The president’s first term has been better than critics from right and left claim
Back in the November edition of Progress magazine I argued that the likely outcome of the 2012 election was an Obama victory as long as unemployment was heading in the right direction. That looks even more likely today as the music hall comedy that is the Republican primary process provokes amusement and despair in equal measure. At the time, someone challenged me about whether it could be argued that Barack Obama should be entrusted with a second term.
The gap between promise and achievement is often asserted. Yet is this really a fair reflection of Obama’s first term in office? There have been times when he has been outmanoeuvred by the Republicans in Congress. The two occasions that most spring to mind are the debt ceiling battle of last summer which for a few days threatened government with shutdown and the financing of US debt. Previously, the loss of the Democrats’ super-majority in early 2010 had also threatened the passage of his healthcare reform. Both times he played ball with the Republicans who failed to shift even a millimetre. A reasonable man in a system that creates latitude for unreasonable opponents can leave the reasonable man looking naive; so it was with Obama.
These are easy criticisms to make of Obama’s presidency but they are rather wide of the mark. He could have taken the lead on healthcare reform instead of allowing Congress to propose its own package. Ultimately, though, historic reform was passed and it was always likely to be messy – see what happened when Bill Clinton tried to achieve the same in the early 1990s. He could have ignored congressional opposition to the debt ceiling increase. That would then have been for the Supreme Court to adjudicate. Would that really have been a better outcome from the perspective of US economic stability? Hardly.
A deeper issue, though, is the way these criticisms of Obama are entirely unsurprising: the left always ready to scream betrayal and the right always willing to talk up Obama’s promise in the past in order to provide itself with a weapon in the political present. Any cursory glance of Obama’s words and message in 2008 which was inspirational yet, ultimately, moderate would have made his style of presidency entirely predictable. Has no one read The Audacity of Hope? It could more accurately be called the consensus of hope.
What more could actually have been secured in addition to an almost $800bn stimulus that saved the economy from a death spiral, a massive expansion of healthcare coverage, the repeal of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’, the bailout which saved the automobile industry and 1.5 million jobs, and financial reform? Of course, the stimulus could have been bigger in an imaginary political universe, healthcare reform could have been more radical, financial reform could have been more stringent and so on and so forth. But Obama has to operate in America as it is, not as some wish it could be. Overall, he has taken the opportunities presented to him pretty well, especially in the early part of his presidency when his political capital was at its highest.
The president of the United States has rather more freedom to act in foreign than domestic affairs. His record here has been a mixed bag – unless you actually believed that Obama was going to change the world with the simple power of heady rhetoric. He has begun the process of rebuilding the US reputation abroad following its nadir in the Bush years. The war in Iraq is at an end and Osama Bin Laden was found. Much of the senior leadership of al-Qaida has been eliminated. George W Bush achieved neither of these strategic objectives.
Suspected terrorists are still in Guantanamo Bay, held without trial. Unfortunately, there are cases where the courts cannot seem to cope with the clash of rights between an individual and collective security. We are discovering that in the case of Abu Qatada. It would be better if it were different but it is not. The Middle East has gone backwards. But it was not Obama who wished to see Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister of Israel or for the Iranian regime to seemingly continue its quest for a nuclear weapons capability.
Afghanistan is a quagmire: he has failed either to pull out or significantly expand the mission so it is in limbo. He plans for troops to leave in 2014: the consequences of that are, as yet, unknown. He has massively expanded the use of predator drones in Pakistan and elsewhere, which raises all sorts of international political, foreign relations, legal and ethical issues which have been ignored. Overall, though, Obama has played a restrained hand in America’s foreign relations. If it were to be characterised, perhaps a Nixonian or George HW Bush approach would bear the closest resemblance to the Obama foreign policy. Not ideal but understandable and a million times better than a neocon approach. America’s influence in Asia is still strong which is a strategic necessity.
What about his second-term agenda? The best guide to this we have is Obama’s recently announced budget which is a real cracker. It reduces the deficit with a mix of tax increases for the wealthy and cuts across the board on a ratio of 1:2.5. Many of the cuts come in healthcare expenditure reductions. Despite this, it contains ambitious plans for job creation in the short term, investment in schools and community colleges, a major increase in spending on science, innovation and tax credits for manufacturing, half a trillion dollars’ worth of investment in surface transportation, and a National Infrastructure Bank as well. The budget introduces the so-called ‘Buffett rule’ named after corporate investor Warren Buffett who has argued that those earning over $1m should pay at least 30 per cent of their income in tax. It eliminates tax breaks for oil, gas and coal companies and imposes a financial responsibility fee on Wall Street banks.
Given the budgetary constraints this is a radical package which matches sound investment with tax increases for the rich and spending cuts across the board. It mixes good economic sense, with a sensible distribution of pain and a sound deficit reduction strategy. This is what a policy for long-term growth looks like and it confronts job losses and unemployment in the short term too. These are the right priorities in straitened times.
Obama’s first term has been pragmatic and restrained but with significant successes given constraints. He certainly compares favourably with the last two Democrat presidents, Clinton and Jimmy Carter. Overseas, things have been more mixed but it is a significant improvement on where America was in 2008. An ambitious agenda for the future is available, but a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives is crucial. So a second term is definitely deserved but, what is more, if Obama does not win one then not only will many of his first-term achievements, including healthcare, be reversed but the US may head in a more destructive direction than even George W Bush managed. The US needs Obama but, equally, it needs to avoid the Republicans as well.
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Anthony Painter is a contributing editor to Progress
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