Sometime around mid-December, give or take a week, President Obama responded to a reporter’s question by saying he’d give himself a B-plus for his first year in office. He then quickly added that he’d raise the grade to an A-minus if Congress passed the health care reform bill and he signed it into law.
Now that the first year is behind him, it’s clear that he didn’t get his A-minus. In fact, that B-plus might be higher than he deserves based on the way his first year ended.
Lest anyone forgot, Obama’s big health care initiative got stalled in back room negotiations between the divergent members of his own party before it was completely scuttled by the election of a 41st Republican Senator. That single upset in Massachusetts was loaded with shock value, as the previously unknown Scott Brown defeated the state’s sitting Attorney General in the race to replace Ted Kennedy. The election occurred on January 19, and was a fitting end to the first year of the Obama presidency.
It is a presidency that has lost far more than its luster. It may also have lost its direction, as the “change” that was the single-word mantra of the campaign slowly got buried in a flurry of events, only some of which the administration could claim to have had no control over.
Consider that in the span of one single year, Mr. Obama has managed to lose the excitement he generated from both the liberal wing of his own party and from the independents who flocked to him in droves (with both their votes and their dollars) during the campaign. That’s no small task, especially considering that he also managed to engender the near hatred of the other side of the political spectrum, as epitomized by the tea bagger movement.
And so, in reflecting on the first year of what was supposed to be a transformative presidency, it is only fair, right and proper to posit the simple question – what happened?
The answer is not nearly as simple as the question, but it has to start with the man himself. Turns out, he’s a much better campaigner than he is a leader. As a campaigner, Obama caught a mood and ran with it. The country was sick of everything that George W. Bush had represented for eight years, and Obama turned that feeling into a reformist battle cry.
Unfortunately, campaign slogans, bereft as they often are (and largely were in this case) of substance, don’t bear much resemblance to the nitty-gritty work of governing a nation. And Mr. Obama, as had been predicted by many, lacked the experience to be president.
Of course, the same can probably be said of every newly-elected president. Even succeeding vice-presidents lack the real experience of being the most powerful person in the world. It’s a job that has no pre-election training program.
But the other conclusion that emerges from Obama’s first year as president may be a more serious problem. For while new presidents can, and usually do, figure out the requirements of the job, some just don’t have the skill set. Mr. Obama may well be stuck with that tragic deficiency.
It isn’t that the man lacks the smarts. He’s probably smarter than almost anyone on the political scene today. And it isn’t that he lacks the energy or interest in the job. He’s totally committed and has plenty of youthful stamina for the long hours and grueling travel schedule. And it certainly isn’t that he lacks an understanding of the critical importance of the work. He knows that the times are perilous for his country and that the future for the entire world may rest on his ability to find solutions to things like environmental degradation, radical Islamic terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and a host of other seething problems that could become Armageddon-like crises in the blink of an eye.
And it isn’t, despite what his detractors are wont to claim, that he is a radical ideologue, desperately seeking to bring European socialism to his country. That claim, while it stirs the anti-government legions who populate the tea-bagger rallies, flies in the face of his Clintonesque approach to policy decisions. He’s a centrist, a veritable clone of the last Democrat to reside in the White House.
His centrism is no more evident than in the health care bill that he allowed to emerge from the Congressional wrangling that took fully a year (now with nothing to show for it). The bill that the Senate passed is loaded with pro-insurance industry goodies and lacks anything that could even remotely resemble a socialized-medicine program.
Were Obama the ideologue his critics claim, that bill would be a single-payer plan, or at least would contain a strong public option. Instead, the bill contains a mandate that will only increase the business flowing to health insurance companies, as the many uninsured in America are forced to buy insurance from the same private insurance companies that were supposedly the focus of the reforms in the first place.
But let’s not stop there. Look at the team Obama has surrounded himself with. On the foreign policy front he has Hillary Clinton at State and Robert Gates holding over from the Bush administration at Defense. On economic policy, he has Lawrence Summers, Clinton’s former Secretary of the Treasury and Tim Geithner, a protégé of Robert Rubin (another former Clinton Treasury secretary) and a Goldman Sachs alum. His chief of staff is Rahm Emanuel, another Clinton aide.
