Category: Stonewalled Visionary
Term in Office: 44th president, 2009-
Political Party: Democratic
Home State: Illinois
Evaluating the sitting president is a challenging task. For years, when doing rankings as facebook notes or for previous blogs I’ve written, I just didn’t do it. It seemed self-evident: the presidency isn’t over- why bother evaluating it? Isn’t it jumping the gun or succumbing to premature judgment? Beyond that, there is a very real problem of myopia; we may be just too close to the incumbent’s time to be objective. We read the news, absorb the commentary, and lose any sense of perspective. Despite these qualms, we also have to recognize that history is never over, and there is a never-ending treadmill of a record that has to be absorbed. At a certain point, you have a make a first draft of history, and that is what I will attempt here.
While we are speaking of presentism, let me begin with a personal anecdote. When I saw my doctor last month, he was alarmed by a lump he found in my clavicle. He referred me to an Ear, Nose and Throat guy whose gut reaction was that something was very wrong; that kind of lump is usually the first symptom of lymphoma to manifest itself. For two agonizing weeks, I did not know whether or not I had a serious form of cancer, and my mind turned to grim possibilities. What would it be like to spend the next two or three years, or longer, as a cancer patient? What if I had to leave my job? (Think chemo is expensive in the U.S.? Try chemo in Singapore.) What would happen if I lost my medical insurance because I was no longer employed?
Fortunately, I had a biopsy performed, it came up negative, and with a clean bill of health, I flew to Singapore to resume my teaching responsibilities. Nevertheless, this health crisis brought home for me how important the much-criticized signature accomplishment of the Obama presidency, the Affordable Health Care Act, has become. The law has its flaws, and I will discuss them, but most of my criticisms come from the left (it is too friendly and accommodating to existing drug companies and continues the wrongheaded scheme of tying one’s health insurance so closely to one’s employment). Despite these drawbacks, I cannot say enough how relieved I was that the law was in place: if necessary, I would be able to purchase my own insurance if I could no longer work, and couldn’t be denied for a pre-existing condition (and believe me, lymphoma would have been a pretty serious pre-existing condition.) If the question is, to paraphrase Reagan, would I have been better off now than I would have been eight years ago, the answer is a resounding and unmistakable ‘yes.’ My rankings prioritize helping the vulnerable, and there aren’t many who are more vulnerable than the seriously ill, and this law, for all its complexities and for all the issues still being ironed out, is a considerable boon to them.
So, despite the number of persistent criticisms Barack Obama has attracted, we need to step back, and take the larger view– remember all the persnickety armchair presidents who thought Truman and Eisenhower were rudderless in the 40s and 50s? Now, both men are considered very successful. So in the absence of time and cognitive distance, I will try, in my own meager way, to consider Obama’s larger place in history, even as that drama is still unfolding. Andrew Sullivan (who, I may add, is a self-professed conservative so completely distraught by the state of modern conservatism, he became one of Barack Obama’s strongest supporters) wrote these words on the night of his re-election in 2012:
“But this president has never been a radical; he has always been a moderate; he has been immensely skilled at foreign policy, ended one war and won another, killed Osama bin Laden and saved the American auto industry, deflected a Second Great Depression and initiated universal access to healthcare. He has presided over a civil rights revolution and the beginning of the end of prohibition of marijuana. He has created the new and durable coalition that was once Karl Rove’s dream.
Americans saw this. They were not fooled. And they made the right call, as they usually do. What was defeated tonight was not just Romney, a hollow cynic, but a whole mountain of mendacity and delusion. That sound you hear is the cognitive dissonance ringing in the ears of ideologues and cynics. Any true conservative longs for that sound, the sound of reality arriving to pierce through fantasy and fanaticism.”
A great assessment from a man who is anything but a dyed-in-the-wool liberal. Let’s look at how this began, though: the 2008 election through which Obama came to office was a singularly exciting moment– two strong candidates and excellent campaigners with very different visions of what they would do in office. There was a sense that a sea change took place after the George W. Bush presidency; even committed Republicans were walking away from many of his decisions. But those of us who expected the millennium in 2008 would be disappointed. The overwhelmingly Democratic, almost filibuster-proof* Congress that was elected with Obama seemed poised to initiate a Great Society-like shift that would empower and enfranchise those left behind by the Bush years. To our chagrin, Congress played it safe, probably believing the dreadfully misinformed hype that they would control the legislature for years to come. The Bush tax cuts, even for unfathmobly wealthy earners, were kept in place. Estate taxes, the fairest way to put more money in the coffers to begin reducing the deficit, were hardly even considered. An ugly, but unfortunately necessary bailout for the automotive industry passed with Obama’s signature, but so too did the badly needed Dodd-Frank reforms of the financial industry. For a president running on widespread programmatic and temperamental change in the nation’s capital, change was there, but it seemed sluggish and slow and tentative in coming.
