I believe one of Obama's most unheralded accomplishments is to retain much of the financial team and policy put in place by Bush. A different president might have taken a very different line of attack. It's true that bankers were not held to account, but maybe that was the wise price to pay for keeping the banking system intact.
Understandably, it is much harder to give credit for disasters averted. But Obama deserves it.
Jailing a few dozen c-suite financiers in 2010 would've had, literally, zero negative economic impact. And probably would've had at least some positive long term economic impact. Modern finance is approaching 100% rent extraction. Anything that discouraged ramping up any of the many aspects of that would be net positive.
I think that was an early take (2009) and I also think that a no bailout scenario and subsequent banking bust/nationalization would have hurt the least fortunate disproportionately.
But yes I think (1) the govt. could have struck harsher deals and (2) the failure prosecute people like Dick Fuld was a mistake.
No, it was not the wise price to pay, and Obama knew that and did it anyways.
"The case for bold action was sound. The history of financial crises showed that the least costly approach is to resolve mortally wounded organizations, install new management, set strict guidelines, and separate out the bad loans and investments in order to restructure and sell them. An IMF study of 124 banking crises concluded that regulatory forbearance, the term of art for letting impaired banks soldier on, found:
The typical result of forbearance is a deeper hole in the net worth of banks, crippling tax burdens to finance bank bailouts, and even more severe credit supply contraction and economic decline than would have occurred…"
No, they did not. And you would know that had you read the link I posted. The only reason TARP got "repaid" was so that bankers could take home huge bonuses.
The recession ended June 2009. Far too soon (given policy lags) for the new admin to have done anything to end it. Probably would have ended in Q1 2009 except for the January/Feb panic in the markets over uncertainty about the new administration. Disaster averted by continuing the prior policies. McCain would have been a disaster- he was not as much the Goldman Sachs President as Obama was.
I give Pelosi and Reid, Paulson, Bernanke and Bush a ton of credit. Not only TARP but stimulus bills in 2007 and 2008. They ended the recession for the country- all Obama had to do was nothing (and thankfully he did that). Well, Dodd Frank and $30 to $50 billion in bank lawsuits probably slowed the recovery, but not enough to kill it. McCain was too erratic - thank goodness he lost.
While Obama was a successful President, I think he failed badly on two fronts.
He was too much of a Wall Street President, overly committed to preserving the structure of the financialized economy we have rather than tearing more of it down and holding the bad actors accountable for the GFC. So, unlike some people in your list of commenters, I believe he squandered a historic opportunity to blow up Wall Street - commercial banks, investment banks, investment partnerships, the carried interest loophole, privileging capital over labour income, etc. etc. His primary error was putting a committed institutionalist like Tim Geithner in the Treasury rather than Paul Volcker (or Elizabeth Warren!), who knew the banks and funds for the grift machines that they are and would likely have lit the regulatory and structural equivalent of an atomic weapon on Wall Street.
His second major error, and an unpardonable one, IMHO, is Syria and Libya. Syria was probably an unforced error, and a legacy of the unholy mess that the Bush and the second Iraq war had wrought upon the region. Obama and many liberal Democrats (and probably many neoCons) also irresponsibly promoted the Arab Spring-like movements in the Arab world, most of which had no chance of success without forceful intervention by the West. And, of course, we saw how THAT worked in Libya, for which, despite his “lead from behind” line, he does bear an large portion of the blame. Obama had a shot at leaving well enough alone, but did not resist his advisors or his own impulses enough. In the Middle East, the opposite of secular authoritarianism is mostly illiberal theocracy, not liberal democracy. The US State Dept does not seem to realize this, and Obama allowed his idealism to trump what should have been common knowledge.
For all that, I voted for him twice. And would have done so again if he had been allowed to run for a third term.
Paul Volcker was very high up at Chase Manhattan before running the Fed – why would he have been any less an institutionalist? He was there for the creation of the post-Bretton Woods system!
First if all, great piece Noah. I really enjoy your work. Second, Obama is and was an excellent role model no matter your race. He was certainly better than thrice married demagogue Donald Trump. Third, he could have accomplished more if the GOP wasn't dead set on blocking everything he tried to accomplish. And finally, to those who say that race relations got worse under him, they could be right. But it's not his fault. Because haters gonna hate.
I hear you on Joe Biden! I wish we had someone in the White House as strong, cogent, consistent, and articulate as President Trump.
And both should envy his accomplishments, such as, banning Muslims from entering the country (after 3 attempts), dramatically reducing the number of refugees granted entry into the US, using child separation as a feature not a bug in the southern border crisis, shaking down the new president of Ukraine for dirt on his presumed opponent and getting impeached for it, striking a dubious deal with the Taliban (which his successor woefully fulfilled), folding Neo-Nazis and replacement theorists into his copious bosom after Charlottesville, inflaming the culture war at every opportunity, undermining every international institution that the US had a hand in creating and leading since WWII, and sowing the seeds of discontent by reinforcing to his followers that the only way he could lose in 2020 was by fraud, and exploiting it endlessly when he lost, and seeing it through to catastrophic ends (which included his 2nd impeachment).
