribution Error
In high school psychology, students learn about an odd tendency of the human
condition, the so-called fundamental attribution error. We people are hard wired, it
seems, to overvalue the personality-based reasons for someones behavior, while under-
valuing the circumstantial reasons. If a waitress is rude, our instinct is to assume she is a
bad person, not that there are circumstances (a home foreclosure, a divorce, a sick child)
that would explain the rudeness. When a hedge fund manager hits a jackpot, we assume
he is just more brilliant, not that he got lucky.
Over the last few months at the White House, aides to President Obama have talked in
similar terms about their own situation. Though they never use the terminology, they
accuse the American public, as read in presidential approval polls, of being mislead by a
sort of fundamental attribution error. While many in America attribute the current
national malaise to President Obamas leadership, he and his aides are busy pointing at
all the situational factors that have nothing to do with the presidents leadershipthe
financial collapse, the intransigence of Republicans, the inanity of the cable news shout
fest.
The White House press corps reigning dean, Peter Baker, gets right at the heart of
argument in his definitive two-year New York Times magazine check-in of the Obama
Administration.
[F]or all the second-guessing, what you do not hear in the White House is much
questioning of the basic elements of the program Obama aides, liberal and
moderate alike, reject complaints from the right that the stimulus did not help
the economy or that health care expands government too much, as well as
complaints from the left that he should have pushed for a bigger stimulus
package or held out for a public health care option. . . . Instead, what you hear
Obama aides talking about is that the system is not on the level. Thats a phrase
commonly used around the West Wing its not on the level. By that, they
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mean the Republicans, the news media, the lobbyists, the whole Washington
culture is not serious about solving problems.
In other words, the problem is circumstantial, not personal. This argument leads to the
presidents current self confidence despite all the bad news around him, and will likely
lead him to govern in his second two years with more consistency than Bill Clinton after
his big midterm defeat chased him to the center. Obama acknowledges almost no
regrets, no inclination to shift strategy in any major way. He is telling voters to vote
Democratic in the midterms because they will get more of the same from the Democratic
party, not something different. If Obama is right, then when the circumstances shift, he
will be vindicated.
But he may also be wrong. There are lots of signs that the American people may not
much like Obamas actual policies. Health care reform has not polled well for about a
year. Less than half of Americans have much faith in the federal government to solve
problems, even as Obama posits more government as the solutions to health care,
energy, education and the economy. In the story, Baker gets at some of the skepticism
around Washington that the presidents diagnosis is correct. One prominent
Democratic lawmaker told me Obamas problem is that he is not insecure he always
believes he is the smartest person in any room and never feels the sense of panic that
makes a good politician run scared all the time, frenetically wooing lawmakers, power
brokers, adversaries and voters as if the next election were a week away.
Whatever the results of the coming midterm, a period of Democratic self-evaluation will
ensue. If the losses are big, the infighting could get ugly. The president has a lot riding
on the outcome. He needs to convince his own party, going into 2012, that the losses
they have just suffered have external causes, not internal ones. Ironically, if the external
factors remain bad, then Obamas refusal to shift approach may only confirm the belief
that it is all his fault.