Obama then made a major tactical error in making health care the major cause in which he funneled most of his political capital. As I said in my write-up, this was a badly needed bill, even in its present watered-down form without a public option or a Medicare-for-all approach. Obama should have recalled that pushing health care reform as a first priority decimated the early years of Bill Clinton’s presidency and helped cost the Democrats control of Congress in 1994. In hindsight, he almost certainly should have used his political capital on a more widely popular and more easily marketed measure– a jobs bill, an infrastructure bill, something that would have been broadly supported and easily comprehended by the public, and would have had a salutary effect on the economy, allowing for greater credibility to push further reforms. Instead, Obama’s signature domestic achievement was a complex, overlong bill that easily fell prey to absurd talk about “death panels,” losing doctor choice, ruinously high taxes, and a vast array of misleading claims and outright lies.
Partly out of unhappiness with the Affordable Care Act, partly out of frustration over the still-sputtering economy, the Democrats endured the worst defeat a majority party endured in a couple generations, returning the GOP to control of the House and severely cutting into their lead in the Senate. But the triumphant GOP was not Bob Dole’s Republican Party. Instead, a movement that started out in the Ron Paul wing of the party, quickly diffused into a broader, more populist TEA Party, devoted to a kind-of mythic Jeffersonian limited government. Adapting the Gasden (“Don’t Tread on Me”) flag, it grew into a movement of sad sexagenarians playing dress-up and living out patriot fantasies without a modicum of a patriot’s willingness to sacrifice. All too often their mantra of “taking the country back” had, sometimes intended and sometimes not, strong racial overtones, and the movement was not unrelated to the demographic sinkhole white Americans have found themselves in. At any rate, there is no accounting for poor behavior at the tea party, the bad feeling in the Darjeeling. Basic cooperation and civility, hallmarks of any Congress, went out the window. A litany of disgraceful conduct and bizarre claims, within and without the halls of Congress followed, from getting interrupted at the State of the Union (“you lie!”) to Dinesh D’Souza’s poorly substantiated movie claiming Obama is a relentless anticolonialist with an axe to grind against Western culture. And of course, there was the “Birtherism” questioning the president’s American citizenship with virtually no convincing proof, and did not relent even after his birth certificate was made public. Lots of presidents had to wade through malicious enemies and weird-ass claims about their past, but no president had to deal with it so consistently and relentlessly as Barack Obama, as attempts to code him as “different from most Americans” became a backhanded way of protesting the first president of African descent.
All this is to say, Obama had to deal with some of the worst congresses in U.S. history– only a couple of the Gilded Age congresses and the class of 1946 even come close. The leaders of our national legislature have refused give-and-take politics crucial to any fair discourse– the deficit must go down, but it’s always got to be revenue cuts, never any tax raises. On three different occasions now, the House has played chicken with the full faith and credit of the United States, refusing to approve a raise to the debt ceiling- on spending Congress had already committed to- without concessions. How can one accomplish anything within the boundaries of one’s power with such a group, willing at times to blow up the world economy just to make an ideological point? Accordingly, a promising presidency became mired in gridlock where ineffectual half-measures became the best one could hope for. Consider that as I write this, a Farm Bill is poised to show up on the presidents desk that cuts food stamps by nearly a billion dollars a year, while preserving most of the unnecessary farm subsidies that bolster agra-businesses like Monsanto. Democrats reluctantly went along with the bill, and Obama is likely to sign it into law because it is probably the best that they can hope for given the partisan makeup of Congress at this time. What all of this amounts to is something that might be called “the damage control presidency.” That’s good- the backsliding must be contained- but it is such a pale shadow of what could have been during these years.
So far, however, I have avoided three elements I address in almost every write-up: temperament, administrative skill, and ethics. How does Obama compare by these metrics? So…Temperament. Obama, as Jonathan Alter put it, lacked “the schmooze gene” that came instinctively to Clinton, Bush 43, Reagan, and even, to an extent, compulsive thank-you note writer, Bush 41. The most common metaphor involved household pets; most presidents are affable, gregarious dogs, while Obama has been compared to a cool and aloof cat, replete with an unwillingess to suffer fools and glad-handlers. On the whole, this is a good thing, I would argue. We’ve had too many shallow baby-kissers and impulsive “deciders”, and his careful, no-drama deliberation– very much a Picard to George W.’s Kirk, is a turn for the better.