In an attempt to be fair-minded, I’ll acknowledge some good he did, such as the First Step Act, banning bump sticks after Vegas (and a general skepticism of the fetishization of guns, which he never actualized on account of pushback in his own party), the Abraham Accords (despite overt coziness to the Saudis), which demonstrated the value of transactional diplomacy where moral leadership has no purchase, and paying farmers for the negative externalities caused by his trade wars (for selfish reasons, but it was still the right thing to do).
No President is an unalloyed success, and admittedly, I don’t find much to love in Trump, and shudder at the idea of a 2nd term. But it’s unfair to list, as we’ve both done, their most acutely failures (choosing to elide over your references to BS conspiracies), especially those honed by partisan distortion.
I have plenty of qualms with Obama, as well, but I never confused him as the 2nd coming of Jesus, either. But in the very least, he always struck me as a fundamentally decent person, who viewed the office with humility. Trump never managed to clear that bar, nor did he try very hard.
Maybe the problem is -- as you and several commenters demonstrate -- fandom itself. How odd it is that so many people have so many emotions about the role of president. Emotions, fandom, Beatles-type screaming at rallies -- these things are not so healthy. "The strong rum of party" as Emerson (or maybe Channing) put it. As a sci fi fan can you imagine how this may look to other civilizations? Rabid crowds cheering leaders?
Emotions are fine and normal, and I disagree that it's odd to feel strongly about (someone in) a powerful position. But ecstatic fandom is an overreaction; no modern US president has earned starry-eyed adulation.
Odd that you don't mention the Iran deal, a great foreign policy success.
But Libya was very bad indeed -- it sent exactly the wrong message to NK and Libya's ally Russia. You cut a deal with the US, your reward is death a decade or two later after the American attention span moves on and forgets about the deal. That was the message we sent by killing Gaddafi.
Has politics, anywhere, at any time, ever involved anything other than endless cycles of irrationally euphoric hope and irrationally despondent disappointment?
In the US, during my relatively long lifetime, politics on both the left and the right has been driven by True Believers. And the True Believers tend, psychologically, to be emotionally labile, easily aroused, and easily deflated, reflexive catastrophizers, and filled with the messianic despair and hope of the Old Testament prophets. Things are always worse than they've ever been; we're always on the brink of catastrophe; only our candidate can save us from the demons clawing at the door. Most of us aren't like this, don't want to spend time with these people, but don't have the time or the energy to wrest control of our politics from them, and so we just let the drive them bus. And, because they're terrible drivers, we're always very close to being driven off a cliff, and so we keep our seatbelts securely fastened, and pray (many of us to gods we don't really think exist.)
Hype and unfulfillable promises are what get people elected and unelected. The actual work of governance -- making the trains run on time, solving problems to whatever extent possible with whatever resources are available, trying to formulate and effectuate policy in a universe of unfathomable complexity and nearly total uncertainty -- is really carried out largely by nameless, faceless, unelected career bureaucrats who usually never get thanked or reviled or blamed or rewarded for what they do. If I believed in god, I'd ask her to bless them.
Your second paragraph about True Believers is at best both-sidesing; True Believers of the left have had negligible control over US politics for decades.
I was also a huge Obama fan. Obamacare was an incredible accomplishment. But I was hoping he would do more to address the Unitary Executive theory. As he was a constitutional scholar I was sure he would understand how dangerous the Bush years were.
The interesting thing about the reaction many conservatives have to the Obama presidency is that they describe him as being "the most racist president ever" or someone who "made everything about race." Which is ironic from a liberal standpoint, because many of us feel that he didn't do enough about race relations and that he spent so much energy trying to not be the "black president" that he wasted an opportunity to make a difference.
I think Obama knew there was no upside to mentioning his own race. "My son could have looked like Trayvon Martin" was a rare exception and it drove some people absolutely hysterical. You can't blame him for trying to avoid comments like that
I think there's an argument to be made that while his attitude made sense at the time, it was also a precursor of what was to come. Obama's skittishness about mentioning his race didn't prevent the criticism. In fact, it's common to conservatives in the media refer to him as "the most racist President ever."
A lot of establishment Democrats triangulate their responses and public statements in hopes of staving off bad-faith criticism from the Right. And the criticism comes regardless, because it's inherently in bad faith and doesn't require any context. So Dems might as well say what they mean.
This is a pretty complete evaluation of the Obama Presidency. I dissent on two items:
(1) The way he managed the Great Recession certainly favored (Republican style) top down economics. Most commentators agree the focus on rescuing the banks and Wall Street was important, but the inept attention to Main Street and those who suffered most (loosing homes as well as jobs) was both tragic at the time and fueled the long term popular trend toward alienation from and distrust of government.
