When a virtually unknown state Senator from Illinois addressed the Democratic National Convention in the summer of 2004, his presentation was brilliant, electrifying and filled with clear and articulated goals and policies. He was a truly inspirational orator. His speeches during his initial presidential campaign were fiery, focused on our obvious social and economic problems, but his opponent, an elderly statesman with a clearly unqualified vice-presidential running mate, were relatively easy picking. Then came the second term run. An uber-rich opponent, who ran one campaign to get nominated and quite another to try and take the presidency, was completely out of touch with his grassroots supporters and rather uninspirational. Again, a relatively easy victory.
But make no mistake, as unkind as Barack Obama’s opponents have been to him, he has tried and failed to be the great uniter. He has never used his once-phenomenal oratorical skills to explain his most controversial legislation, the Affordable Care Act, in sufficient detail, to take the mystery out of the basics of this legislation. He has never told us how success in other nations and states with similar plans already vetted the general path of the statute.
The latest healthcare rage: “Notices are going out to hundreds of thousands of Americans informing them that their health insurance policies are being canceled as of Dec. 31… The notices appear to contradict President Obama’s promise that despite the changes resulting from the law, Americans can keep their health insurance if they like it… Administration officials say the canceled insurance will be replaced by better policies. But the new line of attack comes as the administration continues to grapple with its problem-plagued Web site, HealthCare.gov.” Washington Post, October 30th. Again, there has been an entire lack of effective communication.
Obama’s own party sees him as an appeaser, and the extreme right has used this massive confusion as their basic gridlock philosophy – oppose everything that Obama is for and get him out of office. Even in his lame duck term, too many in Congress simply vote against whatever he is for. He failed to reign in Wall Street, explain why and how to the electorate, and the Dodd-Frank legislation on his watch was watered down, its implementation hardly prioritized.
Are the Republicans so opposed to relatively open access to healthcare insurance? In late October, one of the party’s staunch conservatives, House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), introduced a bill that would allow all Americans to enroll in the same health insurance plan given to federal employees and member of Congress! Huh? Still, killing “Obamacare” is high on the national priority. The President got a law passed and then seemed to pay no attention to how it was being implemented. The rollout of the Website was a national embarrassment of unbelievable proportions, what the military would call totally FUBAR.
True, he was handed an abysmal economy, sinking fast, a new ultra-conservative movement of scared old-world-traditionalists terrified at the changes and demographic shifts around them, dedicated to stopping the world and putting up barriers to these seismic shifts. But just take a look at the two failed wars he inherited. Look at how long we stayed, knowing what we were doing was not remotely working. Obama took office in 2008, and we left Iraq at the end of 2011, wasting billions and billions of precious dollars in the effort. More people died. American soldiers and local civilians. As never-ending bomb blasts in the heart of Baghdad remind us, we hardly created the stable country the President envisioned.
The war in Afghanistan – supporting one of the most corrupt regimes on earth – has gone down a similar path… and we are still there! True, the exit is planned for next year, but who on this planet really believes that we accomplished anything meaningful during our occupation, that the country will become stable? Anybody? Anywhere? Why did we waste hundreds of billions of deficit slamming dollars in that wasted effort? Why did American soldiers die in this effort? The government tells you how they have crushed terrorism, but read the headlines every day. The battle is continuous. Afghanistan and Iraq provided valuable training experience, and provided massive fodder for anti-American recruitment efforts that have made terrorist pop-up in other venues around the world.
All that money could have been invested in growth parameters: my usual mantra of education (which trains people for higher-paying jobs), infrastructure (which improves efficiency across the land and creates jobs) and research too expensive to be borne by the private sector (but could create new solutions and technologies to spur economic growth). Obama has failed to accept meaningful international restrictions and progress elements aimed at curbing greenhouse gasses, a place where those research dollars are still badly needed.
Edward Snowdon and Julian Assange aside, how in this modern world could the president believe that his NSA spying program could even be kept secret? We live in a fishbowl, Web-based world of hackers and whistleblowers. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of federal employees and contractors knew what was going on. What kind of naïveté would lead anyone to think that such an intrusive and massive program could be kept secret? What planet is he living on?
While spying on friendly powers is nothing new – we’ve arrested Israeli spies here in the U.S. – that the president did not have the wherewithal to tell his senior intelligence officers to back off of spying on our allies at this critical moment is astonishing. Note that all the government denials to international allies has been “we do not and will not,” but there is no “and we have not” in the disclaimer. And as a professor of constitutional law, what would ever make the president believe that such wide warrantless sweeps of his own citizens remotely passes the constitutional smell test?
The Republican Party has wasted time and effort on Benghazi, when their own last president has a record of even more attacks against American diplomats. It wasn’t George Bush’s fault any more than Obama’s. They have resisted tax reform, and the president hasn’t even figured out that the big opportunity – dropping our excessively high corporate income tax to reasonable levels – can be traded for finding ways to repatriate tax-avoiding corporate monies parked offshore, generating a net plus for the treasury. He is ready to accept cuts in Social Security and Medicare as a bargaining chip with deficit-reduction-focused GOP budget mavens, but this represents a basic betrayal to the main constituents of his own party.
Barack is becoming a man without a party, and perhaps a president without a country. We’ve had some pretty good leaders in recent history, Eisenhower on the Republican side and Clinton for the Dems, but Barack Obama will most certainly not go down in history as anywhere near the top of the best qualified. He had some wonderful ideas and inherited some horrific circumstances, but in my opinion he will be lucky if history accords him much more than a C- on his report card.
The only consolation is that the candidates that the GOP offered in the last elections provided little in the way of clear positive directions for the country, focusing instead on all things these were going to stop and end. By embracing taking government out of the mix as much as possible, they have completely forgotten about addressing how to make the government actually work. By telling us what they will never cut, they have made a mockery of true budget-balancing negotiations. Where is that wonderful middle that actually defines most Americans?
I’m Peter Dekom, and I’d like to think that we can do so much better than we have.
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