Administrative skill. Sigh. He started out well, picking a very strong cabinet, including a gracious inclusion of a vanquished rival for Secretary of State, and recognizing Robert Gates as the indispensable man in Iraq. But there was a stunning aloofness and a lack of fire in the belly, a condition that many have characterized as “leading from behind.” While Clinton’s team drafted a health care plan, Obama let Congress figure it out. Same with immigration, gun control, and every other plan that ended up stymied in congressional gridlock. And yet, Obama could not be considered indecisive; even Robert Gates’ sometimes-critical memoir credits his second boss with taking to the presidency prodigiously, including the bold decision to technically invade Pakistan in hopes of taking out Osama bin Laden. Still, Obama’s relative disinterest in the cabinet departments and his lack of executive experience prior to his presidency makes this one of his weaker areas. A wider array and greater depth of experience would have served him well here.
As far as ethics? The corrupt “Chicago style” politics some pundits predicted never really materialized (By the way, have you ever noticed how “Chicago-style politics” flawlessly transitioned from a polite way of saying “the Catholics are too corrupt to govern” to a polite way of saying “the blacks are too corrupt to govern” in the 60s and 70s?) The small, petty, money-grubbing scandals that pockmarked the Clinton presidency, and the corporate cronyism (remember the no-bid contracts on war supplies?) that besmirched the Bush-43 presidency never materialized. It is important in the age of the 24-hour news cycle, where every flaw and foible is overanalyzed by a panel of self-professing experts, how remarkably, though certainly not flawlessly, clean this administration has been. Despite the vigilance of congressional Republicans, Fox, and dozens of right-leaning blogs, nothing really stuck. The IRS scandal defused when it became clear that a rogue office overzealously looked at groups claiming non-profit status, and even then, liberal groups were questioned just about as often as conservative groups. No convincing evidence has emerged, despite constant coverage on FOX, that Benghazi was anything more than a tragic flare-up of sectional violence. The most recent red flag, “you can keep your plan” may well be the most damaging and the president needs to answer for it, but even then, Obamacare resulted in shockingly low numbers of Americans forced to buy into a plan inferior to what they already had. Altogether, though, very little sticks, and the administration, for all the scrutiny it is under, has kept itself quite clean.
Let’s take a look, though, at where all this led. His support for same sex marriage was a close and careful political calculation, but it was also a vital moment for the movement to have the president’s support, and history will remember that he was the first sitting president to support it. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the first piece of legislation Obama signed, was an important step forward for the “equal pay for equal work” principle. Women’s access to contraception is greater than ever, thanks in part to the health care law. Social justice and speaking up for marginalized communities is a big part of my rankings, and here, Obama clearly succeeded.
Due to his positioning in the presidential pantheon, Obama had the opportunity to depart from his predecessors’ choices or continue them, and the result is a mixed bag. He fulfilled his campaign pledge to withdraw from Iraq, drew down our forces in Afghanistan, reversed the petty doctrinal ban on stem cell research, ended the “enhanced interrogation techniques” that were little more than a smokescreen for torture — but on the other hand, NSA surveillance remains out of hand, Guantanamo remains open, and drones continue to develop, often at cost to civilian life. In these instances, Obama may have erred by turning Bush-era decisions into something more intractable, that is, a precedent, by keeping, and in some cases escalating, their practice.
Unlucky #13 it is. Not bad at all, but I expected Obama to be a top 7 president when he was inaugurated, the sort of guy we might mention in the same conversations as Harry Truman or Theodore Roosevelt as the best of the near-great presidents. Maybe it was youthful naivety, maybe a truly progressive moment, but more importantly, a recommitment of our social contract toward good government, was actually possible during that short window. Instead, we got a presidency that at times had a strong energy and commitment to restorative justice, but at other times, dawdled, fumbled, and spent too much time negotiating with a disloyal opposition that did not return the good faith. And now, we return to the long view: when we talk about the Obama presidency 15 years from now, many of our perfectly valid frustrations and reservations will seem small and petty. The disastrous and inexcusably slow rollout of the healthcare.gov website will be relegated to footnotes, but a bill that led to more Americans, especially the poor and the chronically sick, having access to health care will be remembered as a signature achievement. Slow, steady piecemeal reform, while keeping the forces of plutocracy and banksterism at bay? Perhaps that is the only change we can believe in these days.
*A number of discrete events conspired to keep the Democrats at 60 votes for only a very short period of time between 2009-2011, including the delay in certifying Al Franken’s very narrow win in Minnesota, Ted Kennedy’s death, Arlen Spector’s timely switch to the Democratic Party, and ultimately, Scott Brown’s election to Teddy’s seat.
