Last week's poll shows broad support for President Barack Obama: a whopping 80% are optimistic about the next 4 years with the President despite the fact that many of those very same people are pessimistic about their own lives.
How do we understand that the very same people gloomy on the economy are simultaneously pleased with the President's leadership?
One might be tempted to point to the passage of the stimulus bill, the strong measures put forth to prop up the banks, put people back to work, and fill state budget coffers. However, polls show that people are extremely divided about our new president's policies and leanings on the stimulus package and the auto and bank bailouts.
So what has happened for Americans that they express confidence in their leader while remaining deeply skeptical that things will turn out for the good?
Here's one possible explanation: our president has rhythm.
What's rhythm? It is a concept that is only beginning to be articulated scientifically, and yet may be a key element in allowing people to synchronize their actions, make music and work together.
It seems that within days of birth (and perhaps even earlier) humans are not only able to detect a beat in music, but they seem to be able to induce a beat in other people's speech. The way my PT blog colleague University of Amsterdam researcher Henkjan Honing puts it: ...you pick up a rhythm even if it's not there explicitly in the notes...you hear a pulse. You induce the pulse in the people around you. During last year's presidential campaign some people I know began to discern Obama's cadence in his manner of talking even though it is not music. When he spoke about change, they felt the beat of change in his voice.
As a psychotherapist I have often wondered why some patients feel better after a session or a series of sessions even as they face the same daunting, complex problems they walked in with.
Some people say that they feel better because they feel understood, but it is possible that we may not have understood them so much as synced with them or some might say resonated. That means that the patient and therapist may have induced each other's rhythm since generally patients and therapists don't sing to each other.
Obama's success may be because he does not seem as interested in convincing as he is in connecting. For example, on January 27th President Obama went to the Republican lunch on Capitol Hill to talk about his stimulus bill. He was rebuffed and treated like a supplicant.
Yet, what looked like a foppish failure may have been the beginning of a shrewd victory especially when you fast forward to last week's fiscal policy summit with members of congress. This time they gathered around the president like disciples around the Rebbe. They were the supplicants. When House GOP Whip Joe Barton pleaded with the president to encourage democrats to be more inclusive, the President deftly responded: "...the majority has to be inclusive...the minority has to be constructive."
The reality is, that therapists, teachers, preachers, presidents, have to say the same thing to people, thousands of time and millions of different ways until they resonate.
Obama seems to know this instinctively. "I'm going to keep on talking [to Eric Cantor]," he said. "Some day, sooner or later, he is going to say, 'Boy, Obama had a good idea.' It's going to happen. You watch, you watch."
If this rhythm keeps up, this might well be the most loved recession this country ever had.
*Acknowledgment to Ncaps learners and faculty
