It’s long since become conventional wisdom that it took the Democratic Clinton administration to bring elements of the Reagan revolution to fruition, just as it would take the New Labour Blair government to bring elements of the Thatcher revolution to fruition. Will we someday be saying that it took the Democratic Obama administration to bring elements of the G. W. Bush revolution to fruition?
“Employees describe being in Interior – not just MMS, but the other agencies – as the third Bush term,” says Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which represents federal whistle-blowers. “They’re working for the same managers who are implementing the same policies. Why would you expect a different result?”…
“People are being really circumspect, not pointing the finger at Salazar and Obama,” says Rep. Raul Grijalva, who oversees the Interior Department as chair of the House subcommittee on public lands. “But the troublesome point is, the administration knew that it had this rot in the middle of the process on offshore drilling – yet it empowered an already discredited, disgraced agency to essentially be in charge.”…
Undeterred, Obama and Salazar appeared together at Andrews Air Force Base on March 31st to introduce the plan. The stagecraft was pure Rove in its technicolor militaristic patriotism. The president’s podium was set up in front of the cockpit of an F-18, flanked by a massive American flag. “We are not here to do what is easy,” Salazar declared. “We are here to do what is right.” He insisted that his reforms at MMS were working: “We are making decisions based on sound information and sound science.” The president, for his part, praised Salazar as “one of the finest secretaries of Interior we’ve ever had” and stressed that his administration had studied the drilling plan for more than a year. “This is not a decision that I’ve made lightly,” he said. Two days later, he issued an even more sweeping assurance. “It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills,” the president said. “They are technologically very advanced.”
Eighteen days later, on the eve of the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, the Deepwater Horizon rig went off like a bomb….
Damningly, the whiteboard also documents the disconnect between what the government suspected to be the magnitude of the disaster and the far lower estimates it was feeding to the public. Written below the federal estimate are the words, “300,000 gal/day reported on CNN.” Appearing on the network that same day on a video feed from the Gulf, Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry insisted that the government had no figure. “We do not have an estimate of the amount of crude emanating from the wellhead,” she said….
Scientists were stunned that NOAA, an agency widely respected for its scientific integrity, appeared to have been co-opted by the White House spin machine. “NOAA has actively pushed back on every fact that has ever come out,” says one ocean scientist who works with the agency. “They’re denying until the facts are so overwhelming, they finally come out and issue an admittance.” Others are furious at the agency for criticizing the work of scientists studying the oil plumes rather than leading them. “Why they didn’t have vessels there right then and start to gather the scientific data on oil and what the impacts are to different organisms is inexcusable,” says a former government marine biologist. “They should have been right on top of that.” Only six weeks into the disaster did the agency finally deploy its own research vessel to investigate the plumes….
Both the government and BP have reasons to downplay the extent of the spill. For BP, the motive is financial: Under the Clean Water Act, the company could owe fines of as much as $4,300 for every barrel spilled, in addition to royalties for the oil it is squandering. For the Obama administration, the disaster threatens to derail the president’s plan to expand offshore drilling. “It’s crystal clear what the federal response to the tragedy ought to be,” said Sen. Frank Lautenberg, who chairs the Senate subcommittee on environmental health. “Bring a dangerous offshore drilling pursuit to an end.”
The administration, however, has made clear that it has no intention of reversing its plan to expand offshore drilling. Four weeks into the BP disaster, when Salazar was questioned in a Senate hearing about the future of the president’s plan, he was happy to stand up for the industry’s desire to drill at any cost. “Isn’t it true,” asked Sen. Lamar Alexander, a Republican from Tennessee, “that as terrible as the tragedy is, that unless we want $14, $16, $18, $20-a-gallon gasoline, that it’s not realistic to think that we would actually stop drilling for oil in the Gulf?” Unbowed by the catastrophe that was still unfolding on his watch, Salazar heartily agreed, testifying that the president had directed him to “move forward” on offshore drilling.
That may help explain why the administration has gone to unusual lengths to contain the spill’s political fallout. On May 14th, two days after the first video of the gusher was released, the government allowed BP to apply a toxic dispersant that is banned in England at the source of the leak – an unprecedented practice in the deep ocean. “The effort should be in recovering the oil, not making it more difficult to recover by dispersing it,” says Sylvia Earle, a famed oceanographer and former NOAA chief scientist who helped the agency confront the world’s worst-ever oil spill in the Persian Gulf after the first Iraq War. The chemical assault appeared geared, she says, “to improving the appearance of the problem rather than solving the problem.”
Critics of the administration’s drilling plans fear that the president’s decision to postpone drilling in the Arctic and appoint a commission to investigate the BP spill are merely stalling tactics, designed to blunt public anger about the disaster. “The way the PR is spinning is once that spill is plugged, then people declare victory,” says Rep. Grijalva. “The commission stalls it long enough where the memory of the American people starts to fade a little bit on the issue. After that, we’re back to where we were.”