The problem with judging presidents before their term is completed isn’t just presentism- it’s that we don’t know what he will do in the remainder of his term. For all we know, tomorrow Obama could get drunk and nuke Pakistan. Or he could come up with a brilliant plan that results in a lasting peace in the Middle East.
In your article on JFK, you said that you would discuss his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis in comparison to the 13th President. But it doesn’t seem to be above.
Michael– quite right! I intended to make a comparison between the Cuban Missile Crisis and the “invade the place where Osama is hiding” decision that didn’t pan out and didn’t quite work. The Obama assessment was getting too long, so I felt I had to cut it out.
I understand your qualms with ranking a presidency while it is still ongoing. My answer is that we are learning new, game-changing things about previous presidencies all the time, and what we learn will change how each of them is evaluated. For example, one journalist recently uncovered evidence that Grover Cleveland went out of his way to make life miserable for a reporter who broke the story about his secret cancer surgery, and Cleveland’s uncharacteristic vindictiveness might change our take on him. My point is, history is always continuing, and it is always being rewritten. It never stays still long enough for us to definitively rank something. As such, I have to acknowledge that my ranking, and any ranking, is just a snapshot of a moment in time.
First, I should acknowledge my prejudice. Like Obama: I identify with Hawaii, having lived there for five years in my twenties; I lived in Asia as a boy; I went to college in CA; and finally, I’ve settled and put down roots in Illinois. So, I don’t expect to ever again have so much ‘where-you’re-from’ in common with a president.
Second, I’d like to admit to one other subjective bias: Obama’s demeanor (a mix of power, grace and calm–emanating, perhaps, from his African, Hawaiian and Indonesian roots, respectively) is something, in my eyes of course, that approaches high art. The only parallels are JFK and FDR. Some of this is the contrast with his predecessor, but I think we take for granted what will be seen in hindsight as incomparable delivery.
What’s crucial, though, is not Obama’s agile approach to the microphone, or Reagan’s hearty, bemused, good-natured delivery, it’s the essence of a president’s politics. And here, context matters. Essentially, what’s in the realm of the possible? As you correctly note, the 60-vote Senate Democratic super-majority existed for a short period (six months, from July ’09 to Jan. ’10). What we should also remember is that several of those 60 were quite conservative, or at least had to protect themselves against challenges from the right (senators from NE, LA, AR, IN, PA, CT). Meanwhile, Republicans were organizing to purposefully block everything Obama proposed, regardless of merit, and their major tool in doing so was the Senate filibuster, which is the hidden story of our time, politically speaking.
Thus, when comparing what Obama was able to accomplish with what Johnson, say, accomplished we must remember this contextual key.
Here, then, are a few differences I’d like to point out, between your and my Obama analysis (I start each by quoting from your piece):
“…change was there, but it seemed slow and sluggish and tentative in coming.” There is always the question of whether to promise only what one can deliver, and risk losing an election; or whether to aim for the stars. Obama chose the latter in ’08 and won convincingly. Given his race, the uncertainty of the economic trauma the country was experiencing and the irregularities in the close, ’00 election, deflated rhetoric was all but unaffordable.
“…made a major tactical error in making health care the major cause in which he funneled most of his political capital”. You cite jobs and infrastructure as alternatives that could have garnered more support and been first steps to tackling health care. Except that a nearly-trillion-dollar stimulus bill, meant to jump-start the economy had jobs and infrastructure as components; there was even a second, minor stimulus. Plus, if Democrats in congress had waited on health care, they would have by then lost their 60-seat supermajority. As it was, the legislation just barely passed, and less than a month before the D’s lost a senate race in MA.
The most commonly suggested alternative to Health Care was Cap & Trade legislation. The House successfully passed it early on, but the consensus at the time, IIRC, was that health care was the likelier issue.
As for learning from Bill Clinton’s mistake in the early ’90s, it can be argued that Obama paid too much heed. Probably the biggest reason why the president let congress hash out the details, and so allow the process to play out in public, was that Clinton had crafted his attempt behind closed doors with little congressional input, then presented it fait accompli.
“Obama’s signature domestic achievement was a complex, overlong bill that easily fell prey to absurd talk about “death panels,” losing doctor choice,… Or, one can blame Republican detractors for distorting what was the only way forward. For example, Connecticut’s Joe Lieberman shook his head on a public option. Interestingly, the losing-your-doctor charge may be the one true criticism that was hushed up by the bill’s supporters. If Obama hadn’t repeatedly said “If you like your plan, you can keep it” ObamaCare may have fallen short.
