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Few would disagree that the nation’s mood during the first term of the US’s first African American president — who generated tremendous enthusiasm under the appealing banner of “hope and change” — has been notably pessimistic. Polls show that roughly three quarters believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. Most economic indicators are bleak. The unemployment rate seems stuck at about 9 percent, though it dropped to 8.6 percent in November 2011.
Barack Obama and most other Americans of course knew that the country was not in good shape when his administration began in January 2009 (which explains why he won the election). Few, however, realized then how serious the economic crisis was — and how difficult it would be to lift the economy out of such a deep hole. Obama assembled an economic team that came up with a set of prescriptions, including a stimulus package just under one trillion dollars, stress tests for banks, and rescue of the automobile industry. The president also made passing healthcare reform his highest legislative priority.
Since the economic problems have proved to be so stubborn, and so resistant to the recipes devised and applied in the last three years, it is hardly surprising that Obama and has team have come under enormous criticism. The critique from the left, expressed in a recent book by Ron Suskind (The Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President), argues that Obama mistakenly brought on the same economic team — including National Economic Council Director Larry Summers and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner — who had been associated with the wrong-headed policies and had been too cozy with Wall Street (such a sentiment eventually gave rise to the “occupy” movement in the country). These officials were not about to break with policies that they had helped put in place, and that, the critics maintain, had been responsible for the crisis to begin with.
The critique from the other side of the political spectrum, reflected in the Republican opposition, was that Obama’s measures revealed his true socialist leanings, and his penchant for big government programs and huge spending. That issue explains why Obama got what he acknowledged was a “shellacking” in the mid-term 2010 Congressional elections, when the Republicans regained control of the House of Representatives.
It will be debated for many years what Obama should or could have done differently, but the fact is that he was operating within significant political constraints that did not allow much room for maneuver. He might have tried for an even larger stimulus — as frequently urged by economists such as New York Times columnist Paul Krugman — but that would have great difficulty making it through Congress. He might have tried to be tougher with the banks — and indeed, he could have pushed harder — but that too would have had political costs for a president who pledged to work with Republicans and believed in the virtues of bipartisan consensus. The view that Obama might have spent his political capital on creating jobs rather than health care reform — and might have been less passive, presenting his own legislative proposal to Congress instead of leaving it to Congress to work out the details of the measures — has considerable merit.
It is curious that such an exceptionally impressive communicator has not done a very good job in communicating his own administration’s accomplishments. Perhaps he should have started with job creation before healthcare reform, but the latter was a historic achievement by any measure and will make a important difference in the lives of millions of Americans. Although it is admittedly difficult to gain much political advantage by emphasizing how much worse things might have been if it weren’t for some policies, Obama could be more effective in showing how his approach succeeded in averting an economic collapse in the US. Obama’s soaring rhetoric in the 2008 campaign may be partly to blame for the problem — his performance on the economy is measured against the high expectations he raised.
If Obama’s performance in managing the economy has been disappointing, his performance in foreign policy has been widely applauded. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and, until recently, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, have been the real stars of the administration during the first term. They were seen as hard-headed and pragmatic, with diplomatic acumen.They also worked well together, which is not common in US administrations. In political terms, the killing of Osama Bin Laden was of course a great triumph for the Obama administration, as were other gains against Al Qaeda. Relentless drone strikes in Pakistan make it hard to characterize Obama as a dove in foreign policy. Obama’s handling of the Libya situation has also been generally praised. The political advantage the Republican Party tended to enjoy on national security matters over the past four decades has been effectively neutralized by Obama’s record.
But foreign policy probably won’t be decisive in the 2012 presidential elections. The economy will be the overriding issue. The challenge for Obama, as well as for the eventual Republican candidate, will be to convince the electorate that they have the best program to improve the employment outlook in the short term, and at the same time to address the country’s unsustainable deficit and debt (now approaching 15 trillion dollars). So far, the political system, reflecting a polarized electorate and a poisonous, distrustful climate, has been unable to deal sensibly with these challenges. The failure of the so-called “super-committee” of Republican and Democratic legislators — set up to reach a compromise to reduce the deficit and debt — was predictable. Now the debate about the role and scope of government — and how to deal with the country’s profound problems — will be settled through an election.
If Obama has had bad luck in inheriting such daunting economic problems, he has been a lot luckier in his political opponents.(In Obama’s run for the US Senate from Illinois in 2004 he ran against Alan Keyes, an African American Republican, with a flamboyant rhetorical style but was not taken seriously as a contender; Obama got 70% of the vote.) This year’s Republican field of candidates is not exactly known for its high quality. The Republican Party may sense Obama’s vulnerability in 2012, and they may be eager to retake the White House, but they need to find a viable nominee first.
The odds now seem that Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts who has a ceiling of roughly 25 percent support and evokes little excitement in the Republican base, will eventually be Obama’s rival in 2012, though the support levels for the various non- Romney candidates — Donald Trump, Michelle Bachman, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, and, finally, and with considerable strength, Newt Gingrich — have fluctuated wildly. The thinking of the Republican establishment (to the extent one still exists) is that once Romney wins the nomination (he is better candidate than he was four years ago, but that was a low standard), the excitement will come, not because of his personality or convictions (which are not easy to pinpoint), but because he has a some chance to defeat Obama.
Of course, the Obama campaign machine — already in high gear and operating out of Chicago, not Washington, presumably to be more in tune with the national mood — is hoping to produce excitement in the electorate not because of the president’s success in reducing unemployment or the debt, but because of the alternative represented by the Republican Party and its candidate. The strategy is to make the election not a referendum on the Obama administration but a real choice. It would not be surprising for the campaign to replay videos of the many Republican debates, which are filled with gaffes that are bound to trouble more moderate and independent voters in a general election.
Obama is also likely to run against the Congress, which has proven to be dysfunctional and whose approval level is nearly in single digits. That may be a smart political strategy and would take advantage of his incumbency and ready access to the bully pulpit. Whether the strategy will work may depend more on whether the unemployment rate in October 2012 is heading up or down. And even if it succeeds, and Obama gets reelected, the country’s fundamental problems will remain — and Washington’s toxic political environment is unlikely to get any better.