(2) The ACA was probably mostly the politics of the possible. It had one main drawback: It increased the number of insured with direct tax revenue subsidy of their out of pocket expenses - a windfall to health insurance companies. It had two main innovations (both unmentioned here): (a) As designed it created universal national health insurance for all the poor. This would have gone a long way toward eliminating the structural racism embodied in Medicaid. This was, of course, snuffed out by the Supreme Court. (b) It was partially financed by new taxes on the wealthy - to the tune of $600 billion/10 years - which is the, usually unstated, reason the Republicans hated the ACA so and a tax which they repealed at the first opportunity. It should be noted that the ACA financing structure as designed was the biggest improvement in USA inequality since 1965.
Other than slowest recovery from recession on record, despite zero interest rates and massive QE that inflated asset prices and heightened inequality, accepting China’s occupation and militarization of the South China Sea, rewarding Russia with an “unconditional reset” after its invasion of Georgia and annexation of S Ossetia et al, leading to its 2014 decision to annex Crimea, choosing a path of racist hate mongering and populist division after the Dems lost congress in 2010, leading directly to the campaign styles of Trump and Bernie, weaponizing the IRS and intelligence agencies to spy on and harass political opponents including using the NSA intercept database and “unmasking” for political spying, abandoning a stable Iraq to an Iranian coup in 2010 which led to sectarian warfare, the birth of ISIS, hundreds dead in Europe, war in Syria and Iraq, 5 million refugees (a good slug of which tried to get to Europe and were waved in by Merkel….leading to Brexit. ..::No, other than that, I agree Obama was wonderful!
Oh - has anyone ever gone to the St. Louis Fed real hourly earnings database to look at Obama and Biden’s combined record on real wage growth? (Jan 2009- Dec 2016 and Jan 2021 to present)?
Perhaps you were being sarcastic Yuri? I was not familiar with that speech, so I found it and read it. There are any number of things President Obama did that I did not and do not agree with. This is not one of them. The link to the text is below.
Dear God. Obama was NO FDR. How on earth could you think Obama's handling of the GFC was good? He designed HAMP specifically to maximize evictions and bank profits. To get the votes for TARP he promised congress he would support cramdown, it passed and then he went with HAMP instead of cramdown anyways.
"The cynical view is that HAMP worked exactly to the Treasury's liking. Both Senator Elizabeth Warren and former Special Inspector General for TARP Neil Barofsky revealed that then-Secretary Geithner told them HAMP's purpose was to "foam the runway" for the banks. In other words, it allowed banks to spread out eventual foreclosures and absorb them more slowly. Homeowners are the foam being steamrolled by a jumbo jet in that analogy, squeezed for as many payments as they can manage before losing their homes."
All that because he refused to consider any meaningful reform to Wall Street.
"The widespread, vocal opposition to the TARP was evidence that a once complacent populace had been roused. Reform, if proposed with energy and confidence, wasn’t a risk; not only was it badly needed, it was just what voters wanted.
But incoming president Obama failed to act. Whether he failed to see the opportunity, didn’t understand it, or was simply not interested is moot. Rather than bring vested banking interests to heel, the Obama administration instead chose to reconstitute, as much as possible, the very same industry whose reckless pursuit of profit had thrown the world economy off the cliff. There would be no Nixon goes to China moment from the architects of the policies that created the crisis, namely Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, and Director of the National Economic Council Larry Summers.
Defenders of the administration no doubt will content that the public was not ready for measures like the putting large banks like Citigroup into receivership. Even if that were true (and the current widespread outrage against banks says otherwise), that view assumes that the executive branch is a mere spectator, when it has the most powerful bully pulpit in the nation. Other leaders have taken unpopular moves and still maintained public support.
Obama’s repudiation of his campaign promise of change, by turning his back on meaningful reform of the financial services industry, in turn locked his Administration into a course of action. The new administration would have no choice other that working fist in glove with the banksters, supporting and amplifying their own, well established, propaganda efforts.
Thus Obama’s incentives are to come up with “solutions” that paper over problems, avoid meaningful conflict with the industry, minimize complaints, and restore the old practice of using leverage and investment gains to cover up stagnation in worker incomes. Potemkin reforms dovetail with the financial service industry’s goal of forestalling any measures that would interfere with its looting. So the only problem with this picture was how to fool the now-impoverished public into thinking a program of Mussolini-style corporatism represented progress."
I was an Obama voter, but with the benefit of hindsight I disagree with Noah.
As mentioned by others his foreign policy was a disaster (aside from the gutsy call on Bin Laden); the Iran deal, ISIS, Syria, Russia/Crimea, China, even the Paris agreement was done in haste and therefore has fallen apart. In short he subordinated American interests and as a result the public rebuked his policies.