So if he isn’t an ideologue and he doesn’t lack the smarts, or the energy or the interest, what does he lack?
What Obama lacks, or at least has lacked to this point in his presidency, is the ability to lead. He has not led his party well or effectively, and he has not led his nation decisively or coherently. He has been a rudder, seeking to guide ever so gently, while trying, in understated tones, to get everyone to get along.
Rudders work well on ships at sea; they tend to be less effective in commanding ships of state.
Ed, a very well-written article, and the overall analysis you provide I think would be tough for anyone from the left or the right to disagree with. The only thing in this article that I do not agree with is your contention that he is a centrist.
I think you intimate that he is a centrist and is trying to build a centrist coalition around healthcare. You state:
“His centrism is no more evident than in the health care bill that he allowed to emerge from the Congressional wrangling that took fully a year (now with nothing to show for it). The bill that the Senate passed is loaded with pro-insurance industry goodies and lacks anything that could even remotely resemble a socialized-medicine program. Were Obama the ideologue his critics claim, that bill would be a single-payer plan, or at least would contain a strong public option.”
I do not agree with tht statement. You state that he ALLOWED the bill to be loaded with pro-insurance goodies, etc. and if it were up to him there would be a single-payer plan and strong public option. The fact is that that was what he wanted to do, but he could not get the support to get it through. Lieberman, and I believe Snowe and Collins, all stated they would not support the bill in that form. The fact is that he ALLOWED it to be modified that way so that he could get something through. I think his true values coincide with the far left, but I think he is pragmatic to realize that his ideology is further to the left that a substantial amount of Americans, and that he could not get things passed. He is willing to compromise because there would be nothing to show for his presidency if he did not go further to the middle. I believe and will continue to believe that his true allegiances lie to the far left but that he realizes that some of his more liberal programs would not get passed and therefore he is willing to water them down in the hopes of getting something pushed through.
Ed, a little more reflection on your early post election thoughts would be helpful here. It seems to me that there was plenty of commentary on Obama making the correct moves, on Obama being strategic by keeping around so many Clinton era financial thinkers. Let us know what you think. Were those good choices then but bad choices now? If so, what happened. Were they bad choices then?
Finally, the conundrum seems to be that it is quite obvious that Obama is a centrist, was then and continues to be. And further, the demographics suggest that this is a centrist nation. If so, what’s the disconnect? Why is this centrist nation so unhappy with it’s centrist president? Is it simply because the right has successfully convinced the center that Obama is a communist? While there’s a bit of truth there, I don’t think that quite explains the discontent. I think, rather, the idea of a nation of centrists is much more complicated. We may be a nation of people skeptical of party politics, skeptical of extreme right- or left-ism, but that is quite a different thing from being a nation of people who is seeing greater precariousness, increasing inequality, volatile racialized backlash in labor markets, excessive debt, the list could go on. At some point, we have to ask ourselves why it is that so-called ‘centrism’ has been unable to deal with these issues. You’ll probably assume I’m arguing for a renewed leftism here, but don’t jump to assumptions. What I’m saying is that we gotten all we’ve asked for, yet it hasn’t really gotten us some things we all know to the core are important.
Adam –
Your point on the health care bill would be more persuasive if the other evidence also lined up. But if he isn’t a centrist, how do you explain the general economic plan he has embraced, courtesy of the Goldman Sachs team of Summers and Geithner? And how do you explain the massive build-up of troops in Afghanistan? These are not the actions of a far-left guy. He’s been slow to close Gitmo, exceedingly slow to get rid of “don’t ask-don’t tell,” and almost Bushian in pushing any meaningful action on climate change.
As for the health care bill, he may have his heart in the public option concept, but he certainly has never championed it.
No, I’m afraid he’s a centrist trying to convince those on the left that he isn’t, while trying to appeal to those in the center by doing the things they actually prefer. In other words, he’s a politician, pure and simple.
David –
I think the Geithner appointment was troubling and thought so right from the start. I like Summers, and still do, provided he’s balanced by other top people with less of a Wall Street orientation. The other aspects of his centrism were either hidden during the campaign or were things I always opposed (e.g., the massive build-up of troops in Afghanistan).
As for your incisive comments about the centrist nature of our country, they deserve a more complete response than I can make here. Instead I’ll draft a full column on the subject in the near future.
