Where now for Obama?

25/01/2010

The experts assess Barack's first year - and look at where his presidency heads next...

The documentary film By The People – The Election of Barack Obama, recently shown on the BBC, proved an interesting augury of the President’s current difficulties. It was thrilling to watch his campaign gain momentum from behind the scenes, but here too was evidence Obama does not walk on water. Here was a politician who, for all his obvious charm and intelligence, forgot his jobs recovery plan (more than 10% of Americans are currently unemployed), deliberated over what clothes to wear in front of rural audience, and struggled to find any connection with voters on awkward small town walkabouts.

His first year in the White House has been full of ironies and apparent contradictions. During the campaign Obama’s domestic agenda seemed to have the backing of a clear majority, and his achilles heel was said to be inexperience in foreign affairs. He ends the first 12 months of his Presidency backed by a majority on policy overseas, but seems to have lost the electorate on the economy and all-important health care reform.

The would-be peacemaker has ramped up the war in Afghanistan, sending 30,000 more troops into the troubled country in the hope that a handover can begin in 2011. The candidate praised for his admirably clear, cautious, rational thinking is now perceived by many as a dispassionate ditherer often unwilling to engage in confrontation with a cantankerous Republican opposition.

In perhaps the most bitter twist of his improbable journey, the man who inspired millions to knock on doors and deliver leaflets for the first time has also now inspired the biggest ever protest marches of the right. The so-called ‘tea party’ movement of grass-roots conservatives grew over the summer of 2009, outraged at Obama’s $787 billion (approximately £482 billion) economic stimulus spending and further bail out of the banks. Although Congress is set to pass a health care reform bill in the coming months – a significant achievement – Obama has been forced to compromise on a vital government-run health insurance plan. For all Obama’s rhetorical expertise, the insurance lobbyists and Republican Party dug their heels in, stoked anti-government paranoia, and won over popular opinion.

The Big Issue invited top observers of US politics to assess Obama’s first 12 months. The intriguingly varied responses show Obama, for all the pretty speeches and behind-the-scenes photographs, remains something of an enigma. Critics from the right and left agree on one thing: that he has been bold - unafraid to take on some of the biggest challenges any president has ever faced.
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Michael Lux
Former Bill Clinton adviser and head of political consultants Progressive Strategies

Obama’s health care reform bill is a modest success, with some disappointments. The best analogy is that it’s a starter house: the first house you buy, a little beat up, a little smaller than you’d like, but it’s still your first house.

Unfortunately, the power of the health insurance industry is still very strong. But the legislation changes the dynamics.

There will be much tougher regulations on the insurance companies, many more Americans will find it easier to get coverage and it establishes for the first time the right of all citizens to health care. Some have suggested no bill would be better than this one.

My experience in the Clinton House is that once we lost on health care reform, Democrats couldn’t go back for a long time. When you get your ass handed to you, you can get very cautious.

Having won it this time, it’s now easier to go back and tinker with the legislation and make it better.

I have faulted Obama for his style  of leadership. He doesn’t give the impression he’s fighting very hard. He is a cool customer and doesn’t  always appear passionate.  Obama is more like John Kennedy than his brother – more Jack than Bobby.

He has not done a very good job of creating a narrative around the economy, but he has done a number of good things for low-income Americans – the stimulus bill created new jobs and saved a lot of jobs too. I give him a lot of credit for taking  on the big challenges.

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David Freddoso
Washington Examiner columnist; author of The Case Against Barack Obama

Under Obama we have seen a very aggressive push to enact several left-wing items of legislation all at once.

The idea was to try to do everything at once because there’s a chance of getting everything passed, but there are risks that come with that.

The political discontent we’re seeing right now is the direct result of trying to do so much so quickly. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Right as active as right now.

I went to see one of the ‘tea party’ protests in Washington and what impressed me was that these were truly disorganised people with no polish, no message discipline, and no significant ties to the capital’s organised conservative movement or Republican Party.

This was a rag-tag grass-roots bunch upset about Wall Street bail-outs, high taxes and the virtual nationalisation of health care. These are not corporate stooges, either - they are railing against our bipartisan culture of corporate profiteering through big government.

The insurance industry has run ads against Obama’s health care plan – not to stop it but to change the way the law emerges. And as they hoped, the legislation will likely pass without a government-run insurance option as competition.

What company wouldn’t like a law that basically just says people have to buy their product?

I believed after Obama got elected that it would take a decade for people to re-learn the lessons of why big government is a bad thing. But in less than a year, Obama had re-educated them. People wanted change, but they're waking up only now to the fact that this was not necessarily the kind of change they wanted.

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Gary Younge
US-based author and Guardian writer

What people want from Obama is heaven or hell and what they got is life on Earth. He never stood as a radical Democrat; he’s not been a radical Democrat.

I think he’s the most progressive president since Lyndon Johnson but that doesn’t necessarily mean he is progressive enough.

People are hurting very badly – unemployment is in double digits, one in eight people are on food stamps, one in four children are on food stamps. This is the richest country in the world.