President Obama pushed to expand offshore drilling, in part, to win votes for climate legislation, which remains blocked in the Senate. The political calculus is understandable – the risk of an oil spill weighed against the far greater threat posed by global warming – but in the end, he may have succeeded only in compounding one environmental catastrophe with another. Even if the climate bill is eventually approved, the disaster in the Gulf will serve as a lasting and ugly reminder of the price we paid for our addiction to oil. “It was a bargain with the devil,” says Steiner, the marine scientist who helped lead the response to the Valdez disaster. “And now the devil is gloating.”
The Edge of the American West 
53 comments
July 11, 2010 at 12:16 pm
ari
Maybe we should make t-shirts in addition to bumper stickers?
July 11, 2010 at 12:24 pm
NOTaREALmerican
Bring Steven home.
Four More Wars.
War is not the Answer.
(The dumbasses on the left are as dumb as the dumbasses on the right).
July 11, 2010 at 1:10 pm
kevin
Will we someday be saying that it took the Democratic Obama administration to bring elements of the G. W. Bush revolution to fruition?
No. No, we won’t be saying that.
July 11, 2010 at 1:27 pm
Ben Alpers
Serious question, kevin: why, in your opinion, won’t we be saying that?
July 11, 2010 at 3:47 pm
John
“Will we someday be saying that it took the Democratic Obama administration to bring elements of the G. W. Bush revolution to fruition?”
Definitely.
July 11, 2010 at 5:16 pm
kevin
Serious question, kevin: why, in your opinion, won’t we be saying that?
The Bush administration was, at heart, an effort to downplay and dismiss the role of government in American life and to shift the emphasis to private industry. No matter where you look, that was the emphasis — privatizing Social Security, outsourcing military work to Blackwater, solving the health care crisis through “personal savings accounts,” engaging in massive deregulation across the board, etc. etc.
The Obama administration, in contrast, represents an effort to reassert a fundamental meaningful role for government in American life. Obama is setting out a longterm agenda that has the very real potential to reverse the trends that Ronald Reagan instituted and that have held sway over public discourse for three decades now.
Some comparisons:
Bush refused to get the government involved in public infrastructure, and the nation rotted away on his watch — the entire northeast had a massive power blackout in 2003, an interstate bridge collapsed in Minneapolis, water mains exploded on the streets of Manhattan, and his response was … a big yawn. Notably, he refused to fund a long overdue $700 billion project to reassess the levies in New Orleans in 2002 or so. Obama, meanwhile, has secured $100 billion for infrastructure and transportation improvements — the largest public works project since Eisenhower — and another $60 billion in energy projects.
Bush refused to do anything on the health care crisis, other than pushing through an unpaid Medicare Part D provision that only ballooned the deficit and peddling free-market nonsense like the Health Savings Accounts. Obama, however, has expanded SCHIP for 4 million kids and with the Affordable Care Act secured the greatest bit of health care reform ever. In terms of the people affected, it is massively bigger than Medicare and Medicaid combined. (Yes, yes, I would have loved a public option, but this is a massive accomplishment still.)
Bush was a loose cannon on foreign policy, ratcheting up tensions across the board and starting a grossly unwarranted war in Iraq. Obama has dialed that down, secured a nonproliferation treaty on nukes, and secured the New START treaty as well. He’s continuing the war in Afghanistan, yes, but I don’t realistically see much of a choice there. Oh, and while Bush never met a shiny weapons system he didn’t like, Obama canceled the F-22 system. Bush made us reviled in the world; Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Bush turned a blind eye to Wall Street, trusting them — as always — to police themselves. Following up on the repeal of Glass-Steagal in 1999 (which Clinton dutifully signed into law as a Reaganite heir) and the impact of the 9/11 attacks (which caused the FBI to reassign 500 financial fraud agents and never replace them), Bush let Wall Street get away with murder. Obama’s now poised to pass the strongest bit of financial reform since the New Deal.
Bush had an atrocious record on civil rights, aligning himself with the social conservatives across the board. Obama, meanwhile, has not only secured equal pay for women doing equal work — a liberal goal since JFK, for God’s sake — with the Lily Ledbetter Act, but has prepped the ground for a lasting reversal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” as well, and got the Hate Crimes Act, which had been stuck in Congress for years, signed into law.
The Bush administration had an attitude to science that was explicitly hostile, and Obama has reversed that. Specific policies like the ban on stem cell research have been reversed, and while Bush used to have 24-year-old political hacks editing the findings of scientists at NOAA and NASA before they were released and let Cheney and his cronies work out energy policies, Obama put a Nobel Prize winning physicist in charge of the Department of Energy.
Speaking of appointments, Bush put two right-wing conservative activists on the Supreme Court. Obama is about to put his second left-of-center justice on there.
Bush gutted the regulatory system of the government across the board, while Obama has brought it back to full strength. Pick any agency and you’ll see aggressive oversight of private industry — Lisa Jackson at EPA, the FDA securing new regulations of tobacco, etc. Plus, there are tough new regulations on the credit card industry, and the entire student loan system has been mercifully reformed to prevent empty-headed bank subsidies and get money into students’ hands.
Did he get around to cleaning up Bush’s mess at MMS too late? Sure, and that’ll haunt him. But the intent to clean house was there from the beginning — Salazar’s first act in office was to order the review — and I don’t think history will say that a president who came into office with two wars, an economic meltdown and all the rest should’ve first turned his attention to the Minerals Management Service.
