Even before his election, Barack Obama’s persona led to many historical comparisons. One does not need to look any farther than the first hit of a google search for “Barack Obama JFK”, to find perhaps the most common. Since his election and subsequent inauguration, Obama has been compared to, among others, FDR, Lincoln, Carter, and most recently Herbert Hoover. It is interesting that this man can be measured up against so many Presidents with such different styles, or with a past president at all. To me, this shows that he is at least operating in the realm of historical American political thought despite what his critics might say.
George W. Bush tended to not garner such historical references. His governing style was unprecedented and never in recent history had the executive branch been run so close to corporate interests. Indeed, the Bush administration could be called the corporate administration. In foreign policy, Bush took the unprecedented step of preemptive strike. Perhaps it was because his leadership was so unique that kept people from comparing outcomes of past and present.
So some may be worried that negative comparisons will shed some light on the outcome of President Barack Obama’s term. While I cannot make predictions about the future, I feel reassured that my current president can be compared.
The first I heard of the events in on the Detroit bound plane on Christmas was a text message from CNN. “Passenger sets off firecrackers on a Northwest flight as it lands in Detroit.” My initial reaction is “this is not news.” As the story developed, Americans learned that this was not some failed attempt at a holiday prank, but an effort to ignite an explosive on a Christmas flight. Since then, political thinkers have been pontificating as to the implications of these events. Janet Napolitano has made a fool of herself, Ben Stein has called for the TSA to privatize and everybody has wondered why the President is still on vacation.
It’s no mystery. If the attack failed, why terrorize people more? Ideally, this is what would have happened. Not in this world. The opposition has pulled the amateur stunt of acting as if the country is running around with its head cut off because the president had chosen not to publicly comment for a few days. Where is our leader? Why is he in the middle of the Pacific ocean? This is not something that happened to George W. Bush, as Politico pointed out, and I think both Presidents made the proper decision to let the truth of the situation percolate through the media before commenting more. The opposition made the improper choice to politicize this, and it has sort of come back to haunt them.
Like George Bush before him, Obama stepped up and made a beautiful speech in memory of those lost in a national tragedy. Hot Air pointed to one of the most powerful sections of the speech:
For history is filled with heroes. You may remember the stories of a grandfather who marched across Europe; an uncle who fought in Vietnam; a sister who served in the Gulf. But as we honor the many generations who have served, I think all of us — every single American — must acknowledge that this generation has more than proved itself the equal of those who have come before.
We need not look to the past for greatness, because it is before our very eyes.
Skip to 11:18 for the beginning of “for history is filled”.
The other day, the White House finally released visitor logs. Not since 2006 has the executive branch had this much transparency. Some interesting things to note:
In September, requests were submitted for the names of some famous or controversial figures (for example Michael Jordan, William Ayers, Michael Moore, Jeremiah Wright, Robert Kelly (“R. Kelly”), and Malik Shabazz). The well-known individuals with those names never actually came to the White House. Nevertheless, we were asked for those names and so we have included records for those individuals who were here and share the same names.
Question: Did the White House plant these names in an attempt to excite the vast right-wing conspiracy? If so, it seems to have worked.
Over the summer, there were a fare amount of people repeating a talking point about how the President had a marketing problem. Conservative activists took control of town halls and media outlets all but doomed the healthcare push to failure. For a while, the administration seemed to ignore much of the criticism. Then, however, Barack Obama went out on the ole’ campaign trail, stumping across the country for healthcare reform. To his opponents, this seemed like weakness. To his supporters, this seemed like building a consensus. What was actually happening was that the President needed to find a way to balance the limited powers of the executive branch with his desire to sell his agenda.
At times, these plans failed horribly. More than once, President Obama has been accused of building an enemies list: first with the White House email account to “flag” falsehoods about healthcare reforms, second because of an interesting tactic that the administration has taken to Fox News. Still more recent is the recent controversy over HealthReform.gov, a site set up by the Department of Health and Human Services to help sell the administration’s desired reform plans.
Can this problem be attributed to any one of Obama’s personal qualities? Perhaps. He has been accused of being narcissistic and thin-skinned by his opponents. His constant media appearances still make even his supporters uncomfortable. The problem is more basic than that, though. When George W. Bush (and every president before him) was elected, he did so with a few large media players essentially moderating and mediating the debate between himself and Vice President Gore. What Obama faces is a new foe: a hydra of new and old media.