The ACA was well intentioned, but it tried to address a supply side problem (need to reform the healthcare complex- insurance co, doctors, hospital systems, drug companies) with a subsidy. With hindsight it's no surprise that healthcare outcomes have not improved and costs continue to climb. The costs should not be underestimated as Democrats continue to pass subsidies to hide them from the public (latest being in the IRA).
Also, student loans are even more of a problem today than they were 14 years ago. This relates to the ACA as part of the funny CBO math used to pass the bill.
Dodd-Frank was fine and has helped strengthen the banks (and payment system). However, risk was simply transferred to other parts of the financial system which is why the Fed had to do far larger QE and buy corporate bonds. QE directly leads to more wealth inequality.
The perception of the voters from the Rust belt and middle and low wage earners was that he saved Wall Street and didn’t do enough to prevent people from foreclosures
This lead to disaffection and Trump’s election
Your article is very good but Obama governed as a centrist, and didn’t tackle Main Street’s real problems
Yes, the last of the Neoliberal presidents, there was only so much he or congress (both sides) were willing to do. Compare anti trust then to now as an example.
Glad to see you and Yglesias (Thursday’s column) making similar arguments in defense of Obama. I’m very happy that IRA is getting signed but I do think the important lesson in terms of legislative accomplishments is to win more seats, not play Overton Window/negotiating games.
I reject the idea that winning more seats and "play[ing] Overton Window/negotiating games" are in tension. And it's far from obvious that winning more seats is automatically helpful, as shown by a recalcitrant, um, seat in Arizona and another in West Virginia.
The fact of the matter is that more in aggregate legislation got done under Obama - not because he’s a genius legislator or anything vs Biden but because he had 60 Senators, at least 10 of which were from red states like Manchin. My position is that Dems should do what they need to to get 10 more Manchins as opposed to setting up hard primary litmus tests. I do think those things are in tension.
Can't read the MY piece as it's paywalled and I don't give MY money.
Obama getting more done with 60 Senators doesn't, in itself, demonstrate that Democrats NOW need 10 more Manchins, since circumstances have changed since 2009. At the least you'd have to demonstrate that at least 10 of Obama's 60 Senators weren't just "from red states" but Manchin-like fossil-fuel figureheads.
The fastest way for Dems to get to 60 Senators would be to exploit the Senate's anti-majoritarian bias with a move like adding Puerto Rico, Guam, the US Virgin Islands, and each of DC's 8 wards as new states. There's no tension between that and "hard primary litmus tests" (and I'd say that "Overton Window/negotiating games" are just an intrinsic part of democratic politics).
I agree on adding states (for the territories and DC for sure, but probably not for each of DC’s wards; I would agree to splitting up some existing big D states).
I think we’ll just agree to disagree on whether hard primary litmus tests are intrinsic to the democratic process.
Splitting existing D states would work in principle but can't be done unilaterally with 50 Senators. But making non-states into states CAN, which is why it'd be the fastest method. And if you want to get to 60 D Senators ASAP, adding DC as a whole (plus PR, Guam, and the USVI) won't do the trick; one new state could only get Ds to 52; 4 new states only to 58.
I don't claim that "hard primary litmus tests are intrinsic to the democratic process", just "Overton Window/negotiating games" — any actual democracy is going to feature politicians trying to persuade people of things ("Overton Window" "games") and bargain with each other ("negotiating games"). You can shift where persuasion and bargaining happen — intra-party versus inter-party — but they won't go away without ending democracy.
I should be clear what I mean by “Overton window/negotiating games” is intra-party fights devoid of external considerations like winning elections. That’s what I think is a bad idea.
Of course, persuasion and bargaining is part of democracy and getting rid of those would be impossible in democracy.
I think Obama deserves more credit for the TPP but far more blame on his Russia and ME policies. It’s clear now glad handing Russia was a mistake and that taking a less interventionist approach to the ME was proper. I give Obama credit for learning from his Libya mistakes. But he didn’t learn them fully.
I agree with your assessment.
I believe one of Obama's most unheralded accomplishments is to retain much of the financial team and policy put in place by Bush. A different president might have taken a very different line of attack. It's true that bankers were not held to account, but maybe that was the wise price to pay for keeping the banking system intact.
Understandably, it is much harder to give credit for disasters averted. But Obama deserves it.
Jailing a few dozen c-suite financiers in 2010 would've had, literally, zero negative economic impact. And probably would've had at least some positive long term economic impact. Modern finance is approaching 100% rent extraction. Anything that discouraged ramping up any of the many aspects of that would be net positive.
I might not defend Obama on the basis of his economic team: https://web.archive.org/web/20091213114234/http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31234647/obamas_big_sellout/print
I think that was an early take (2009) and I also think that a no bailout scenario and subsequent banking bust/nationalization would have hurt the least fortunate disproportionately.