In all of this, Obama had not simply reversed the course of American policy from his predecessor (and the three presidents before him, Reagan, Bush and Clinton) but he has reversed the course of American assumptions about the very role of government.
George W. Bush was a dutiful disciple of Reaganism; Barack Obama is its destroyer.
Sorry, the idea that Obama would ever be seen as “Bush’s third term” is just ludicrous.
July 11, 2010 at 5:32 pm
ari
All of that may be true, kevin, but he hasn’t devoted himself to revealing to the world the conspiracy surrounding the birth of Trig Palin. And until he does, well, I’m afraid he’s complicit, now isn’t he?
July 11, 2010 at 5:52 pm
kevin
Touché, Ari. Touché.
July 11, 2010 at 6:25 pm
kid bitzer
thanks, kevin. that took some time to compile, but it’s a good reminder of the real state of affairs.
July 11, 2010 at 10:24 pm
Linkmeister
I don’t disagree with Kevin, but I will point out that the LA Times has just published a story which indicates that scientists are still being overruled by political appointees in various agencies throughout the government.
There are few quotes from scientists by name in the article, but there are quotes from various public watchdog outfits paraphrasing scientists who talk to them.
July 11, 2010 at 11:23 pm
Ben Alpers
Thanks for that, kevin!
The problem is that neither “Obama as third-term Dubya” nor “Obama as destroyer of Reaganism” actually fits the facts. Your description sounds great, but it significantly overstates what Obama has done or tried to do.
Just to address a few points:
Pick any agency and you’ll see aggressive oversight of private industry
As this very post points out (and you sort of affirm a little later in your comment), this is simply not the case.
Speaking of appointments, Bush put two right-wing conservative activists on the Supreme Court. Obama is about to put his second left-of-center justice on there.
Calling Elena Kagan “left of center” seems an incredible stretch. Though it is admittedly difficult to say exactly where she stands, she is very likely to the right of the Justice she’s replacing, John Paul Stevens, a moderate Republican who is, nevertheless, the leftmost Justice on this extraordinarily conservative Court.
Indeed, Kagan’s nomination is a great example of how Obama is neither George W. Bush III nor the Destroyer of Reaganism. She’s certainly not a Justice in the Alito or Roberts mode. But she’ll likely continue the corporate-friendly jurisprudence provided by Breyer (again, this is speculative…she’s something of a cypher). Obama has denounced the “excesses” of both the Warren and Roberts courts. And he’s accordingly appointed Justices who are “centrist” by the very right-wing standards of our current federal courts.
… has prepped the ground for a lasting reversal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” as well….
Well, he promised to repeal DADT. What he’s done is talk about it and given the military time to prepare to mount a defense. Clinton promised to allow gays and lesbians to openly serve in the military. But he gave us DADT. So far, Obama hasn’t changed DADT. When he repeals DADT, I’ll give him credit. Until then, it’s status quo plus talk.
Obama’s now poised to pass the strongest bit of financial reform since the New Deal.
This is again both optimistic and very carefully spun. If this financial reform regulation passes (and with the WV Senate situation, it’s not sure that it will), it won’t even put us back to the status quo ante Clinton (i.e. Glass-Steagall). So while this is the biggest piece of financial reform legislation since the New Deal, it manages to reaffirm a lot of the post-Reagan conservative desiderata.
He’s continuing the war in Afghanistan, yes, but I don’t realistically see much of a choice there.
The realistic alternative is to leave. At least Obama has always been honest about escalating this unnecessary war.
Similarly, the realistic alternative to continuing to operate Gitmo is to close it. Obama told us he’d do that. He hasn’t. And he’s expanded the use of Bagram as a similar grey-area legal holding cell for those who the President finds convenient to detain indefinitely at the his say so.
He’s also expanded Bush’s already outrageous executive authority claims to include the unreviewable assassination of U.S. citizens.
The war crimes of the last administration go unpunished; many of them continue. As during the Bush years, we have a president who says that the U.S. doesn’t torture while, as far as we know, we still do.
Obama’s Iraq policy is not a real break from the policies of the Bush administration’s last half year or so. No, Obama would not have started the Iraq War (and he deserves credit for having voiced his opposition at the time). But his 2010 policy toward that war is largely a continuation of Bush’s 2008 policy toward it. Of course he has the same SecDef.
And Obama may well become the president who finally does to Social Security what Clinton did to welfare.
July 12, 2010 at 12:43 am
mealworm
The answer is obvious, and Obama himself pretty much laid it out explicitly: The legacy of the Obama administration is dialing us back to Reagan. A lot better than Bush’s third term, but still plenty depressing.
July 12, 2010 at 5:03 am
kevin
As this very post points out (and you sort of affirm a little later in your comment), this is simply not the case.
No, MMS is the exception to the regulatory rule. The intent to implement reform has been there from the start and represents a stark difference from what Bush wanted.
Indeed, I’d argue that Obama’s revitalization of the regulatory apparatus is one of his biggest accomplishments and one of the ways in which he most differs from Bush. I usually avoid TNR, but John Judis had an excellent rundown on all the ways in which Obama has strengthened the regulatory agencies and empowered them to go after big business. It’s a night and day difference from Bush.