Example: Health care scare mongering. With mailers and bloggers and townhallers and Internet organizers spreading (at most) half-truths about any number of healthcare bills making their way through congress, what is a president to do? This will be a great challenge to the Obama administration. The office of the president is relatively small compared to the massive effort to stop anymore government involvement in healthcare. Obama has run into the collective action problem. That is to say, it is very difficult to mobilize support for a public good.
One possible solution is to ignore the constant onslaught. As the president, his job has historically been considered above petty legislative bickering. This idea worked for George W. Bush, who managed to push through his agenda with relative ease. Obama seems different though. He has opted for a full-frontal assault on prominent critics. Put my vote as skeptical for whether or not this will be effective.
So, the big news yesterday was that the Obama administration announced pay caps for companies that still have government money. Some conservatives immediately jumped in to say that the cuts would be an average of 90%. The news today is that executives are leaving these firms because they can’t accept the pay cut. Put in more concrete numbers:
At Bank of America, for instance, only 14 of the 25 highly paid executives remained by the time Feinberg announced his decision. Under his plan, compensation for the most highly paid employees at the bank would be a maximum of $9.9 million. The bank had sought permission to pay as much as $21 million, according to Treasury Department documents.
Yes, bankers are leaving because they are only making $10 million. From Instapundit (though his take is different).
Waking up to an article about the Obama administration proposing limits on banker pay for companies that were bailed out and an article about how President Obama brought in millions in donations from investors in Manhattan had me a bit vexed at first. Out of one side of the administration comes a sharp regulation targeted directly at certain Wall Street firms, out of another side, the President is pushing reform as bankers open their checkbooks. What exactly is going on here? Harper’s points to the final paragraph of the Washington Post article:
Large public banks have long been loath to get involved in politics, a major Obama donor said: “The stronger base is among private equity guys, hedge funds, et cetera. People in private firms feel a little more flexible.”
I’ve mentioned this before in the context of healthcare, but the Obama administration’s apparent tactic of making people perceive popular critics as radicals is very widespread. This is a pretty ingenious move by the president, who has faced constant criticism as being too weak. He is clearly not too weak, he is very shrewd. Mr. Obama plays good politics but will it make for good policy? Nothing radical has been passed yet, but he appears to be playing himself into a good position.
Update: Wonkette has, of course, their own take on this.
With approval ratings that are still relatively high, it is interesting to me that polls such as the one Fox News released last week are making such a splash on blogs and cable news channels. Never mind, though, approval ratings don’t matter until the election anyway. What’s more intriguing are the persistent and opposing narratives of Obama as both brutal tyrant and weak-handed leader simultaneously.
I disagree with both of these points. As mentioned on this blog a few times before, Obama has proven himself as an effective, forward-thinking, and pragmatic political player. It seems I am not the only one. Andrew Sullivan’s latest column for the Times directly addresses this issue.
And he has framed the debate so that the Republicans find themselves as their own worst enemies. Support for Obama’s health reform was sliding until August’s right-wing temper tantrum. Since then, his approval ratings on the issue have steadily climbed, and Democrats are increasing their lead in congressional polling.
Like Sullivan, I am also still wondering about whether the president can successfully overcome the risks involved, but that remains to be seen.
Last night, the Obama administration said it would stop prosecuting medical marijuana users as long as they followed the rules of their state. Liberals have applauded this because of their strong opposition to the decades long War on Drugs. Liberals weren’t the only ones, however. Constitutional conservatives are also fans of this decision because it turns enforcement more federalist. Who would’ve thought that it would be this issue that brought the separate ideologies together?
While the President is constantly in the spotlight giving interviews, press conferences, and and attending fundraisers, his head diplomat, Hillary Clinton, has been working away. Her most notable accomplishment to date has been helping save the Turkey-Armenia accords, finally setting the stage to allow for the two countries to normalize relations.
Since the Nobel prize announcement, a good number of people have seemed to write off the president as one who aspires but fails to deliver, but I think that Clinton’s pragmatic, diplomatic approach to foreign policy will be something that will help him deliver. It seems that “smart power” wasn’t just another attempt at flashy rebranding of the same policies.
This policy is not without its detractors, however. Some argue for a stronger position against Iran, for example. Others feel that the administration has sold out on Israel. It is too soon to tell if either side is right, but this new approach to international relations is refreshing.
I, along with most of the rest of the world, was shocked yesterday to wake up to the news of Barack Obama winning the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. Like most people, my first reaction can be summed up as a simple “what?” The cable news pundits, political blogs, political party leadership and newspaper columnists were quick to make their opinions known on the subject. The almost unanimous response after a day of deliberation between the talking heads has been that Barack Obama has not accomplished enough to deserve a prize so prestigious. After all, he has only been in office for 9 months.
Barack Obama, however, is not the first sitting president to win the prize. Two other presidents have been awarded the prize (albeit for more tangible accomplishments): Woodrow Wilson in 1919 and Teddy Roosevelt in 1906. These awards were also shared their fare amount of controversy.
Teddy Roosevelt, 1906
Teddy Roosevelt won the award in 1906 for helping put an end to the Russo-Japanese War. According to a December 17th, 1906 New York Times article, many Norwegians felt that Roosevelt “merely was the means of ending a war after all the damage had been done.” They instead thought that the prize should have been conferred upon “a group of Swedish and Norwegian statesmen… who negotiated the peaceful separation of the two countries.” The “Karistad Commission” successfully avoided a war, even after Norway’s military had 30,000 troops at the ready.
Woodrow Wilson, 1919
Woodrow Wilson’s 1919 Nobel Peace Prize was still more controversial. Wilson was nominated by the Swedish Socialist party in January of 1920 (the committee originally decided not to award a peace prize for 1919) for proposing the League of Nations.
The League was the subject of heated debate in the United States. Senator Hiram Johnson led the opposition:
“We saw the high principles of President Wilson discarded,” said Senator Johnson. “We saw altruism gone and idealism buried, and we saw open covenants openly arrived at accomplished behind barred doors. We looked to see the removal of economic barriers; we looked to see national armaments reduced, but we never heard the semblance of any accomplishment. We saw arbitrary power have its will in the adjustment of world affairs, and we saw a defensive and offensive alliance brought about instead of a desired understanding for world peace.”
The opposition was not just at home. The German newspaper “Germania” said:
President Wilson is the man who gave Germany the right to hope, then robbed the Germans of their peace. If hypocritical peace ambitions are to be crowned with the Nobel prize, then each succeeding recipient of the award must carry a share of his shame.
Two pieces of positive news for the prospects of a healthcare bill passing (or at least getting to a floor vote).
First, the Congressional Budget Office has released it’s report on the predicted cost of Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus’ healthcare bill and the numbers look good for Democrats. Ezra Klein has a few summaries of the report. Matt Yglesias stays up late in Europe to read the report. National Review Online has some initial thoughts on how the GOP will respond. Allahpundit at Hot Air as well. Megan McCardle has faith it will pass. Will this report get the Olympia Snowe vote?
The second bit of news is the fact that moderate Republicans are endorsing the Democratic plan for reform. This shouldn’t actually be news because Gov. Schwarzenegger and Mayor Bloomberg have no vote in congress. However, it is more indicative of the politicking that the Obama administration has been doing across the aisle. While Republicans have moved farther to the right, some have become increasingly disenfranchised. The Obama administration reached out and encouraged these moderates to come forward and make the leadership look even more extreme.
Jeremy Scahill reads “government contractors” into Karl Rove’s recent Wall Street Journal article.
Mr. Obama’s hands-off approach to the war seems to fit his governing style. Over the past year, he outsourced writing the stimulus package to House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, washed his hands of Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to reinvestigate CIA interrogators, and hasn’t offered a detailed health-care plan.
I’d say that the second sentence demonstrates a skewed view of the separation of powers. While it is true that the administration has handed Congress bills to pass in the past, it is not a requirement. Did Mr. Rove forget that the president is not a dictator? Also, is it still outsourcing when they’re all federal employees?
Sarkozy is taking a hard line on Iran’s nukes. According to the Washington Post:
Michael Williams, a lecturer in international relations at Royal Holloway, University of London, noted that the difference in tone between Europe and the United States can be attributed in part to the wearing down of Europeans’ patience during the constructive dialogue conducted before Obama took office. Although there is no substantial difference, he said, European leaders seem to be playing bad cop to Obama’s good cop in this stage of the nuclear standoff.
This Iran situation seems to be unfolding a lot different than one might have expected… From Hot Air.