But yes I think (1) the govt. could have struck harsher deals and (2) the failure prosecute people like Dick Fuld was a mistake.
No, it was not the wise price to pay, and Obama knew that and did it anyways.
"The case for bold action was sound. The history of financial crises showed that the least costly approach is to resolve mortally wounded organizations, install new management, set strict guidelines, and separate out the bad loans and investments in order to restructure and sell them. An IMF study of 124 banking crises concluded that regulatory forbearance, the term of art for letting impaired banks soldier on, found:
The typical result of forbearance is a deeper hole in the net worth of banks, crippling tax burdens to finance bank bailouts, and even more severe credit supply contraction and economic decline than would have occurred…"
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/03/the-empire-continues-to-strike-back-team-obama-propaganda-campaign-reaches-fever-pitch.html
The wise move was to punish the bankers. Obama decided to maximize evictions instead.
But our banks recovered and built-up their capital and paid all the money back to the government.
I agree about punishing the bankers who broke laws, but that's different than punishing the banks.
No, they did not. And you would know that had you read the link I posted. The only reason TARP got "repaid" was so that bankers could take home huge bonuses.
The recession ended June 2009. Far too soon (given policy lags) for the new admin to have done anything to end it. Probably would have ended in Q1 2009 except for the January/Feb panic in the markets over uncertainty about the new administration. Disaster averted by continuing the prior policies. McCain would have been a disaster- he was not as much the Goldman Sachs President as Obama was.
I give Pelosi and Reid, Paulson, Bernanke and Bush a ton of credit. Not only TARP but stimulus bills in 2007 and 2008. They ended the recession for the country- all Obama had to do was nothing (and thankfully he did that). Well, Dodd Frank and $30 to $50 billion in bank lawsuits probably slowed the recovery, but not enough to kill it. McCain was too erratic - thank goodness he lost.
While Obama was a successful President, I think he failed badly on two fronts.
He was too much of a Wall Street President, overly committed to preserving the structure of the financialized economy we have rather than tearing more of it down and holding the bad actors accountable for the GFC. So, unlike some people in your list of commenters, I believe he squandered a historic opportunity to blow up Wall Street - commercial banks, investment banks, investment partnerships, the carried interest loophole, privileging capital over labour income, etc. etc. His primary error was putting a committed institutionalist like Tim Geithner in the Treasury rather than Paul Volcker (or Elizabeth Warren!), who knew the banks and funds for the grift machines that they are and would likely have lit the regulatory and structural equivalent of an atomic weapon on Wall Street.
His second major error, and an unpardonable one, IMHO, is Syria and Libya. Syria was probably an unforced error, and a legacy of the unholy mess that the Bush and the second Iraq war had wrought upon the region. Obama and many liberal Democrats (and probably many neoCons) also irresponsibly promoted the Arab Spring-like movements in the Arab world, most of which had no chance of success without forceful intervention by the West. And, of course, we saw how THAT worked in Libya, for which, despite his “lead from behind” line, he does bear an large portion of the blame. Obama had a shot at leaving well enough alone, but did not resist his advisors or his own impulses enough. In the Middle East, the opposite of secular authoritarianism is mostly illiberal theocracy, not liberal democracy. The US State Dept does not seem to realize this, and Obama allowed his idealism to trump what should have been common knowledge.
For all that, I voted for him twice. And would have done so again if he had been allowed to run for a third term.
Paul Volcker was very high up at Chase Manhattan before running the Fed – why would he have been any less an institutionalist? He was there for the creation of the post-Bretton Woods system!
First if all, great piece Noah. I really enjoy your work. Second, Obama is and was an excellent role model no matter your race. He was certainly better than thrice married demagogue Donald Trump. Third, he could have accomplished more if the GOP wasn't dead set on blocking everything he tried to accomplish. And finally, to those who say that race relations got worse under him, they could be right. But it's not his fault. Because haters gonna hate.
Birthers: still bigots full of shit after all these years.
So silly!
We can agree to disagree.
LOL
I know....Obama is a joke. There were other more qualified to become President. But, the
Globalists fooled the people with Obama. Where was his Hope and Change? His Mother was
white and Father was Black. So, he was not a totally Black President. He's just like JOE
take away the teleprompter and he comes up with salad words like the Miss VP Marxist
he put in. The other is Pedophile Lover Ketanji.
I hear you on Joe Biden! I wish we had someone in the White House as strong, cogent, consistent, and articulate as President Trump.
And both should envy his accomplishments, such as, banning Muslims from entering the country (after 3 attempts), dramatically reducing the number of refugees granted entry into the US, using child separation as a feature not a bug in the southern border crisis, shaking down the new president of Ukraine for dirt on his presumed opponent and getting impeached for it, striking a dubious deal with the Taliban (which his successor woefully fulfilled), folding Neo-Nazis and replacement theorists into his copious bosom after Charlottesville, inflaming the culture war at every opportunity, undermining every international institution that the US had a hand in creating and leading since WWII, and sowing the seeds of discontent by reinforcing to his followers that the only way he could lose in 2020 was by fraud, and exploiting it endlessly when he lost, and seeing it through to catastrophic ends (which included his 2nd impeachment).
