The Curious Failure Of The Obama Presidency

Much of the backdrop of this week's bad news - the S&P downgrade, the stock market gyrations, the Republican Presidential candidate dance card - took place against the backdrop that's just about become an absolute given: the idea that Barack Obama's presidency has somehow failed.

The sense of disappointment in the Obama Presidency has broadened and deepened in the past few months, especially as the debt ceiling and default drama played itself out. Since conservatives nd Republicans have already committed themselves fully to hating Obama, and a significant swath of the left was already disappointed, what probably happened, really, was that a real sense of doubt and disappointment crept into the Obama diehards - the educated, professional elite.

Having maintained for nearly 3 years that the prospect of a President Obama was never going to be as good as the hopes and dreams of his most fervent supporters, I'll continue to maintain that they have no one to blame but themselves. The Obama Presidency was oversold, its promise was never as bright as the true believers suggested, and a lot of what didn't happen has to do with the President himself. 

Still, given all the negativity, and contrarian that I am, I have to wonder... is the Obama Presidency really the disaster its being made out to be, just now? (Dear God... I am turning into Carrie Bradshaw on politics.)

As bad as things are, I think the idea of the Obama Presidency as absolute failure, however appealing it seems, is itself a mistake of trying too hard to condemn the man and his leadership. Despite a variety of mistakes - especially on economic issues - to say that this is a Presidency of few or no accomplishments, or disastrous choices that have ruined us, is to toss out some real signs of progress... and a way to miss the reasons that, come next November, the route to Obama's reelction is nowhere near as bad as it may seem just now.

It's worth remembering that - still - some of the things ascribed lately as the worst failings of this Administration are not recent developments. The housing crisis, the banking and finance meltdown, the deficit and debt ceiling problems, the War in Afghanistan... these are all developments that started with the Bush Administration, and much of what has made them difficult to solve has nothing to do with the current President.  This doesn't excuse, say, President Obama's failure to make a fresh start with a better economic team... but it's a reminder to ask,as we take stock of the good and bad, just what our expectations actually should be.

And in that context, it's worth remembering what has been accomplished. We have had some banking and finance reform. There has been some lurching progress to sorting out foreclosures and bad loans. There are steps to reducing our presence in Afghanistan, and we have had two deals on debt and spending that were not nearly as bad as many scared lefties predicted. 

Despite repeated shouts that the President would tamper with Social Security or Medicare, nothing really has happened to either one (and, in some sense, this is one reason why so little progress has been made on deficit and budget concerns). Democrats have complained, with both deals, that Republicans got everything they wanted... even as true believer conservatives complain, bitterly, that they've been cheated. The real cuts to spending by the end of this year will amount to less than $60 billion, a comparatively small sum when trillion dollar deficits are all we can see. 

It may not be brave leadership to keep punting the hard choices and painful discussions down the road... but no one, it seems, wants to figure them out now. As we watch yet another super-committee/commission attempt to make a budget compromise, we know where the solution really lies: some tax revenue increases, some changes to entitlement programs, and some serious cuts in defense spending. That's where the money is... and where the uncomfortable choices lie.

On top of the modest progress on these holdover issues, the President also pushed through an enormous set of changes to health insurance which, though not a solution to health care costs, will still represent, for many people, a prospect for better coverage and some chance to obtain better care. The alternative of doing nothing - which is where Republicans stood, as they did for much of the budget discussions - is no solution. And again, saying the President failed has to happen, I think, against a backdrop of what alternatives actually existyed, and whether or not they were worse.

President Obama is, no doubt, a mediocre President; his leadership is uninspiring, his economic policies are weak, and he has a real struggle to connect with the concerns and fears of everyday people. That's a reality that was clear when he started, and it's only grown truer through his time in office. It's just that, in these times, he's the only alternative to prospects which are far far worse: the idea of a Presidency of John McCain. The idea of a budget created by Paul Ryan. The idea of taking Michelle Bachmann as a serious contender.

It's no fun to be the defender of a President whose defense, at best, is "he's not so bad, given the alternatives." That's one reason I worry, more than the election of 2012, about what Democrats will have left when Obama most likely finishes a second term in 2016. Grimly reelecting Obama, the President we don't like but who merely looks better than the other options, is a terrible answer, yet probably the only choice many liberals will have. All of which is a reminder that, if we want to talk about failure, we should spread the failings around: to Congress, and to the Republicans, and to banking and finance leaders... and, in the end, to ourselves and our resistance to difficult changes and painful choices. If we want something other than failure... it's not the President we need to change.

President Obama is not great, but he is not, sadly, a complete failure. In a world of pronounced extremes he is, most frustratingly, our symbol of what it is to be middling, so-so, fair to poor. And the sad thing is, sometimes, fair to poor is the best you can get.

Comments

[scott]

I see no reason to support a man whose primary agenda seems to be the destruction of the social safety net, who has publicly boasted about offering up cuts to SS and Medicare and whose handlers want to do more of the same in the 2nd term. Why we have to continue to rationalize away all of this is a mystery to me.

[jinb]

You are not alone, Scott.