Kevin Drum gets it exactly right.
Here’s the good news: this record of progressive accomplishment officially makes Obama the most successful domestic Democratic president of the last 40 years. And here’s the bad news: this shoddy collection of centrist, watered down, corporatist sellout legislation was all it took to make Obama the most successful domestic Democratic president of the last 40 years. Take your pick.
Advertisement
18 comments
July 16, 2010 at 4:34 am
kevin
Well, I tend to see some of the accomplishments in a slightly better light, but yeah, that’s pretty much right on both points.
July 16, 2010 at 5:02 am
lawguy
Bills have been passed, but I would argue that they are mostly smoke and mirrors. Or as Ms. Stein once said about something else: “There is no there there.”
July 16, 2010 at 5:19 am
chris
Well, there have only *been* two Democrats in the last 40 years, and Clinton would probably have been a Rockefeller Republican if they had still existed by then.
I think Carter was actually doing fairly decent until he got mugged by an oil shock, but I haven’t studied his record in detail.
July 16, 2010 at 5:59 am
Malaclypse
Well, there have only *been* two Democrats in the last 40 years
Carter + Clinton + Obama = three.
Carter was also mugged by inflation, which he had no control over, plus whoever had the bad luck to be president when Iran imploded was gonna be known as History’s Greatest Monster. Either way, Carter was the conservative governor of a conservative state, and did not actually enact any vaguely liberal agenda (beyond putting solar panels on the White House, which Reagan promptly took down).
July 16, 2010 at 8:10 am
kyllaros
@lawguy: Are you serious? The financial reform bill has a strong consumer protection agency, it gives the federal government resolution authority over failing financial firms, it regulates derivatives, and institutes a stronger Volcker rule than Volcker himself wanted. All of that is in addition to stronger capital requirements for large institutions and a host of new regulations on the entire sector. It’s the huge step towards ending the march of deregulation.
That’s some pretty amazing smoke and mirrors.
July 16, 2010 at 9:47 am
chris
@Malaclypse: Yeah, I meant two other Democrats.
As for inflation, was it really inflation? An oil shock raises the *real* cost of lots of things. This causes their nominal prices to also rise, and rising nominal prices are usually a sign of inflation. Usually.
Maybe that’s the answer to the stagflation mystery: it was really a widespread rise in real costs mistaken for inflation, combined with an ordinary recession. In which case the Phillips Curve isn’t broken after all, we just need to define inflation more carefully.
July 16, 2010 at 10:04 am
kevin
Or as Ms. Stein once said about something else: “There is no there there.”
That’s an apt quote, I think, but not for the reasons you suggest.
Stein’s quote came from when she returned to the USA on a lecture tour in the 1930s, and tried to find her childhood home back in Oakland. She’d wanted to “return there,” but in the end she decided “there is no ‘there’ there” anymore.
In a similar sense, the political landscape of our collective childhood has been just as thoroughly transformed as the literal landscape of Stein’s childhood Oakland. You can go looking for a dimly-remembered land of progressive possibilities from your younger days, but like Stein, you won’t find them there anymore. The Reaganite bulldozers demolished those thirty years ago, and Barack Obama didn’t have a thing to do with it.
July 16, 2010 at 10:05 am
lawguy
@kyllaraos yeah, I can still say that.
July 16, 2010 at 11:25 am
chris
@kevin: whereas to me, that landscape has never existed as anything other than a mythical golden age, and therefore I judge Obama compared to other mortal men after the Fall, and conclude that he’s doing pretty well by those standards. I never really expected him to resurrect the Great Society of legend, because even if that’s possible at all it’s a job too big for one person.
Also, I think “corporate sellout” is somewhat misleading. Passing legislation requires agreement among a lot of people and a lot of those people are heavily influenced by corporations. Even someone whose own views aren’t influenced by corporations (if such a person exists and can win office) would still be compelled to negotiate with corporate tools in order to get anything done. If that’s “selling out”, then you’re letting a desire for purity interfere with the practical requirements of effective action — probably *the* classic mistake of amateurs thinking about politics.
July 16, 2010 at 11:42 am
Ben Alpers
The sad thing is that while a case can be made that Obama has passed the most progressive domestic agenda of any Democratic president in the last 40 years, it’s harder to make the case that he has passed the most progressive domestic agenda of any president in the last 40 years.
In certain ways, Garry Wills’s calling Tricky Dick the “Last Liberal” in Nixon Agonistes (1970) is looking more prescient with each passing year.
July 16, 2010 at 11:46 am
kevin
Definitely, Ben.
Compare the 1972 Republican platform with the 2000 Democratic one, and the contrasts are striking. What was the “conservative” option in the 1972 election is much more liberal than what passed for the “liberal” option in 2000.
July 16, 2010 at 12:00 pm
Malaclypse
What Kevin and Ben said. Whenever someone calls Obama a socialist, I ask them to name 5 policies on which he is to the left of Nixon. Nobody ever has.
They still all remain convinced that he just must be a socialist, though…
July 16, 2010 at 12:18 pm
chris
Compare the 1972 Republican platform with the 2000 Democratic one, and the contrasts are striking. What was the “conservative” option in the 1972 election is much more liberal than what passed for the “liberal” option in 2000.
…As long as you’re a white male.
Remember the Southern Strategy? Nixon ran on it.
July 16, 2010 at 12:28 pm
Ben Alpers
…As long as you’re a white male.
Remember the Southern Strategy? Nixon ran on it.
He also introduced federal affirmative action (in part to create a wedge between two key Democratic constituencies) and actively promoted the ERA (ditto).
July 16, 2010 at 4:50 pm
Malaclypse
…As long as you’re a white male.
Remember the Southern Strategy? Nixon ran on it.
Yes he did. Nixon was an awful, awful person, no doubt. And in terms of actual policies enacted, with the arguable exception of GLBT issues, Nixon was consistently to Obama’s left.
Now you can argue that Nixon was left on domestic issues so that Congress would leave him alone to wage land wars in Asia, and that’s a fair criticism. But the end result was still some of the last good legislation this country has seen. Obamacare is still crappier than Nixoncare would have been (at least, until Reagan would have destroyed it).
July 16, 2010 at 5:11 pm
silbey
If a liberal can’t get elected in the woods, does anyone hear it?
July 17, 2010 at 12:41 pm
jroth95
Now you can argue that Nixon was left on domestic issues so that Congress would leave him alone to wage land wars in Asia, and that’s a fair criticism.
Whereas Obama wages land wars in Asia in hopes that Congress will leave him alone to get something vaguely progressive passed domestically.
This country is so fucked.
OTOH, I’ve kind of enjoyed getting the mailers from my banks (I have accounts at 2) “warning” me to opt-in to their oh-so-helpful Overdraft Coverage. Thanks, but no thanks, guys.
July 17, 2010 at 1:45 pm
mrearl
I’m having a hard time with this land war in Asia stuff. I mean, how you gonna fight a naval war in Afghanistan?
Anyway, never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.