In an attempt to be fair-minded, I’ll acknowledge some good he did, such as the First Step Act, banning bump sticks after Vegas (and a general skepticism of the fetishization of guns, which he never actualized on account of pushback in his own party), the Abraham Accords (despite overt coziness to the Saudis), which demonstrated the value of transactional diplomacy where moral leadership has no purchase, and paying farmers for the negative externalities caused by his trade wars (for selfish reasons, but it was still the right thing to do).
No President is an unalloyed success, and admittedly, I don’t find much to love in Trump, and shudder at the idea of a 2nd term. But it’s unfair to list, as we’ve both done, their most acutely failures (choosing to elide over your references to BS conspiracies), especially those honed by partisan distortion.
I have plenty of qualms with Obama, as well, but I never confused him as the 2nd coming of Jesus, either. But in the very least, he always struck me as a fundamentally decent person, who viewed the office with humility. Trump never managed to clear that bar, nor did he try very hard.
Wow. I hope for your sake you are just trolling, because, wow. Yes, let’s agree to disagree.
On what planet do you spend most of your time?
Maybe the problem is -- as you and several commenters demonstrate -- fandom itself. How odd it is that so many people have so many emotions about the role of president. Emotions, fandom, Beatles-type screaming at rallies -- these things are not so healthy. "The strong rum of party" as Emerson (or maybe Channing) put it. As a sci fi fan can you imagine how this may look to other civilizations? Rabid crowds cheering leaders?
Emotions are fine and normal, and I disagree that it's odd to feel strongly about (someone in) a powerful position. But ecstatic fandom is an overreaction; no modern US president has earned starry-eyed adulation.
Odd that you don't mention the Iran deal, a great foreign policy success.
But Libya was very bad indeed -- it sent exactly the wrong message to NK and Libya's ally Russia. You cut a deal with the US, your reward is death a decade or two later after the American attention span moves on and forgets about the deal. That was the message we sent by killing Gaddafi.
The Iran deal was good, but Trump was able to unilaterally yank the US out of it!
Has politics, anywhere, at any time, ever involved anything other than endless cycles of irrationally euphoric hope and irrationally despondent disappointment?
In the US, during my relatively long lifetime, politics on both the left and the right has been driven by True Believers. And the True Believers tend, psychologically, to be emotionally labile, easily aroused, and easily deflated, reflexive catastrophizers, and filled with the messianic despair and hope of the Old Testament prophets. Things are always worse than they've ever been; we're always on the brink of catastrophe; only our candidate can save us from the demons clawing at the door. Most of us aren't like this, don't want to spend time with these people, but don't have the time or the energy to wrest control of our politics from them, and so we just let the drive them bus. And, because they're terrible drivers, we're always very close to being driven off a cliff, and so we keep our seatbelts securely fastened, and pray (many of us to gods we don't really think exist.)
Hype and unfulfillable promises are what get people elected and unelected. The actual work of governance -- making the trains run on time, solving problems to whatever extent possible with whatever resources are available, trying to formulate and effectuate policy in a universe of unfathomable complexity and nearly total uncertainty -- is really carried out largely by nameless, faceless, unelected career bureaucrats who usually never get thanked or reviled or blamed or rewarded for what they do. If I believed in god, I'd ask her to bless them.
Your second paragraph about True Believers is at best both-sidesing; True Believers of the left have had negligible control over US politics for decades.
I was also a huge Obama fan. Obamacare was an incredible accomplishment. But I was hoping he would do more to address the Unitary Executive theory. As he was a constitutional scholar I was sure he would understand how dangerous the Bush years were.
The interesting thing about the reaction many conservatives have to the Obama presidency is that they describe him as being "the most racist president ever" or someone who "made everything about race." Which is ironic from a liberal standpoint, because many of us feel that he didn't do enough about race relations and that he spent so much energy trying to not be the "black president" that he wasted an opportunity to make a difference.
I think Obama knew there was no upside to mentioning his own race. "My son could have looked like Trayvon Martin" was a rare exception and it drove some people absolutely hysterical. You can't blame him for trying to avoid comments like that
I think there's an argument to be made that while his attitude made sense at the time, it was also a precursor of what was to come. Obama's skittishness about mentioning his race didn't prevent the criticism. In fact, it's common to conservatives in the media refer to him as "the most racist President ever."
A lot of establishment Democrats triangulate their responses and public statements in hopes of staving off bad-faith criticism from the Right. And the criticism comes regardless, because it's inherently in bad faith and doesn't require any context. So Dems might as well say what they mean.
This is a pretty complete evaluation of the Obama Presidency. I dissent on two items:
(1) The way he managed the Great Recession certainly favored (Republican style) top down economics. Most commentators agree the focus on rescuing the banks and Wall Street was important, but the inept attention to Main Street and those who suffered most (loosing homes as well as jobs) was both tragic at the time and fueled the long term popular trend toward alienation from and distrust of government.
(2) The ACA was probably mostly the politics of the possible. It had one main drawback: It increased the number of insured with direct tax revenue subsidy of their out of pocket expenses - a windfall to health insurance companies. It had two main innovations (both unmentioned here): (a) As designed it created universal national health insurance for all the poor. This would have gone a long way toward eliminating the structural racism embodied in Medicaid. This was, of course, snuffed out by the Supreme Court. (b) It was partially financed by new taxes on the wealthy - to the tune of $600 billion/10 years - which is the, usually unstated, reason the Republicans hated the ACA so and a tax which they repealed at the first opportunity. It should be noted that the ACA financing structure as designed was the biggest improvement in USA inequality since 1965.
I agree. Matter of fact I think he was a great potus under the circumstances
Other than slowest recovery from recession on record, despite zero interest rates and massive QE that inflated asset prices and heightened inequality, accepting China’s occupation and militarization of the South China Sea, rewarding Russia with an “unconditional reset” after its invasion of Georgia and annexation of S Ossetia et al, leading to its 2014 decision to annex Crimea, choosing a path of racist hate mongering and populist division after the Dems lost congress in 2010, leading directly to the campaign styles of Trump and Bernie, weaponizing the IRS and intelligence agencies to spy on and harass political opponents including using the NSA intercept database and “unmasking” for political spying, abandoning a stable Iraq to an Iranian coup in 2010 which led to sectarian warfare, the birth of ISIS, hundreds dead in Europe, war in Syria and Iraq, 5 million refugees (a good slug of which tried to get to Europe and were waved in by Merkel….leading to Brexit. ..::No, other than that, I agree Obama was wonderful!
Oh - has anyone ever gone to the St. Louis Fed real hourly earnings database to look at Obama and Biden’s combined record on real wage growth? (Jan 2009- Dec 2016 and Jan 2021 to present)?
🙄🙄🙄
Perhaps you were being sarcastic Yuri? I was not familiar with that speech, so I found it and read it. There are any number of things President Obama did that I did not and do not agree with. This is not one of them. The link to the text is below.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/full-transcript-president-obamas-speech-dallas-police-memorial/story?id=40521153
Wow
Dear God. Obama was NO FDR. How on earth could you think Obama's handling of the GFC was good? He designed HAMP specifically to maximize evictions and bank profits. To get the votes for TARP he promised congress he would support cramdown, it passed and then he went with HAMP instead of cramdown anyways.
"The cynical view is that HAMP worked exactly to the Treasury's liking. Both Senator Elizabeth Warren and former Special Inspector General for TARP Neil Barofsky revealed that then-Secretary Geithner told them HAMP's purpose was to "foam the runway" for the banks. In other words, it allowed banks to spread out eventual foreclosures and absorb them more slowly. Homeowners are the foam being steamrolled by a jumbo jet in that analogy, squeezed for as many payments as they can manage before losing their homes."
https://prospect.org/economy/needless-default/
All that because he refused to consider any meaningful reform to Wall Street.
"The widespread, vocal opposition to the TARP was evidence that a once complacent populace had been roused. Reform, if proposed with energy and confidence, wasn’t a risk; not only was it badly needed, it was just what voters wanted.
But incoming president Obama failed to act. Whether he failed to see the opportunity, didn’t understand it, or was simply not interested is moot. Rather than bring vested banking interests to heel, the Obama administration instead chose to reconstitute, as much as possible, the very same industry whose reckless pursuit of profit had thrown the world economy off the cliff. There would be no Nixon goes to China moment from the architects of the policies that created the crisis, namely Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, and Director of the National Economic Council Larry Summers.
Defenders of the administration no doubt will content that the public was not ready for measures like the putting large banks like Citigroup into receivership. Even if that were true (and the current widespread outrage against banks says otherwise), that view assumes that the executive branch is a mere spectator, when it has the most powerful bully pulpit in the nation. Other leaders have taken unpopular moves and still maintained public support.
Obama’s repudiation of his campaign promise of change, by turning his back on meaningful reform of the financial services industry, in turn locked his Administration into a course of action. The new administration would have no choice other that working fist in glove with the banksters, supporting and amplifying their own, well established, propaganda efforts.
Thus Obama’s incentives are to come up with “solutions” that paper over problems, avoid meaningful conflict with the industry, minimize complaints, and restore the old practice of using leverage and investment gains to cover up stagnation in worker incomes. Potemkin reforms dovetail with the financial service industry’s goal of forestalling any measures that would interfere with its looting. So the only problem with this picture was how to fool the now-impoverished public into thinking a program of Mussolini-style corporatism represented progress."
