Coming from me, a defense of Barack Obama may surprise my readers. That’s because they may not have read the fine print! Some of his policies I haven’t exactly agreed with (principally, the expensive health care reform, which at a time of rapidly rising sovereign debt, was imprudent). I reluctantly supported Obama for president in 2008 because he was the better of the two candidates. Reluctant because we could have chosen a more experienced hand (read here), especially on economic policy.
Nevertheless, the president has done an exceptional job in tough times. He has been lucky both before and after the election, but, judging by the recent grilling from his erstwhile supporters, his luck may be running out. They even talk about Obama losing his mojo. You can criticize Obama and the Democrats, for sure, but what is the alternative? The only thing innovative in the Republican Party these days is the Tea Party, and I for one don’t want to be dumbed down by the likes of Sarah Palin and the former witch from Delaware (Christine O’Donnell). As for the more “mainstream” Republicans such as future Speaker Boehner, is the answer really more tax cuts at a time of skyrocketing government debt?
What really gets me about this country is the electorate’s emotional bipolarity. First Obama is viewed as nearly Jesus Christ, now he’s a bum. C’mon people! C’mon Velma Hart!
I cringe at charisma. The Obama-euphoria of the campaign trail scared me, as many of his supporters failed to think critically about the choice. Instead they anointed a messianic figure and expected him to deliver paradise. Obama fanned the flames of euphoria then and is now getting burned. Today, even though the administration managed to sidestep a 1930s-style economic meltdown by rescuing the banks and providing a huge Keynesian stimulus, we hear from Velma and Company that they’re upset they don’t “feel it yet.” Jon Stewart is “saddened.” As I have said before, Americans are spoiled. Unlike citizens in emerging markets, accustomed to crisis, accustomed to lines outside of banks, Americans want it all. Now they are mad at Obama for only achieving what is humanly possible. He has delivered far more than Bill Clinton did by this time in his administration, and is even delivering on the liberal agenda – for example, by appointing two very young, very liberal female lawyers to the Supreme Court.
Now he is branded as anti-business. There were a pair of articles in The Economist on this (see below). I noted in my blog during the 2008 election that it did not make sense to elect a man with no economic policy experience to pilot us through the economic storm, who, as a young man, quit a job as an economic analyst because he didn’t want to become a tool of corporate exploitation. Two years later, people have noticed that his passion is not for business. Well, lay off him now. His policies are not particularly anti-business – this government has spent more bailing out corporations than any previous one. Furthermore, he is in good company taking on corporate abuse. Anyone remember Teddy Roosevelt’s trust-busting? Finally, if we continue to harp on this anti-business thing, it will become self-fulfilling. The Obama administration’s credibility growing the economy could be irreparably damaged, which will hurt us all.
It is human to fight the last war. So, to avert a depression, the Obama administration took actions that were not taken in the thirties. Yet our undoing will be something unforeseen, and in my view, this is likely to come on the fiscal side. Government debt is around 90% of GDP and deficits are in the double digits. With economic growth likely to remain sluggish (economists have declared a “new normal”), it is not far-fetched for the United States to be in a Greek-style sovereign default over the medium term if a road map to solvency is not charted soon. There are as yet few signs of determination in this administration to deal with this problem (they appointed a panel), not least because of the recent turnover in the economic team.
What I don’t like about Obama is the spin. Spin is less than truthful. I know all politicians do it, especially the successful ones. But, Barack Obama ran as a change agent, a post-partisan, and he has been, is, and will probably always be an aggressive left-of-center partisan. Centrists, such as Evan Bayh, Joe Lieberman, Norm Coleman, Ben Nelson, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, need not apply. He admires Ronald Reagan and is his heir in terms of image-making. Now he is going around the country discussing his Christian faith. Good timing. The other side does it too. It is demoralizing for a centrist like me to hear John Boehner savage Obama’s economic policy record and Obama call Boehner’s Pledge to America irresponsible. Where lies the truth? Same thing happened on health care. The problem is, partisanship wins elections.
On foreign policy, Obama savaged Bush for adventurism and questionable methods in war. Yet in office, he has ramped up the use of targeted assassinations, sometimes resulting in the deaths of innocents. The end justifies the means, the saying goes. As a candidate, he lashed out at David Petraeus for the “surge” in Iraq; now he has hired him to salvage his Afghan policy. Yet Obama supporters don’t bat an eye, as they swing from indicting Bush for torture to arguing for the necessity of targeted assassinations.
I would like to see a stronger Republican Party. The country would benefit from an energetic opposition. Yet, by shifting toward the loony right, Republicans are squandering the opportunity to harness the country’s frustration. This could work out in the end for Barack Obama. Taking a page from the Big Dog’s script in 1994-96 — after the Democrats in Congress suffer a beating this year, Obama finds a “Dick Morris” to guide his policy rightward over the next two years. The Party of No (GOP) nominates someone or other like Sarah Palin in 2012, and No Drama wangles himself another term. The country could do worse.
From The Economist, September 23, 2010:
