By Shaun Mullen
http://crooksandliars.com/2016/01/obamas-legacy-great-man-good-president-bad
There have been times over the last seven years when the hope-and-change mantra that propelled Barack Hussein Obama to the presidency seemed like a cruel fiction. Yet despite taking the reins of a war-weary nation in the midst of an economic calamity and having to endure the unrelenting enmity of an obdurate opposition party, Obama has wrought enormous changes during what has been the most transformational presidency in 80 years.
He has implemented far-reaching reforms in a dysfunctional health-care system, raised school academic standards, legislated pay parity for women, revolutionized the way we produce energy through harnessing renewable resources, fought back against global warming, taken on the epidemic of childhood obesity with his First Lady, provided deportation relief to young immigrants, legalized same-sex marriage and opened new opportunities for women and gays in the military. He saved the domestic auto industry, has added nearly four million jobs, reduced unemployment to 5 percent and the deficit by two thirds to a puny 2.5 percent of GDP, engineered egalitarian tax reforms and eliminated the most usurious of credit card abuses, while today the U.S. is an island of relative calm amid the global financial crisis. He also took out Osama bin Laden, isolated Vladimir Putin, normalized relations with Cuba, stabilized relations with Iran and ended the war in Iraq.
Obama's presidency has been, as a live microphone caught Vice President Biden saying on the day he signed the Affordable Care Act, "a big fucking deal."
§
Had the Supreme Court not stolen the 2000 election, Barack Obama would not have become the 44th president of the United States. Things would be very different had the smirking frat boy from the Texas oil patch not been so spectacularly inept, had the economy not belly flopped, and had the relatively inexperienced senator from Illinois not run on a message that galvanized an electorate desperate to turn America back from the dark side.
In exactly one year, the next president will take the oath of office. That president will be a Democrat and almost certainly will be Hillary Clinton -- the first woman president following the first African-American president -- and while she is more moderate than Obama has been liberal, she also is committed to closing addressing the most formidable issue facing America: the gap between the rich and everyone else. And she is campaigning like Obama is her new best friend.
Despite anguished cries of government overreach from Republicans, Washington's share of the economy has grown infinitesimally over the last seven years, and Obama has effectively made the case -- as does Clinton on the stump -- that providing a helping hand like health insurance to millions of people is not government overreach, while interfering with a woman's right to choose most certainly is.
Meanwhile, a new Gallup poll shows that Americans identifying themselves as liberal is at a 23-year high despite the Republican drumbeat of doom and gloom, and that is a really good thing.
§
There have been setbacks, as well as outright failures, on Barack Obama's watch.
He has played much too nice with the Republicans and a deeply dysfunctional Congress. He chose many of the very same insiders for the most important administration fiscal positions who were asleep at wheel or looked the other way as the seeds of the 2008 economic collapse were sewn, and his record on Wall Street reform is mixed. He failed to keep his pledge to shut the revolving door to lobbyists who go from industry to government and back to industry. He not only did not curb mass surveillance, it has grown. He has equivocated on the war in Afghanistan as 1,700 more Americans have died, while the Middle East is even more unstable than when he took office, a situation for which he -- and Hillary Clinton -- must share some of the blame. He has not been particularly effective in using the presidential bully pulpit to allay fears of terrorism, which has inadvertently made the Republican blowhard brigade seem stronger when they rail about foreign policy.
And most importantly for me, he issued go-free cards to Bush administration torture regime perpetrators. His rationale in not ordering the Justice Department to investigate these evildoers is understandable if disheartening: He did not want to begin his presidency with Republicans screaming blue-blooded murder over what they would view as political prosecutions, although they screamed anyway about practically everything else.
Yet Obama has been clever in the face of obstructionist Republicans even if it sometimes seems he has been content with a half a loaf when a whole loaf was needed. He has made recess appointments with some success and is taking unilateral executive action on gun control. He has understood that sweeping reform of environmental regulations is impossible because of the Republicans' big energy-fossil fuel mindset, so he has worked within existing regulations and fairly effectively at that.
Charges that Obama has let down African-Americans while not adequately advocating against racism are rubbish.
Obama remains a potent symbol for African-Americans. Their lives have improved during his two terms because of his trademark quiet determination, not fire and brimstone, while I find offensive the notion that just because he's black things would or should automatically be better. It's going to take a lot more than eight years to undo hundreds of years of racism.
§
Barack Obama's style has been as important as his substance: His determinedly placid temperament has enabled him to keep his head when others lose theirs, most notably during the Ebola outbreak crisis but in many other instances, as well. He has disdained the theatrical and possesses a calculated coolness that at times can be infuriating but became a personal trademark as the challenges -- and the Republican insults and dirty tricks -- piled up and his hair turned gray.
He has a gifted ability to engage when he speaks -- that is if you are inclined to listen in the first place. And you'd darned well better listen when the subject is complicated and his explanation is complex, which it sometimes is because of a tendency to slip into policy wonkery. George Bush invariably talked down to and tried to frighten us, while Obama has talked with us, appealing to our better nature and resilience as a nation.
And where Bush was a dismal speechmaker, Obama has been inspirational.
There was his 2008 "More Perfect Union" speech on race in which he renounced Reverend Jeremiah Wright's beliefs while embracing his faith:
"I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother — a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
http://crooksandliars.com/2016/01/obamas-legacy-great-man-good-president-bad
There have been times over the last seven years when the hope-and-change mantra that propelled Barack Hussein Obama to the presidency seemed like a cruel fiction. Yet despite taking the reins of a war-weary nation in the midst of an economic calamity and having to endure the unrelenting enmity of an obdurate opposition party, Obama has wrought enormous changes during what has been the most transformational presidency in 80 years.
He has implemented far-reaching reforms in a dysfunctional health-care system, raised school academic standards, legislated pay parity for women, revolutionized the way we produce energy through harnessing renewable resources, fought back against global warming, taken on the epidemic of childhood obesity with his First Lady, provided deportation relief to young immigrants, legalized same-sex marriage and opened new opportunities for women and gays in the military. He saved the domestic auto industry, has added nearly four million jobs, reduced unemployment to 5 percent and the deficit by two thirds to a puny 2.5 percent of GDP, engineered egalitarian tax reforms and eliminated the most usurious of credit card abuses, while today the U.S. is an island of relative calm amid the global financial crisis. He also took out Osama bin Laden, isolated Vladimir Putin, normalized relations with Cuba, stabilized relations with Iran and ended the war in Iraq.
Obama's presidency has been, as a live microphone caught Vice President Biden saying on the day he signed the Affordable Care Act, "a big fucking deal."
§
Had the Supreme Court not stolen the 2000 election, Barack Obama would not have become the 44th president of the United States. Things would be very different had the smirking frat boy from the Texas oil patch not been so spectacularly inept, had the economy not belly flopped, and had the relatively inexperienced senator from Illinois not run on a message that galvanized an electorate desperate to turn America back from the dark side.
In exactly one year, the next president will take the oath of office. That president will be a Democrat and almost certainly will be Hillary Clinton -- the first woman president following the first African-American president -- and while she is more moderate than Obama has been liberal, she also is committed to closing addressing the most formidable issue facing America: the gap between the rich and everyone else. And she is campaigning like Obama is her new best friend.
Despite anguished cries of government overreach from Republicans, Washington's share of the economy has grown infinitesimally over the last seven years, and Obama has effectively made the case -- as does Clinton on the stump -- that providing a helping hand like health insurance to millions of people is not government overreach, while interfering with a woman's right to choose most certainly is.
Meanwhile, a new Gallup poll shows that Americans identifying themselves as liberal is at a 23-year high despite the Republican drumbeat of doom and gloom, and that is a really good thing.
§
There have been setbacks, as well as outright failures, on Barack Obama's watch.
He has played much too nice with the Republicans and a deeply dysfunctional Congress. He chose many of the very same insiders for the most important administration fiscal positions who were asleep at wheel or looked the other way as the seeds of the 2008 economic collapse were sewn, and his record on Wall Street reform is mixed. He failed to keep his pledge to shut the revolving door to lobbyists who go from industry to government and back to industry. He not only did not curb mass surveillance, it has grown. He has equivocated on the war in Afghanistan as 1,700 more Americans have died, while the Middle East is even more unstable than when he took office, a situation for which he -- and Hillary Clinton -- must share some of the blame. He has not been particularly effective in using the presidential bully pulpit to allay fears of terrorism, which has inadvertently made the Republican blowhard brigade seem stronger when they rail about foreign policy.
And most importantly for me, he issued go-free cards to Bush administration torture regime perpetrators. His rationale in not ordering the Justice Department to investigate these evildoers is understandable if disheartening: He did not want to begin his presidency with Republicans screaming blue-blooded murder over what they would view as political prosecutions, although they screamed anyway about practically everything else.
Yet Obama has been clever in the face of obstructionist Republicans even if it sometimes seems he has been content with a half a loaf when a whole loaf was needed. He has made recess appointments with some success and is taking unilateral executive action on gun control. He has understood that sweeping reform of environmental regulations is impossible because of the Republicans' big energy-fossil fuel mindset, so he has worked within existing regulations and fairly effectively at that.
Charges that Obama has let down African-Americans while not adequately advocating against racism are rubbish.
Obama remains a potent symbol for African-Americans. Their lives have improved during his two terms because of his trademark quiet determination, not fire and brimstone, while I find offensive the notion that just because he's black things would or should automatically be better. It's going to take a lot more than eight years to undo hundreds of years of racism.
§
Barack Obama's style has been as important as his substance: His determinedly placid temperament has enabled him to keep his head when others lose theirs, most notably during the Ebola outbreak crisis but in many other instances, as well. He has disdained the theatrical and possesses a calculated coolness that at times can be infuriating but became a personal trademark as the challenges -- and the Republican insults and dirty tricks -- piled up and his hair turned gray.
He has a gifted ability to engage when he speaks -- that is if you are inclined to listen in the first place. And you'd darned well better listen when the subject is complicated and his explanation is complex, which it sometimes is because of a tendency to slip into policy wonkery. George Bush invariably talked down to and tried to frighten us, while Obama has talked with us, appealing to our better nature and resilience as a nation.
And where Bush was a dismal speechmaker, Obama has been inspirational.
There was his 2008 "More Perfect Union" speech on race in which he renounced Reverend Jeremiah Wright's beliefs while embracing his faith:
"I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother — a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