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/03/the-empire-continues-to-strike-back-team-obama-propaganda-campaign-reaches-fever-pitch.html
And don't even get me started on Obamacare:
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/08/the-history-of-obamacare-2013-2016.html#comment-2662272
I was an Obama voter, but with the benefit of hindsight I disagree with Noah.
As mentioned by others his foreign policy was a disaster (aside from the gutsy call on Bin Laden); the Iran deal, ISIS, Syria, Russia/Crimea, China, even the Paris agreement was done in haste and therefore has fallen apart. In short he subordinated American interests and as a result the public rebuked his policies.
The ACA was well intentioned, but it tried to address a supply side problem (need to reform the healthcare complex- insurance co, doctors, hospital systems, drug companies) with a subsidy. With hindsight it's no surprise that healthcare outcomes have not improved and costs continue to climb. The costs should not be underestimated as Democrats continue to pass subsidies to hide them from the public (latest being in the IRA).
Also, student loans are even more of a problem today than they were 14 years ago. This relates to the ACA as part of the funny CBO math used to pass the bill.
Dodd-Frank was fine and has helped strengthen the banks (and payment system). However, risk was simply transferred to other parts of the financial system which is why the Fed had to do far larger QE and buy corporate bonds. QE directly leads to more wealth inequality.
The perception of the voters from the Rust belt and middle and low wage earners was that he saved Wall Street and didn’t do enough to prevent people from foreclosures
This lead to disaffection and Trump’s election
Your article is very good but Obama governed as a centrist, and didn’t tackle Main Street’s real problems
Am unaccomplished presidency
Yes, the last of the Neoliberal presidents, there was only so much he or congress (both sides) were willing to do. Compare anti trust then to now as an example.
Glad to see you and Yglesias (Thursday’s column) making similar arguments in defense of Obama. I’m very happy that IRA is getting signed but I do think the important lesson in terms of legislative accomplishments is to win more seats, not play Overton Window/negotiating games.
I reject the idea that winning more seats and "play[ing] Overton Window/negotiating games" are in tension. And it's far from obvious that winning more seats is automatically helpful, as shown by a recalcitrant, um, seat in Arizona and another in West Virginia.
I’m not a takes-smith so I can’t make the argument nearly as well but the tl;dr is in the MY piece here (https://www.slowboring.com/p/theres-no-need-to-exaggerate-bidens).
The fact of the matter is that more in aggregate legislation got done under Obama - not because he’s a genius legislator or anything vs Biden but because he had 60 Senators, at least 10 of which were from red states like Manchin. My position is that Dems should do what they need to to get 10 more Manchins as opposed to setting up hard primary litmus tests. I do think those things are in tension.
Can't read the MY piece as it's paywalled and I don't give MY money.
Obama getting more done with 60 Senators doesn't, in itself, demonstrate that Democrats NOW need 10 more Manchins, since circumstances have changed since 2009. At the least you'd have to demonstrate that at least 10 of Obama's 60 Senators weren't just "from red states" but Manchin-like fossil-fuel figureheads.
The fastest way for Dems to get to 60 Senators would be to exploit the Senate's anti-majoritarian bias with a move like adding Puerto Rico, Guam, the US Virgin Islands, and each of DC's 8 wards as new states. There's no tension between that and "hard primary litmus tests" (and I'd say that "Overton Window/negotiating games" are just an intrinsic part of democratic politics).
I agree on adding states (for the territories and DC for sure, but probably not for each of DC’s wards; I would agree to splitting up some existing big D states).
I think we’ll just agree to disagree on whether hard primary litmus tests are intrinsic to the democratic process.
Splitting existing D states would work in principle but can't be done unilaterally with 50 Senators. But making non-states into states CAN, which is why it'd be the fastest method. And if you want to get to 60 D Senators ASAP, adding DC as a whole (plus PR, Guam, and the USVI) won't do the trick; one new state could only get Ds to 52; 4 new states only to 58.
I don't claim that "hard primary litmus tests are intrinsic to the democratic process", just "Overton Window/negotiating games" — any actual democracy is going to feature politicians trying to persuade people of things ("Overton Window" "games") and bargain with each other ("negotiating games"). You can shift where persuasion and bargaining happen — intra-party versus inter-party — but they won't go away without ending democracy.
I should be clear what I mean by “Overton window/negotiating games” is intra-party fights devoid of external considerations like winning elections. That’s what I think is a bad idea.
Of course, persuasion and bargaining is part of democracy and getting rid of those would be impossible in democracy.
I think Obama deserves more credit for the TPP but far more blame on his Russia and ME policies. It’s clear now glad handing Russia was a mistake and that taking a less interventionist approach to the ME was proper. I give Obama credit for learning from his Libya mistakes. But he didn’t learn them fully.