-Ed
Ed,
I don’t believe that a centrist would embrace a $1.65 trillion dollar budget deficit nor would a centrist embrace a $787 billion dollar stimulus, which by all accounts has been poorly mismanaged.
As to how I explain Afghanistan, Gitmo, etc…. my explanation is that Obama the campaigner could say “When I’m President we’ll get out of Afghanistan and Iraq. We’ll close down Gitmo. We’ll reign in spending. We’ll invest in technology and green alternatives” etc. I think Obama the President is finding out that it’s not so easy when the buck stops with him.
He is finding out that other countries disparage us for having Gitmo, but when we ask if they are willing to jail terrorists, they are a bunch of NIMBYs. I think he is also finding out that just simply “getting out of Iraq” or “getting out of Afghanistan” is not that easy. At the end of the day, I think he is learning the hard way that it’s easy to criticize the choices Bush made, but he is the one making them, those choices aren’t so easy.
I think his jobs policy is a direct result of the polls and a politician who is listening… I think he realizes that if he were to continue to push healthcare at the expense of the economy and jobs, the Democrats would get slaughtered in November and branded (rightfully so) as a party out of touch. I think the fact that he is listening to Americans that they care about the stock market, financial / banking reform, and jobs more than healthcare is evident that he IS a politician and a pragmatist.
I am not disputing that he is trying to go more towards the center… My contention (which really can’t be proven) is that his heart lies more towards the left but he is becoming more of centrist out of political necessity and has learned the lesson Clinton did in 1994 that unless he is willing to compromise, he will certainly be a one term president. I believe his association with Jeremiah Wright and the anecdotes we hear of his Harvard days are quite telling where his true ideology is.
Adam –
Your concern about the deficit is interesting. Bush ran up an $8 trillion deficit before we had the financial/economic meltdown. And he was a rock-solid conservative.
The stimulus was what saved us from a second Great Depression, and if you don’t accept that conclusion, you are probably an admirer of Herbert Hoover.
As for the Jeremiah Wright association and the anecdotes of his Harvard days, I’d urge you to read his book (written long before he turned to politics). You may find out things that are surprising about the man you seem so anxious to believe is a certain way.
The rest of your post is accurate. He is suffering from the same learning curve that all new presidents go through. But no one can fault him for not trying or for not having the welfare of the country first and foremost in his actions. I disagree with his decision on Afghanistan and don’t like his actions in other areas, but I still think we are far better off than we were under his predecessor.
-Ed
Funny enough, my problem with Obama is that he is not an ideologue. He does not have the consensus-building skills that Clinton mastered in the 90’s (not to mention LBJ – so basically the last two effective Democrat presidents). For this reason, he needs his convictions to play the part of the rudder. If how he has handled much of his agenda (health care, homosexual civil rights, bank regulation, war, transparency of decision-making and operations) is a reflection of his ideological disposition, then I want my money (and passion and hope for political change) back.
I would love to believe that this stagnant and disappointing year is Congress’ or the Bush Administration’s fault, as Obama suggested in his State of the Union. But the fact of the matter is that Congress can only be blamed for not passing laws and Bush, as destructive as he was, can only be at fault for so much. Obama has not used his powers, opportunities, and, most importantly, judgement, to stand for anything very compelling – and that is his fault. If health care did not pass because Obama adamantly supported a public option/single-payer system, I would respect his attempt. However, putting together a bill that should please many special interests and maintain much of the status quo only to see it fall on its head is despicable. I can neither support him on his process of moving the bill (which it seems he was basically hands-off for much of) or the values that the bill represents.
What I am currently trying to figure out is how Biden – a veteran in congress – plays into this. A selling point of their campaign was that Biden would facilitate Obama’s policies when dealing with Congress. I don’t know exactly how that’s gone in practice, but from the outside the result is pretty lackluster.
If Obama really believes that he would rather be a good one-term president than an average/poor two-term president, he has a lot of catching up to do, either in policy/ideology or process, or both. Something tells me he is not going to get a free pass on his reelection bid like Bush did. And lord knows that his followers from last year (myself included) won’t work with the same fervor for a man who might become just another politician. That said, maybe he will get enough financial support from financial institutions and the health care industry that he won’t need the grassroots pose any longer.