Tuesday 22 February 2011

The Obama presidency after two years

In general it is true to say that many around the world, particularly throughout Europe, greeted Obama’s election with relief that George W. Bush would no longer be president. Bush was seen widely as a warmongering, belligerent, (unfairly) unintelligent president who was a danger to the world. Obama’s election, in contrast, was what Stanford University Professor Josef Joffe called “a moment of relief at having a US president who made it possible for the world to love his country again.” (Foreign Affairs, Sept/Oct 2009).

Unlike Bush, Barack Obama could claim a mandate, winning 53% of the popular vote and big majorities in the House of Representatives and Senate.

However, where Bush inherited from Clinton the first balanced budgets since 1969, and sought to pursue a “compassionate conservatism” agenda, Obama became president at an extraordinarily difficult moment for America. He faced the unprecedented problem of a world-wide economic downturn, with a rapidly escalating budget deficit, whilst fighting two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a broader war against terror.

Given the enormity of his task, it is not surprising that he began his Administration with a message that was both pragmatic and bipartisan – both domestically and globally. His inaugural speech contained an announcement that he was willing to reach out to any enemy that unclenched its fists – this was, perhaps, as directed at politicians and opponents back home as it was to the leaders of North Korea and Iran.

At the beginning, Obama often deferred to the Congressional Democratic leadership to write key legislation, such as the stimulus bill and healthcare reform. Unlike Bush, who was an ex-Governor, Obama is the first president since John F. Kennedy (excepting the unelected Ford) to come from Congress. This deference to Congress was, in part, designed to restore the concept of legislative-executive partnership, but it left him open to accusations of partisanship, something not helped by Nancy Pelosi’s abrupt style.

This was made worse by the perception that Obama’s first year as president produced what many regarded as a Democratic Party wish list – or rather legislation centred on the issues where Republicans and Democrats disagreed the most.

This was highlighted by his introduction of healthcare reform. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 was a $938 billion overhaul which extended coverage to 32 million uninsured Americans. The nature of his success in pushing this through Congress cannot be underestimated given the opposition – it was what Joe Biden told the president at the signing in ceremony a “big fucking deal”.

To push the bill through, Obama cleverly co-opted the most powerful interest groups in advance, most notably the health-insurance industry which will benefit from tens of millions of new customers, and the pharmaceutical industry, who supported Obama’s bill once their interests were protected.

But, he was opposed by mostly “ordinary people” who did not understand or like what was being proposed, and by Republicans who opposed what they saw as a massive expansion of the powers of Federal government - not one Republican in the House or Senate voted for his reform.

This was typical of the first two years of his Administration. Obama would admit at the end of last year that he misjudged the depths of partisan polarization and had not identified potential areas of compromise, most notably failing to find an issue that was similar to Clinton's decision to work with Republicans on welfare reform in 1990s.

As Obama has discovered, conservatives have mobilised in opposition, demonstrated by the continuing popularity of right wing shock jocks, Fox News, and the burgeoning Tea Party movement that rails against any expansion of federal government.

Though much of this opposition is polemicised, with accusations ranging from Obama being a socialist through to a fascist, the debate continues to highlight two fundamental problems – the lack of compromise as groups become more and more entrenched, and the increasing narrowness of the political centre in America.

There has also been a sense that Obama’s presidency has failed to capitalise on the mood of his election in 2008 which many feel represented a transformative moment, bringing people together. In particular, the economic collapse seemed to prove that Republicans’ faith in deregulation of the economy and in free markets, epitomised by Reagan, was misguided, or so many liberal, big-government Democrats thought at the time.

However, this proved not to be the case. Arguably, the country has reattached itself to its more centrist moorings, or even moved to the right.

Furthermore, there is no consensus about the means of economic recovery and there is much inter-party disagreement regarding the role of government in restoring prosperity. This is highlighted by the fact that in opposition the Republican Party appears fairly homogenous, whilst the Democrats are more diverse, for example there are Blue Dog Conservative Democrats who oppose government expansion and deficit growth and challenged such programmes as Healthcare reform. There are also divides in the arty over free trade and protectionism.

As a result, Obama has been unable to emulate Bush’s party-style government, whilst the Republican legislators have been united in voting against his proposals, most notably in the Senate where the lack of a Democratic supermajority (60 seats) has proved crucial.

But, Obama has achieved much.

Norman Ornstein, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, recently argued in 'The Washington Post' that the last Congress was “one of the most productive” since the 89th Congress of 1965-66, during which Lyndon Johnson effectively created the Great Society.


Since the dying months of the Bush Administration, with his Troubled Asset Relief Programme, and the beginning of the Obama Administration, federal government has spent $700 billion to bail out the banks whilst the Recovery Act o f 2009 allocated $787 billion in a two-year package to stimulate the economy – passed within a month of Obama taking office. He has also passed a number of other bills, from investments in green technology to making it easier for women to sue for sex discrimination, to improved financial regulation, and bailed out the car companies – once a great symbol of America’s economic power – to ensure their survival.

Even during the so-called ‘lame suck’ session after he November mid-terms last year, he succeeded in passing a tax cut in December last year; Congress voted to repeal the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy on gay soldiers in the military; and the Senate ratified the new START treaty between Russia and America, which will reduce the two countries nuclear stockpiles by a third came into force last weekend.

Larry Sabato, professor of politics at the University of Richmond argued the lame-duck session Obama faced at the end of last year after his ‘shellacking’ in the mid-terms was actually the most productive of the 15 held since World War Two. Indeed, they may provide the impetus for his re-election. The ‘don’t ask, don’t tell' victory may help mobilise his liberal and youth vote; the tax agreement provides much needed stimulus to the economic recovery; and the START success has exposed how hard the Senate Republican Leader, Mitch McConnell, will find it to unite his party in opposition.

Obama has also had some foreign policy successes, perhaps the most remarkable of which is the agreement with Russia to replace the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty to reduce the two countries nuclear stockpiles by a third.

When Obama became president there was a sense that the country was at a very different place ideologically – that is was ready for healthcare reform and an enormous stimulus package. However, that no longer appears to be the case.

When the Clinton administration faced similar difficulty, they were quite adept at reorienting themselves to the centre ideologically. It will be interesting to see if Obama can do this because one significant problem the Democrats have had is creating a compelling vision of where they want to lead the country. Though Obama has achieved key initiatives at home and abroad, they do not seem to be part of a broader, conceptualised agenda of what Obama’s America is.

This is not helped by the fact that many regard Obama’s agenda as being too diverse and needs more explicit focus on the economic recovery – compounding a sense that many Americans have that he is out of tough with the concerns of many ordinary Americans.

There are complaints about Obama that he is too cerebral and analytical in office. That he does not "feel the people's pain" as visibly as he should. However, his speech at the memorial service for victims of the Tucson massacre last month may go a long way to improving his image here.

The criticism, however, ignores a basic truth about the modern presidency: the campaign to win it requires a candidate to promise far more than he can possibly deliver.

In Mr Obama's case, the mismatch between words and deeds has been greater than usual. One reason has been the ferocity of a Republican opposition whose only ambition is to block every piece of legislation he proposes. The other is an ever more dysfunctional system of government that makes it easy for them to do so.