President Chamberlain

I could not help but think of Neville Chamberlain famously waving the paper containing the 1938 Munich Agreement when Barack Obama signed the Republican debt-ceiling increase and claimed it as his own.

The White House called it a “bipartisan deal” and a “win for the economy and for budget discipline.” In reality, the debt ceiling deal was a crushing defeat for the President and for his party. A flawed Republican strategy to pull the country out of the economic crisis had been claimed and owned by a Democratic President. When this agreement makes the economic situation worse in the next year it is not the Republicans who will be held responsible for its failure, but the White House that touted it. The country loses as the economic problems deepen and the President loses when the voters punish him and his party for “his” debt deal. This was not the first time that Barack Obama has surrendered to the Republicans without a fight. The debt crisis debacle is only the latest example of a consistent lack of nerve by the President.

To say that President Obama has been a disappointment to the people who elected him would be an understatement. Democratic primary voters narrowly preferred Obama to Hillary Clinton in 2008 partially because of concern that with Hillary we would get eight more years of Bill Clintons’ “triangulation” strategy. President Clinton nearly always gained politically from his confrontations with Republicans, but liberals complained because he didn’t help his party. The hope was that Obama would have the courage of his convictions, that the man who wrote Dreams of my Father would be a voice for progressive ideas as George W. Bush had been a voice for conservative ones. Instead we have a President who half-heartedly implements Clinton’s triangulation, and does it badly.

The largest example of this tendency was the health care debate in 2009-10. The President said he did not want to determine the legislative debate by giving a specific plan of his own. He also clearly supported a bipartisan plan, expecting that Republicans would be willing to break ranks for the right price. To this end, Harry Reid and other Democrats spent months negotiating with Republicans while periodically withdrawing progressive ideas without extracting any concessions from their opponents. A single payer system was thrown out first, followed by nearly every money-saving measure in the bill. The last to go was the Public Option, which would have tested the Republican claim that no government program can compete with private business. The reward for all of these concessions when the bill came up for final passage in March 2010 was: zero. No Republican lawmaker in the House or the Senate voted for the final bill. The law was derided as being socialist, containing “death panels” and “rationing care.” Obama saw the passage of a health care law, but one which was much weaker and more conservative than it needed to be.

The stimulus bill of 2009 also saw this pattern, where President Obama unilaterally took progressive ideas off the table such as greater spending on infrastructure and mortgage assistance while including conservative favorites; tax cuts. Multiple Nobel Prize winning economists suggested that the government stimulus needed to be around $2 trillion to account for the private business shortfall. Tax cuts have also been shown to be poor at stimulus because they do not create a positive feedback loop of investment the way direct government spending can. The final bill was a little over $800 billion, about 40% of what it needed to be, and was one-quarter tax cuts. The reward for the concessions to pass this bill was three Republican votes in the Senate and none in the House. The GOP immediately started crafting their 2010 electoral strategy around the “failed” stimulus which the President and the Democratic leadership had allowed them to poison.

A third example is the extension of the Bush tax cuts. President Obama had staked out a position early that he wanted to keep the tax cuts for all but the top five percent of earners. By that time, the Republicans had his measure. They held out for extending all of the tax cuts and threatened to let all of them expire if the President did not go along. Rather than holding his ground, a position that has consistently had seventy percent support in polls, he complained that the GOP was holding the country hostage and renewed the tax cuts for another two years.

Even beyond these examples of capitulation to his political opposition, Barack Obama has consistently adopted the rhetoric of his opponents rather than making the progressive case for policies. He implicitly accepts that government is the problem, that tax cuts are always good, and that our current economic issues revolve around the federal deficit rather than jobs. He placed cuts to Medicare and Social Security in play in the debt negotiations without asking for anything in return. He refused to hold any Wall Street bankers responsible for their behavior and allowed his financial regulatory agency to be neutered by Congress.

In 1938, Prime Minister Chamberlain famously declared that the Munich Agreement would assure “peace for our time.” World War Two started almost exactly a year later when Germany invaded Poland. Britain declared war in 1939, but too late to stop the six year bloodbath that followed. Similarly, Barack Obama will find that the debt standoff and the extension of the Bush tax cuts have only emboldened his enemies. Just as Chamberlain did, he will belatedly realize his mistake and then choose to fight. Like the Prime Minister, he will probably see that fight take place without him as his party chooses a more forceful leader.

News Flash! Barack Obama is not a liberal.
Some of the Ways that Barack will Irritate the Left

1) Obama will not pull out of Iraq right away. In fact it wouldn't surprise me if there were American soldiers still stationed in Iraq when he leaves office (even after eight years).

2) He will increase and intensify our engagement in Afghanistan. Some of the soldiers who leave Iraq will be sent to the forgotten war instead, which is getting more and more difficult and threatens to topple the government of Pakistan. That will be a long fight too.

3) Barack Obama will bring Republicans into his inner circle as well as his Cabinet. Democrats looking for revenge against the total exclusion from influence under Bush are going to be deeply disappointed. We have to be the grown-ups here and include the other side the way Bush should have after 9-11.

4) There will be few or no prosecutions for the actions of major government officials who have clearly violated the law. Even if we can be sure who ordered American officials to torture prisoners, spy on Americans without a warrant, and the other horrible things the Bush administration has done, there will be no prosecutions. Obama realizes that trials of people like Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzales, etc would be a national circus. Besides, Bush will probably take this option off the table by giving blanket pardons for everyone involved.

5) Many other things that I haven't even thought of yet.

The bottom line is that Obama is a pragmatist and he hopes to expand the reach of the Democratic party. That means reaching out to moderates and conservatives and sometimes upseting the liberal base. I think he is going to be a problem solver, which is exactly the kind of person we need in charge with all of the disasters coming down around us.

The Better Angels of our Nature

Barack Obama’s victory in the presidential election on November 4 naturally leads many to think of the first president from a young party founded in 1856 partly on abolishing slavery.  Obama quoted from Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural address in his acceptance speech saying that “we are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection.”  I find myself thinking of the end of the Great Emancipator’s speech which finishes with the hope that we will again reflect “the better angels of our nature.”

 

This victory is historic because of the color of the winner’s skin, his strange Muslim name, and his youth, but I am hopeful that it will accomplish something more important than those historic qualities.  Barack Hussein Obama has an opportunity to take us beyond the culture war that has caused so many political problems over the past twenty years.  Hillary Clinton, John McCain, George W. Bush, John Kerry and most other leaders of both parties became politically active in opposition to or support of the Vietnam War.  Obama is not motivated to refight the battles of forty years ago.  He made his admiration for John McCain’s Vietnam service clear from the beginning of the campaign.  Though he ran many negative ads, those ads did not generally attack McCain personally.  He may have an opportunity to work pragmatically with both parties to find the best solutions to our problems.  After eight years of a president who seemed only interested in pleasing the 49% of the electorate who voted for him, it will be refreshing to have one who wants to represent all Americans.

 

Obama’s lack of executive experience has been a concern about him from the beginning of his campaign.  I have often said that I wish he had become governor of Illinois before running for the White House.  We have found out at great cost the danger of electing someone to the Presidency who does not have experience at the national level.  George W. Bush came into power in 2000 having been governor of a state with one of the weakest executives in the country.  Though he had a disciplined and motivated staff, they seemed more interested in winning more power for Republicans than in actually governing the country.

 

I do not think that Barack Obama will be that kind of president.  He has surrounded himself with advisors who are respected by both major parties, and the evidence from the financial crisis suggests that he will listen to them.  George W.  Bush is an ideologue who seemed to want the presidency initially so that he could avenge the loss of his father to Bill Clinton in 1992.  Obama is a problem-solver who is interested in results for the country.  Even if you think he only wants to help Democrats, I think that he sees the path to success for his party to be in helping the country get out of our current foreign and domestic messes.   He will create a long term majority for Democrats if he can show that his is the party that governs from the middle where most of the electorate is.  No one runs for president who does not desire power.  The sacrifices a presidential candidate must accept for themselves and their families are unacceptable to anyone who does not have enormous ambition.  The kind of candidate we want is one who sees his or her personal success being tied to pragmatic success for the country.  I think that Barack Obama is that candidate.  He has an ability to inspire us to do what is good for the nation even when it might be politically difficult.  He is willing to listen to opposition opinions and make decisions after thoughtful consideration.  If we give him a chance to govern, I think we will be proud that we elected this man president.