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/the-quiet-revolution
Calling Elena Kagan “left of center” seems an incredible stretch. Though it is admittedly difficult to say exactly where she stands, she is very likely to the right of the Justice she’s replacing, John Paul Stevens, a moderate Republican who is, nevertheless, the leftmost Justice on this extraordinarily conservative Court.
Oh, come on. Once upon a time, Stevens was “a moderate Republican” when he was put on the bench by Gerald Ford, but he’s not “moderate” in any sense today. By Republican standards these days, he’s practically Chairman Mao.
That raises an important point, in that for the last forty years, liberal justices tend to ripen on the bench. Stephens was not a liberal by any means when he was appointed to the Court, something that countless articles pointed out in comparing him to the diehard liberal he was replacing, William O. Douglas. It’s been a steady march to the left since then. Contrast his stance on the death penalty in Gregg and Furman to where he wound up in Callins v. Collins, or his 180-degree turn on affirmative action between Bakke and Grutter, etc etc. Stephens was appointed a moderate and moved left; same with Souter.
And if both of them wound up as solid liberal votes, Kagan will too. Right now, I don’t think she’s a doctrinaire liberal, but she is clearly left of center. Go read her oral arguments in Citizens United, or read what her old colleagues at HLS have to say about her.
But frankly, you’re missing the larger point here in focusing on her individual ideology as opposed to the larger change she can bring to the Court. A late-comer liberal like Stevens has given us some really beautifully worded opinions in the past decade — noble, wonderful, and effectively toothless because they’ve almost all been dissents. A center-left nominee like Kagan, who has the ability to build consensus (i.e. win over Anthony Kennedy), is much more likely to result in 5-4 decisions that actually go our way for once.
When he repeals DADT, I’ll give him credit. Until then, it’s status quo plus talk.
I know some of my fellow liberals wish that Obama had rushed through an executive order repealing DADT, but that’s short-sighted. Such a move would lead to a just-as-swift conservative reversal once a Republican is elected. (Think of the perennial back-and-forth on the global gag rule on abortion. It flips with every inauguration.)
Obama is laying the groundwork for a legislative appeal, and with Gates on board, lasting change is going to happen, and soon. This is much more than just talk.
So while this is the biggest piece of financial reform legislation since the New Deal, it manages to reaffirm a lot of the post-Reagan conservative desiderata.
Now you’re moving the goalposts, Ben. If you’re going to argue that Obama is Bush’s third term (and thus essentially Reagan’s fifth term), saying that Obama has uprooted much of Reaganism but not every bit of it is weak.
I wish he’d put Glass-Steagall back in place. But the Volcker Rule will be a huge reversal of Bush — and again, that’s the issue here.
The realistic alternative is to leave. At least Obama has always been honest about escalating this unnecessary war.
Well, here we fundamentally disagree. I don’t think a continued presence in Afghanistan is unnecessary because it seems fairly clear to me that if we leave now, the Taliban resurfaces there and, worse, radical elements topple Pakistan. Yes, we could leave. But I think it’s naive to believe the story ends with our departure, and ends well.
And even here, in continuing a “Bush policy” if we can call it that, Obama has strongly shifted gears. Bush abandoned Afghanistan as he got fascinated with the shiny new toy of Iraq, but Obama has committed himself to it. Again, we’re talking about a change from his predecessor and this is it.
Gitmo, you’re right, though he’s been a little hamstrung by the relocation effort and idiots in Congress in both parties. Bagram too. And the assassination thing — no contest. Just repulsive.
The war crimes of the last administration go unpunished; many of them continue.
Do you seriously recommend the prosecution of the previous administration for war crimes? Do you think Obama could turn Bush and Cheney over to the Hague, trussed up in orange jumpsuits, and not have a literal civil war break out here at home?
And Obama may well become the president who finally does to Social Security what Clinton did to welfare.
How so? Clinton campaigned on a promise to “end welfare as we know it” and, sure enough, gave AFDC a finishing blow. Obama has campaigned against Republican calls for privatization (both in 2008 and now in 2010, on the campaign trail for Democrats) and shows no sign of considering anything close to those plans.
Sorry, I just don’t see the reason for all the hand-wringing.
Is Obama everything a liberal would want him to be? No. Because Obama’s not a liberal.
Is Obama’s “Bush’s third term”? No.
There might be continuation of his predecessor’s policies on 5-10% of things here, but then again, virtually every modern president has continued that much — and more — from his predecessor.
Was FDR’s first term in office “Hoover’s second term” because of the similarities between some of the New Deal and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation? Was Nixon’s first term in office “LBJ’s third term” because Nixon established the EPA and OSHA, and proposed the FAP? Was Reagan’s first term in office “Carter’s second term” because he followed up the deregulation efforts Carter had done in trucking and the airlines on a much larger scale?
You can find continuities if you look hard enough for them. It doesn’t mean they’re not grossly overshadowed by the contrasts.
July 12, 2010 at 5:15 am
silbey
Indeed, Kagan’s nomination is a great example of how Obama is neither George W. Bush III
And here you’re conceding Kevin’s point.