“But there was a stunning aloofness and a lack of fire in the belly, a condition that many have characterized as “leading from behind.” The problem, here, is the Republicans, who we excuse by referring to ‘congressional intransigence’. Because the opposition party has been intent on keeping any hint of victory away from Obama, to the best of their ability, Obama’s only way forward was and is to stay in the shadows, and allow Republicans to claim more than their share of glory.
There is also the extended period early in Obama’s first term when outreach to the opposition was placed front and center (the ’09 stimulus, with its tax cutting emphasis is exhibit A; the near debt default of ’11 with its ‘compromise’ involving sequestration is B), all to no avail. And yet if he had ignored the Republican point of view, initially, it might be argued that he had never tried to engage.
“NSA surveillance remains out of hand, Guantanamo remains open, and drones continue to be deployed, often at cost to civilian life.” This is, again, a case of choosing either right or caution. It may surprise some readers, but the Democratic party has only recently reversed the Republican edge on foreign policy and specifically, keeping the country safe. To do this has meant moderating the impulses to cut back Pentagon spending and abandon key aspects of the war of terror, specifically, drones and wiretaping. Was this wise? Because he was shutting down two wars, opening up to Iran, attempting to close Guantanamo (Congress is alone responsible for this not happening), etc., one could argue that a strong Republican candidate in ’12 or even ’16 could wield an effective critique and perhaps turn an election.
“The disastrous and inexcusably slow rollout of the healthcare.gov website…” I’ll switch gears, here, and agree with you that this will likely be a lesser issue than it is now–although that’s not saying much. The reason it happened in the first place, of course, is that another calculation was made and Obama again came down on the side of caution. From the accounts I have read, work on the website was delayed until after the ’12 election in order to deprive the opposition of an issue. This meant that the usually burdensome red tape pace of government contracting was intensified to the point of hopelessness.
Where does all this leave Obama on my own presidential ranking? During the height of the roll-out mess I counter-intuitively moved him up to #4 with the bold prediction that he would, by the time he leaves office, turn around four major ills: the economy, wars overseas, health care and the environment. We shall see.
Also, Alex, so good to hear that you’re well; here’s to a full, healthy life.
At this juncture in time, mid-April ’14, Bush the First has just been inducted into the equivalent of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, being placed at #9–out of 42 presidents–by our DJer-in-Chief, Alex. To my mind, this is equivalent to Brownsville Station being inducted into the HoF on the strength of ‘Smoking In The Boys Room’.
Be that as it may, I read the latest Time magazine today, and was inspired to expand my list of policy ills that Obama will reverse from four to five. As noted above, I foresee 1) The Economy, 2) Wars Overseas, 3) Health Care, and 4) The Environment as areas that will be turned around, or will be well on their way to being turned around, by the time the president leaves office. Add to that 5) Higher Education.
Enter Haley Sweetland Edwards’ article in Time, Should US Colleges Be Graded By The Government. Ms. Edwards’ name is one I recognize from the Washington Monthly, where, as you may know, the idea of a college rank hack–to tell us which schools are best *for America*–got its start.
Let’s be blunt, student debt is exploding. And many of those who attend college come away with an all but worthless degree from a college that is mainly interested in turnstile cash. By collecting data on things like completion rates and earnings-upon-entering-the-workforce, prospective students can see that Papermill U. is a rip-off and instead attend elsewhere. The plan is to then ask Congress to curtail federal financial assistance to poorly performing schools.
Except, the ranking itself will probably do more to raise standards than will cutting off aid–the latter being of course problematic with dunces in charge of congressional committees.
All of which left me with the shocking realization that the Obama administration will be able to add yet another arrow to their accomplishments quiver without much of any action from congress.
And what will that mean for my own presidential rankings? Obama currently rests at #4; and as they say where I work: “I feel a big one coming on”–in this case a big promotion.
I won’t tackle the entire article,just a few points here.
Healthcare:
1) The reason healthcare is tied to ones job is due to the wage and price controls of the 1940s. The only thing of value that businesses could offer perspective hirees was additional benefits. The blame here goes to FDR.
2) I distinctly remember Obama stating in a debate that the healthcare system available to him as a Senator would be made available to everyone and that’s what his healthcare plan would be. This never happened.
3) If Obama would have made Medicare or Medicade available for purchase from the government would have been better than the plan we actually got.
Just because someone disagrees with Obama or the Democrats, it doesn’t make them racist. This line of thinking that demonizes ones opponents needs to stop.
The Senate was filibuster proof during Obama’s first two years, because there were two Republican Senators that stated that they would vote against filibusters. I’m pretty sure that Susan Collins was one of them.