Obama caricature by William Fiesterman
In his power rankings post, my esteemed co-blogger Jeff writes:
For all the whining from the not-really-the-base, Obama has strong support from the left, especially given the candidates vying for the nomination on the right.
Frankly, there’s just not much room to attack Obama if one is being fair to him.
I think it’s more accurate to say that the base is split — which makes sense, since the Democratic party is split as well. Clearly, a lot of the base supports Obama, but a lot of the base is angry, and dismissing progressive critiques of Obama as “whining” isn’t a substantive response.
It’s ridiculous to imply that all progressive critiques of Obama are unfair. Especially on issues like war, transparency, going after whistleblowers, wiretaps, deportations, medical marijuana, whitewashing torture — issues where Obama acts without having to get a bill passed through Congress — there’s no excuse for how far right Obama has gone.
Jeff:
And given that he now faces a hostile Congress, a president who’s able to keep his head down and negotiate hard is going to be more successful than one who bloviates and gets rolled.
Contrary to what Jeff claims, Obama doesn’t “negotiate hard.” He’s a terrible negotiator , who has been out-negotiated by the Republicans again and again. Obama’s negotiates by offering a compromise as his opening bid, and then being compromising further from there. In Jeff’s terminology, Obama is the guy who keeps his head down while he’s getting rolled.
Admittedly, the Republicans have the advantage of an amazingly unified party in Congress. It’s possible that a much better negotiator wouldn’t have done much, or any, better. Does that excuse not trying?
Nate Silver describes Obama’s approach as risk-adverse:
But I do think it’s fair to characterize it as a risk-averse strategy. And that, at the core, is what bothers some liberals about Mr. Obama’s approach to the presidency. Fairly or not, they want him to push the envelope more than he has and to take a few more chances — to expand the realm of the possible, as Mr. Cuomo seems to have done in New York.
Obama’s defenders implicitly assume that nothing Obama did could have possibly have made the situation better. For example, it’s been suggested that it would have been a waste of time for Obama to fight the filibuster, because the public doesn’t care about procedural issues. But when Bush was president, Republicans fought the filibuster with limited, but significant, success, using the mantra “up or down vote” and the threat of the nuclear option (among other techniques) to compel Democrats to allow more votes. Was the public that different back then?
It’s certainly possible that Democrats wouldn’t have gotten better results by fighting the filibuster. But since we can’t know that for certain, they should have tried. And the not-trying-in-Chief title belongs to Obama.
Good post, Amp.
Most of what you write here makes sense, and I will concede that Jeff goes to far in stating that it is “unfair” to criticize Obama. But please respond to this point made by Jeff: “But imperfect though he is, he’s still succeeded in pushing more progressive legislation through in his first term than any president since Johnson.” Yes, we’ve only had 3 Democratic Presidents since Johnson, but Carter and Clinton didn’t push as much progressive legislation through as *NIXON*. Lots of stuff to criticize Obama for, sure, but I have to respect and support the only President who has made liberal progress in my lifetime.
Since Jeff didn’t support that claim with either an argument or a link, it’s hard for me to respond to it fully. My impression is that most people who are making that argument are giving Obama a lot of credit for every little program that was in the gigantic (and yet still too small!) stimulus package aimed to counteract the worst recession in a century. Unless we think that Clinton and Carter would have been opposed to a stimulus bill in the same circumstance, that’s not a totally fair comparison.
I do think Obama did some good things, most of all the Affordable Care Act, and saving the country from George Bush’s depression (although not from George Bush’s monster unemployment).
It may be that Obama is better than Clinton or Carter were. We can still expect more than that, can’t we? And — as you concede — even if we think Obama has in some ways been excellent, it’s STILL fair for progressives to criticize him.
The truth is, Obama, Clinton and Carter are all three centrist Democrats. Liberal democrats can and should ask for better than that.
As someone who has defended Obama for a long time, and who has never been particularly convinced by the “he should have made more stuff happen” argument (to characterize it unfairly), I have pretty much lost my ability to defend him over this.
So it looks like President Obama will get to add cutting social security benefits and medicare and medicaid to his progressive legislative accomplishments. With that, I bet he’ll even beat Johnson. Hey, if the worthless financial regulation bill and the Race to the Top education program count as progressive legislative accomplishments, why not count gutting both the New Deal and the Great Society?
I can’t imagine ever advancing an argument that it’s unfair for any group to criticize anyone. But if you’re wondering about things to criticize President Obama for, how about more than doubling the number of wars we’re involved in (Nobel Peace Prize indeed!). Then there’s Operation Fast and Furious, which is starting to look like Iran/Contra (and I by no means intend to minimize Iran/Contra), which the current Administration has to wear the jacket for. That alone should call for a fistful of resignations and hopefully indictments.
As far as the stimulus packages go, we were told that they’d drop unemployment. Instead, unemployment has gone up. Shovel ready projects? The only thing shovel ready was the pile of manure that was shoveled on the American public. The figures I keep seeing cited are that each job created – mostly in the public sector, IIRC – cost around $278,000. It would have been cheaper to just hand over $100,000 to twice that many people. Even if you accept the principles of the stimulus spending, there’s no denying that it was remarkably inefficient and mismanaged.
We are 2.5 years into the Obama Administration. Like it or not, he owns the economy. Trying to run against President Bush won’t work. It only appeals to the true believers who are going to vote for Obama anyway. “It’s Bush’s fault” is not going to convince independents. I don’t know who the GOP is going to put up as his opposition, but if they’re not a raving lunatic and are willing to take a page out of Bill Clinton’s playbook, they’ll ride “It’s the economy, stupid” right into the White House. Mind you, I don’t see a lot of people in the current GOP contenders that I want to vote for. But I’m used to that. I’m pretty used to voting against candidates instead of for candidates in just about every election. I’m thinking of having a T-shirt made: “My candidate lost in the primary”. I’d end up wearing it a lot.