July 12, 2010 at 5:32 am
politicalfootball
Look again at eric’s original language:
Though kevin and Ben A. explore this usefully as regards Obama, I disagree with their suggestion that the comparison is inapt.
Obama’s most important officials in the defense and economic hierarchy (Gates and Bernanke) are reappointments from his predecessor. The question isn’t whether Obama is, broadly speaking, continuing key policies of his predecessor, but to what degree.
Nobody claims that Clinton’s Supreme Court nominees were roughly the same as those of Reagan and Bush I. I think eric’s original statement is properly read as a comparison of Obama and Clinton more than as a comparison of Obama and Bush.
Had eric resisted the urge to write a sensational headline, I’d be entirely on board with the original post.
July 12, 2010 at 5:42 am
eric
Fwiw, the phrase “the third Bush term” is from the quoted portion of the article, from a source describing specifically what’s going on in MMS, where I think nobody would argue Salazar has dropped the ball. And Obama’s overall attitude toward offshore drilling, especially the “modern oil rigs don’t leak” comment, does smack a bit of hippie-punching, especially with that condescending opener, “It turns out, by the way”. But no, he’s not WII. On the whole, though, he’d richly deserve the classic Oxford don comment, “could do better.”
July 12, 2010 at 6:12 am
kevin
But no, he’s not WII. On the whole, though, he’d richly deserve the classic Oxford don comment, “could do better.”
Yes and yes.
That said, Obama has still accomplished more of the liberal agenda in eighteen months than Clinton did in eight years.
And while he’s not everything a liberal would want, he’s set forth a clear longterm goal of doing for liberals what Reagan did for conservatives.
And on that comparison, it’s worth noting that at this point in his presidency, it looked like Reagan’s effort to shift the country right was doomed to fail. Unemployment had jumped from 7% to 10% in the wake of Reagan’s first massive tax cut, and the president’s approval rating had plummeted to 35%. Yet he was re-elected handily and set the course for a generation of American politics.
July 12, 2010 at 6:37 am
erubin
This post, along with much of this thread, reads like a filler article for Slate: filled to the brim with useless comparisons and superlatives. Is there any president in the history of this country who we view merely as a continuation of one of his predecessors? Even Truman’s, Ford’s, and George H. W. Bush’s legacies have gradually condensed into their own narratives.
Obama is Obama and let’s leave it at that.
July 12, 2010 at 7:43 am
Vance
let’s leave it at that
What? Presumably you’re not saying we shouldn’t discuss what that means. Are you simply trying to rule out comparisons? Or comparisons that take the rhetorically heightened form of equations?
July 12, 2010 at 8:18 am
lawguy
I suspect that we are on a sligghtly more gentle slope with Obama than we would be with any republican. However, the end result is the same, whether it is a slope or a cliff we are going to end up in the same place.
July 12, 2010 at 8:19 am
erubin
Comparisons are fine. I just find the way that they are phrased to be extremely myopic. For example, much of the media has been pushing the narrative that the BP oil spill is “Obama’s Katrina”. In fifty years, is that what we’ll be calling it? Is Iraq the new Vietnam? Is Obama the new Lincoln? Is Rupert Murdoch the new William Randolph Hearst? Is X the new Y?
Obama has preserved (or failed to overturn) many abhorrent policies of the Bush administration, but that doesn’t make his presidency a continuation of Bush’s. We can and should highlight these similarities, but I see no reason to imply that Obama and Bush are one and the same except to inflame readers and generate controversy (and to that end, I say, “Good job, Eric!).
July 12, 2010 at 8:19 am
lawguy
Nuts that is slightly.
July 12, 2010 at 8:26 am
erubin
Actually, if you don’t mind a double-post, allow me to put it this way, since I think it succinctly makes my point:
Eric posted an excellent article, yet the vast majority of the discussion has been on the title and introductory paragraph.
July 12, 2010 at 8:29 am
Vance
lawguy, I thought you might have been alluding to Aram Saroyan and Jesse Helms.
erubin, point taken — though note that the title and intro paragraph are the only parts of the post that were written by Eric.
July 12, 2010 at 8:50 am
lawguy
Hmmm, perhaps that is just it, as it were Vance.
July 12, 2010 at 8:57 am
Ralph Hitchens
I think Eric posed an interesting question and Kevin offered a reasonable counterpoint. Civilized discourse for and against both. This is what blogs are supposed to do.
FTR I’m with Kevin and like most progressives I’ve had a hard time accepting the fact of what sort of Democrat Obama really is, vice the sort we wished/hoped he would be. Discussions with a longtime friend & Democratic activist here in DC, going back to Obama’s emergence in 2007, always ended with the two of us voicing a single conclusion — this was a man with ice water in his veins. A very careful guy.
July 12, 2010 at 12:11 pm
Ben Alpers
I actually agree with a lot of what kevin has written after my comment.
As I said at the start of my long comment above, I most certainly don’t think that Obama is Bush’s third term, though I also agree with most of the rest of the criticism in the original post.
I was expecially happy to see kevin write:
Is Obama everything a liberal would want him to be? No. Because Obama’s not a liberal.
…since I wasted an hour the other day arguing with someone on another blog who was insisting that Obama was a liberal.
But, in part because Obama is not a liberal, I still disagree strongly with this:
And while he’s not everything a liberal would want, he’s set forth a clear longterm goal of doing for liberals what Reagan did for conservatives.
If Obama is anyone’s third term (and, yes, taken literally, that’s a silly way to frame a comparison), it’s Bill Clinton’s. And–to continue the simplistic comparisons–the task of both Clinton and Obama isn’t to do for liberals what Reagan did for conservatives, but rather to do for liberals what Ike did for conservatives.
July 12, 2010 at 2:23 pm
Walt
I disagree with erubin. I liked the original post, and kevin’s reply. I still think Obama sucks, but kevin does a good job laying out the opposing case.
July 12, 2010 at 9:35 pm
CharleyCarp
Gitmo, you’re right, though he’s been a little hamstrung by the relocation effort and idiots in Congress in both parties. Bagram too.
Plenty of blame for Congress, sure, but IMO the real problem is in DOD, and in the intelligence agencies. 20 years ago, it was clear that for the last 15 years, the hippies had been right, and the entire military-intelligence establishment wrong about, well, everything. No price was paid, nor is any being paid now by people who misunderstand the nature of the enemy and of the war.
Blame for that, though, goes right to the White House.
July 13, 2010 at 10:18 am
student
someone please explain to me why Obama isn’t a liberal (and what do you mean by liberal?)
July 13, 2010 at 9:07 pm
AngryAtheist
He is a democrat, a party that is moderate to moderate right. The republicans are closer to the extreme right. Obama stays away from anything on the far left that contains socialist ideals. The health care debate saw him shun the public option, he did not even have one public option supporter at the summit (which was headlined to have all people and views present). He will only use borderline socialist principals and policies for big business not the people. That is more of a capitalist right wing type philosophy than a liberal one. People are stuck believing that dem.’s are left, and rep.’s are right. Both push a pro-capitalist, war supporting empire agenda that does not resemble liberal ideology what so ever. Both have abandoned civil liberties. If Obama was a socialist he would have maintained government involvement in BP, but again he left it open for big business and the invisible hand to solve. Like the brain deads who wait for god to fix it all, the free marketers wait for an imaginary hand.
July 14, 2010 at 7:25 am
chris
Both push a pro-capitalist, war supporting empire agenda that does not resemble liberal ideology what so ever.
Do the parties push that agenda, or do they run to catch up to the electorate who is pushing that agenda?
What you call true liberalism doesn’t have a party because it doesn’t have enough of a constituency to support one. With a European-style political system that kind of agenda might poll at 20% on a good day. In this country that makes you part of a political party, not the whole thing, and means that you have to constantly fight intraparty battles to get even one party to take your ideas seriously.
July 14, 2010 at 8:47 am
lawguy
Coming by a couple of days late for some more detail, but I have a couple of thoughts on Kevin’s arguments.
One repeal of DADT by executive order would have allowed gay service members to come out of the closet. It would help put pressure on congress. Further, unlike the anti-abortion stuff, once these people are out of the closet, it is a lot harder to reinstate DADT and the kick them out of the service.
Two arguing that the Health Care thing, is the bestest Health Care Reform ever, ignores that it does involve institutionalizing private insruance companies as the middle men, a specifically promising pharmasutical companies that they will continue to get all the money they ask for.
Not only that, but the way HCR the thing was handled, was as anti-democratic as the administration could manage. They made what they had wanted to be secret deals with the industries and completely cut out any real patient advocacy groups from the process.
Is Obama Bush’s third term? Interesting question, he is not as crazy as Bush, but in the end what is he doing that is all that much different than what Bush was trying to accomplish? I mean really? A half assed stimulus package? It will help some people for a short time.
It is easy to show superficial differences, but on the whole he is mostly following in Bush’s footsteps, I think.
July 14, 2010 at 8:50 am
lawguy
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention Obama’s Social Security task force. All members appointed by him. The vast majority of whom want to cut SS before they got to the first secret (that word again) meeting.
Is there anyone who doesn’t see where this is going?
July 14, 2010 at 12:41 pm
silbey
Two arguing that the Health Care thing, is the bestest Health Care Reform ever, ignores that it does involve institutionalizing private insruance companies as the middle men, a specifically promising pharmasutical companies that they will continue to get all the money they ask for.
I don’t think anyone here is arguing that HCR is the “bestest ever”; but there’s a long distance between that and what GW Bush would have come up with, and in that distance dwells Obama.
July 14, 2010 at 1:04 pm
kevin
Lawguy,
I characterized it was the greatest bit of health care reform ever achieved. Not the “bestest ever” as imagined on the internet.
If there’s a piece of health care reform legislation out there that addresses the issues you raise and was actually passed into law, please do me a favor and point it out.
July 14, 2010 at 4:12 pm
lawguy
Yeah, I know I let my sarcasm get the better of me and realized it almost as soon as I posted it. On the other hand, my real points are I think still valid. What the end result was was a massive wealth transfer from the middle class (or government) to various private industries operating in the health care area. There may be more people covered although at what cost?