It would be unreasonable to think that will turn round in a year. It is reasonable to hope they will be moving in the right direction, but they are not moving as fast as the country is going to need.

A year on, his base – that energetic, vibrant, multi-racial, multi-generational base – has more or less disappeared. There are patches where it still exists, but by and large it’s completely gone. That’s not true for the right. They are completely mobilised, they have their own TV station: Fox News.

It’s been an education to see how solidified a bloc the Republican Party has been – I’m not sure we knew that a year ago.

I spent some of the last election in a town in Virginia and people who lived there all their lives were visiting parts of the town they’d never seen to garner support for Obama.

As a journalist, writer and political animal, I’m trying to find out what that was – and where it went.

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Tim Carney
Small-government conservative and author of Obamanomics

President Obama has delivered on his promise of increasing government control over the economy but by doing so he has
trampled on his pledge to reduce the influence of high-powered, well-connected lobbyists and the    special interests that can afford them. The $787bn stimulus, the largest-spending bill in history, was a feast for lobbyists in Washington and a feeding frenzy for Big Business.

Global warming regulation has turned into a corporate porkfest, with well-connected companies such as Monsanto and General Electric ensuring the giveaway of billions of dollars worth of carbon credits.

The energy bill that passed the House wouldn’t have any noticeable effect on greenhouse gas concentrations but it would drive up costs and enrich those who won the lobbying game.

Drug companies have hijacked Obama’s health-care reform and insurance companies have twisted it beyond recognition.  If the bill passes, these special interests will reap trillions from subsidies, mandates and lengthy government-guaranteed monopolies.

Obama’s tough talk toward Wall Street can’t erase the platoon of Goldman Sachs alumni who now litter his West Wing. Obama has injected government into new corners of the economy and the result is that a good lobbyist is now more valuable than ever – which is good news for the fat cats.

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Tristram Riley-Smith
Author of The Cracked Bell: America and the Afflictions of Liberty

Barack Obama was elected on a massive surge of enthusiasm – then the reality kicked in.  His Oval Office in-tray groaned beneath the weight of an economic and financial disaster at home, and a troubled international agenda.

We should not be surprised, then, to see that the bubble of idealistic hope that carried him into office has deflated over the last 12 months. Punk-rocker Jello Biafra seemed to express unease felt by many of the president’s supporters: his latest album  is called The Audacity of Hype, as if to question Obama’s political creed: The Audacity of Hope.

Meanwhile, his conservative opponents have regrouped. There was resistance to his programme of social healthcare among many in middle America.

This reminds us that millions of Americans care passionately about their distinctive brand of liberty, with its focus on individual freedoms, even if this leads to alarming levels of poverty and deprivation (with 28 million claiming food stamps and 47 million denied access to healthcare).

Nevertheless, I believe Obama can look back on his first year of office with some satisfaction. He has begun the process of reshaping America’s profile overseasand he has also made great progress  in closing Guantanamo Bay and delivering on universal healthcare.

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Roger Hickey
co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future

We were all delighted when Obama was elected, and he is a night-and-day improvement on George Bush and his reactionary policies. He is to be praised for doing some very bold things, very quickly. He’s a good Keynsian – he’s spent a lot of money trying to revive the economy, investing in a stimulus package which has done a lot of good things, and in the TARP funds which bailed out the banks.

Unfortunately, the two have gotten confused in the mind of the general public – they confused the stimulus (which was large) with the throwing money at the banks (which was also very large).

Unfortunately, his White House has been close to the banks, and he has not used his leverage to re-structure the banks and change the regulatory system. He has been too accommodating. This latest tax on the bankers is smart – it makes him look like he’s on the side of the people. It may be somewhat symbolic, but he desperately needs that kind of populist symbolism.

He also took on health care reform and it’s been a huge fight against special interests. Here too he has been far too willing to compromise with the Republicans and the health insurance industry. We are advising the White House the health care bill should be characterized as only a first step in regulating the insurance industry.

Obama still has big goals, which is good, because the country needs big change. The question is whether the public sees him as a champion fighting for them or a muddled idealist.

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Mayhill Fowler
The Huffington Post’s pioneering citizen web journalist

Obama’s decision to ramp up the war in Afghanistan took many by surprise, but he said many times as a candidate that we needed to win the war in Afghanistan. Because he is so self-confident, he can be very cautious and deliberative in decision-making. He wanted to hear all sides before he made up his mind on the troop surge policy. On the other hand, he is a bold gambler; a risk-taker. The idea that we can move 30,000 troops to Afghanistan in 18 months and then begin drawing them out, and still have any great effect on Islamic militancy in parts of the country in that time, would seem to be unrealistic.

When I reported in the campaign that Obama had talked about people in small towns who “cling to guns and religion”, I knew many Americans would be upset because it was so condescending. To what extent he understands them now, I’m not sure. The people who are deserting him now are actually the liberal progressives who didn’t expect a centrist deal-maker.

Ironically the people who he offended with those remarks on the campaign ended up voting for him, and might again. I still hear all the time – ‘Well, he’s our president, let’s see how  he does’.