I am not arguing that there is something else out there now that is better. I am arguing that Obama made sure that there wouldn’t be.
I think that Medicaire was the greatest bit of health care reform ever achieved (in the USA, I assume you meant to add on).
Also, too, in addition, I see he has appointed someone especially to cut the deficit. And no one has responded to the point about the Social Security commission.
July 14, 2010 at 9:02 pm
Urk
He’s a centrist Democrat, careful and temperamentally risk-averse. He’s going to respond as such to an electorate that, if you recall, elected George W. Bush twice, including a decently large minority who are completely batshit insane with teh crazy for him. If he weren’t so careful and risk-averse he might be more effective in this political environment, or maybe that’s going to end up being more effective than it seems right now. Or maybe he really doesn’t care about some of these things and this is the intended outward limit of what was premised as “change.” I hope the last one isn’t true, but who knows? I don’t. I do know that calling his first term the third Bush term suggests a short memory regarding those first two terms.
There are continuities, and troubling ones. But I’d guess that many of those continuities related to security and secrecy and to the wars are less extensions of bush than they are extensions of a (paranoid and often self-serving) response to 9-11-2001, etc. across party lines.
July 15, 2010 at 5:42 am
student
yes, a centrist Democrat, essentially a moderate liberal. Now I consider myself to the left of Obama but he is right in the 20th century tradition of Democratic Party liberalism in that that he sees government as a means to ameliorate social problems (e.g. gap in health insurance coverage, unemployment), while generally trying to encourage responsible market behavior and strengthen regulation of business generally to mitigate market instabilities, improve working conditions, etc. This doesn’t mean that he hasn’t had his failures (e.g., earlier sanguine attitude about offshore drilling, underestimate of unemployment in early 2009), but what liberal president hasn’t?
July 15, 2010 at 8:43 am
lawguy
Unless words have ceased to have a meaning Obama is not a liberal (moderate or otherwise).
Although, I guess the argument is, what is the argument. Is there any disagreement about what he has done? I guess the argument is about what he has tried to do. And I also guess that if anyone believes that he has attempted to accomplish any significant liberal (or progressive, if you will) goals. I don’t know delusional is the word that comes to my mind.
July 15, 2010 at 11:39 am
UserGoogol
AngryAtheist: What the hell? Liberalism has always been a pro-capitalist exercise in one form or another, although not laissez-faire. The New Dealers were rather explicit in trying to save capitalism from itself, and their heirs have always endorsed programs which left plenty of room for business to do its thing. Hell, one of the first major acts of the New Deal was to let businesses form (regulated) cartels.
I really think that the word liberalism has lost most of its meaning. You start out with its meaning in a broad philosophical sense as a school of thought which treats freedom and equality as paramount. But that’s very vague and stretches from right libertarianism to more left-wing egalitarian variants. And then in the 1930s, the New Deal Democrats latched onto the term and managed to largely monopolize the term in American discourse because of their political success. (Even though FDR was quite flawed on civil rights.) But eventually as America grew more economically right wing, the word lost much of its cachet and started to be used as a derogatory term, and that further distorted its meaning. So people have all sorts of contradictory ideas as to how left something has to be in order to be “liberal” and all sorts of contradictory ideas as to what exact issues define liberalism.
July 15, 2010 at 11:56 am
Ben Alpers
He’s going to respond as such to an electorate that, if you recall, elected George W. Bush twice. . .
In the interest of accuracy it should be noted that a plurality of the voting public only supported George W. Bush once, and there’s a very good argument to be made that voters only elected him once, too.
My claim that Obama is not a liberal is based on comparing him to the legacy of modern American liberalism as represented by presidents like FDR and LBJ. Much as I dislike certain aspects of Obama’s foreign policy (e.g. escalating the war on Afghanistan), I don’t think they make him non-liberal. The Vietnam War was, in my view, a quintessentially liberal war.
It’s in the area of domestic policy that I think Obama is clearly a “Third Way” (between liberalism and conservatism) centrist rather than a liberal. Like Bill Clinton, Obama defines himself against both conservatism and the legacy of 20C liberalism. We see this, for example, in his discussions of the Supreme Court, in which he equates the excesses of the Roberts court to the purported excesses of the Warren court and proposes to forge a kind of middle way in between them.
Obama is much more enamored of “market-based” policies like cap and trade than traditional liberals would be. And he puts much less of a priority on the desires of organized labor (witness the quiet death of EFCA). He’s also more fiscally conservative than post-FDR liberals tended to be.
Finally, Obama, to the best of my knowledge, does not call himself a liberal.
July 15, 2010 at 4:05 pm
kevin
We see this, for example, in his discussions of the Supreme Court, in which he equates the excesses of the Roberts court to the purported excesses of the Warren court and proposes to forge a kind of middle way in between them.
I missed this statement. Do you have a handy link?
July 15, 2010 at 10:46 pm
Ben Alpers
I missed this statement. Do you have a handy link?
I linked to an article from the NYT about this above. Here’s the link again.
July 16, 2010 at 3:52 am
kevin
Thanks, Ben.
I hadn’t seen that (and apologies for making you post it twice). I’ve liked his efforts to point out how activist the conservatives have been on the bench, but yeah, I don’t care for the gratuitous swipe at the Warren Court. Seems like false equivalency.
July 16, 2010 at 5:26 am
chris
Is there any disagreement about what he has done?
What he has done is in the public record. The disagreement is mainly about what he could have done but might have chosen not to, or what could have happened in his absence that he might have prevented (for example, “I am not arguing that there is something else out there now that is better [than the HCR that actually passed]. I am arguing that Obama made sure that there wouldn’t be.”)
The fact of slight movement to the left on some issues and stasis on others is clear, it’s the counterfactuals that determine how that outcome is interpreted. I prefer slight movement to the left to any amount of movement to the right, which has been the dominant trend for several decades, so I give Obama considerable credit for swimming upstream.
The idea that the country and the government would be surging to the left if Obama weren’t holding them back from doing so is so ridiculous I can hardly find words to describe it. But clearly in some people’s opinion that is exactly what could be happening and they judge Obama quite harshly accordingly.
July 16, 2010 at 8:38 am
student
Mr. Alpers, it doesn’t matter what Obama calls himself; the proof is in the pudding. As I suggested before, that he is trying to use the powers of the federal government to restrain market excesses, strengthen business regulation, alleviate unemployment etc. puts him square in the modern U.S. liberal tradition. And judging Obama by the standard of FDR and LBJ is somewhat ahistorical–for example, as constrained as FDR was politically, he had far more leeway in getting Congress to pass spending bills than Obama has. And LBJ never faced the vociferous Republican opposition that Obama now faces.
July 16, 2010 at 11:26 am
Ben Alpers
The idea that the country and the government would be surging to the left if Obama weren’t holding them back from doing so is so ridiculous I can hardly find words to describe it. But clearly in some people’s opinion that is exactly what could be happening and they judge Obama quite harshly accordingly.
Well I certainly am not claiming that. However, the argument that Obama is not a liberal in no way entails the claim that the country really wants a liberal (let alone left) president at this point. About a quarter of the American public call themselves liberals, so it’s not very surprising that we don’t have a liberal president (which is not to say that we absolutely couldn’t have one…only a little more than a third of the country calls themselves “conservative,” yet we’ve certainly had conservative presidents in recent years).
Mr. Alpers, it doesn’t matter what Obama calls himself
I think it absolutely does matter what Obama calls himself. The only reason we use the word “liberal” to mean what we do in this country is that New Dealers insisted on using the word, much to the annoyance of people like Herbert Hoover, Friedrich Hayek, and (a little later) Milton Friedman, all of whom arguably had better claims to the traditional use of the word. I think one needs a pretty strong reason not to take seriously a politician’s self-description.
As I suggested before, that he is trying to use the powers of the federal government to restrain market excesses, strengthen business regulation, alleviate unemployment etc. puts him square in the modern U.S. liberal tradition
But his level of concern for the desires of Wall Street and his devotion to fiscal conservatism is rather outside the modern U.S. liberal tradition.
What I find frustrating about this conversation is that Obama’s combination of moderate support for some government regulation combined with a strong belief in the efficacy of market-based solutions and fiscal conservatism is nothing new. It’s exactly the “Third Way” between liberalism and conservatism that moderate Democrats in the DLC pioneered in the 1980s and that Bill Clinton built his presidency on in the 1990s. Indeed, this kind of centrism goes back in many ways to the Carter presidency, which itself departed (to the right) from the tradition of US liberalism and thus invited the 1980 Kennedy candidacy.
The only way to make Obama a liberal is to rigidly divide all mainstream American politicians into two categories–liberal and conservative–and then, correctly, argue that Obama is not a conservative. But everyone is not a liberal or a conservative.
And judging Obama by the standard of FDR and LBJ is somewhat ahistorical
If I were judging them by their accomplishments, you’d have an excellent point. Obama is facing a more difficult set of legislative circumstances that FDR (at least from 1933-37) and LBJ (at least from 1963-66). But I’m judging Obama by his policy goals and pronouncements.
July 16, 2010 at 11:32 am
lawguy
@student, I would suggest he is trying to do none of those things. If he was his stimulus would have been a lot larger, his financial regulation bill would have been stronger and the HCR (sic) would not have started out with closed room deals with the insurance and pharmacutical industries.
July 16, 2010 at 1:19 pm
student
Politics is the art of the possible.
July 16, 2010 at 1:49 pm
eric
Nobody disagrees with your aphorism, student. The question is, to what extent has the Obama administration committed unforced errors. The MMS handling was one. The inadequate stimulus was another.
July 16, 2010 at 8:00 pm
politicalfootball
The question is, to what extent has the Obama administration committed unforced errors.
Or the question is: To what degree are these not errors and are, in fact, expressions of Obama’s intent.
July 17, 2010 at 4:00 am
Walt
Politics may be the part of the possible, but the job of leaders is to lead. The country is much further right than it was in 1979. This is not the result of a natural inexorable process, but because Ronald Reagan was a leader, who changed the public conception of government. Democrats are allergic to the notion of leadership, and are endlessly surprised by the process by which the public goes further right.