Greg Mankiw points to the views of various Harvard faculty.
I think that assessing his presidency is a very difficult task.
1. We do not know how the next 8 years will make the Obama Presidency look. If the next President is embarrassingly bad (and Mr. Trump, Mrs. Clinton and even the unlikely Mr. Johnson seem quite capable of that), then he will look better than he does today. On the other hand, if there is a “chickens coming home to roost” event (such as a government debt crisis), he will look worse than he does today.
2. Compared to what? Ken Rogoff writes,
Monday-morning quarterbacks seem to forget just how close we came to a second Great Depression.
I think that the notion that the stimulus saved us from another Great Depression is baloney sandwich on two levels. First, I do not think we were at risk of another Great Depression. Second, I do not think that the stimulus had any net positive effect on employment. But if you agree with Ken, then you have to give President Obama a lot of credit.
Or, consider Obamacare. Compared to what? Compared to some optimal health care reform? Bound to look bad, obviously. But compared to leaving the existing system in place? You have to admit that Obamacare increased the number of households with health insurance. On the other hand, given that health insurance and health outcomes are not closely linked, is that such an achievement?
So the question comes down to, spending a lot of money to get more people health insurance–compared to what? From a health outcomes perspective, the money might have been better spent trying to understand and solve the drug abuse problem. But if the money had not been spent on implementing Obamacare, it might have been spent (either by the private sector or by government) on even less worthy items.
With those caveats, my own views on the Obama Presidency are largely negative (Charles Krauthammer, not surprisingly, also has a negative assessment). I do not believe that Obamacare or the stimulus or Dodd-Frank were good policies. I think that Syria is the most calamitous American foreign policy since Vietnam (among other things, the refugee crisis has caused great stress in Europe). Perhaps President Obama’s defenders want to consider Syria to be a consequence of the invasion of Iraq and to blame President Bush. That may be the right perspective, but if so it reinforces the hazards of trying to assess a Presidency until all of the consequences have played out.
An interesting issue is the relationship of Obama to polarization. His defenders see him as a victim of polarization. His critics see him as a contributor. People are polarized on the subject, as it were.
I see him as a contributor to polarization. I do not think he ever stepped out of his sociology-faculty-lounge mindset, in which conservativism is a pathology. In fact, once he leaves office, I expect him to voice this view quite forcefully.
Instead of seeking genuine compromise with Republican legislators, he offered the attitude that “If you were decent and rational, you would do things my way.” He often had the backing of mainstream media in his confrontations with Republicans in Congress, so that the Republicans, rather than he, were always labeled as obstructionist and usually had to back down. I realize, of course, that from the left’s perspective, Republicans were not decent and rational, and, if anything, President Obama did not get his way often enough.
My default assumption is that presidents are underrated while they’re in office due to the veracity of the 24 hour media cycle. This is irrespective of party, although I think the effect might be more pronounced for Republicans due to mainstream media bias.
As for Obama, I think his presidency was mostly a grab-bag of policies that were pragmatically liberal, so I have a hard time developing a good intuition about what their long run consequences will be since they were all intended to massage the status quo rather than re-orient it.
Then WTF would you have recommended in Syria? It seems really odd that somebody that claims to dislike interventions, not to understand that Civil War can spin out of control. It is a Civil War, it is the up to the people in Syria to solve it not President Obama. Syria would have ended like Iraq in which it takes US troops 6 months to conquer the state and 6 more years of troop involvement with increasing violence. And who know how long the Russians are there? They might have troops there another 6 years and blow $1T on that nation as well. I figure Putin is wasting all kinds of resources and digging his own grave in Ukraine, Crimea and Syria.
If you are going to be libertarian, than really be one. Syria was a giant mission creep and I say thank goodness Obama avoid that money pit. (I wish he could stay for a third term.)
No we don’t know how Obama’s Presidency will viewed in history as we need another 8 years to understand the full reality:
1) If Iran does not get nuclear weapons.
2) We don’t know how Saudia & Yemen ends up.
3) We don’t know how the US economy will grow the next 2 – 4 years. It might have decent growth without a recession.
4) No I don’t think Obama saved us from the Great Recession but the nation is hell better off today than 2008.
I still wish libertarians would look at the Iran nuclear deal as a positive because it is limiting the ability of Saudia Arabia from dominating the oil markets.
“I still wish libertarians would look at the Iran nuclear deal as a positive because it is limiting the ability of Saudia Arabia from dominating the oil markets.”
George P. Mitchell had more to do with that than the Iran deal ever will
Nobody is saying it has nothing to with George Alexander….The primary reason for the fall of oil is US fracking and technology. Ten times “Yes.” But there could be other reasons for oil around $50/barrel, instead of $60/barrel, because every single time Saudia Arabia tries to cut back production, Iran can fill in and decrease the Saudia’s net revenue. The Iran deal sounds like a minor Supply Side argument in the oil markets.
While I tend to agree that Syria is a pit, Obama made two decisions that look bad in hindsight. First, he withdrew US forces from Iraq (contradicting what worked after WWII in Europe, Japan, and Korea), which helped enable the rise of ISIS, and second, he declared US interests and policy in the Syrian civil war but never put anything behind that but cheap words. Your policy of “it’s not our $&@! problem” would have been a huge improvement.
Your point about this being a war Putin can’t afford is interesting but so far it’s looking very much the opposite. Assad looks like he will hang on, and Russia has deeply ingratiated itself with him and Iran, and even NATO member Turkey seems to be aligning itself towards him. It’s possible this was a hand Putin could draw but the West couldn’t due to Russia’s pre-existing alliances and ease with odious characters, but that doesn’t diminish the value to him of it. It may yet come to tears but so far all of his adventures seem to have been well-calculated.
I totally agree that Obama should have NOT signaled any national interest in Syria and any assistance is giving the rebels hope that will not come. (Didn’t the Civil War start before we left Iraq?)
And yes, maybe the Russians might crack the Syrian code and protect Assad final victory. However:
1) They have been there over a year and still have not won. Not a good sign and I believe Putin announced troop removals six months. Putin has sucked into Mission Creep here and who knows when the troop removals are.
2) I know the decision is not popular in Russia so we don’t know if it will hurt Putin or Russia. Russia tends not to hold open polling.
In your last paragraph I think you get to the point. Calling for people to be civil, when they believe the other side is “objectively, factually wrong” is a waste of time. Why would someone view favorably someone they believe is dead wrong, especially on “important issue XYZ that is affecting so many people.”
You’ve simply got to win debates. There is no other way. Democrats focus mercilessly on winning. And lo and behold, they tend to win.
Obama set the tone of his presidency when he met with Republicans in January 2009 to discuss the proposed stimulus: “I won,” he said. Thereby, in two small words, discarding any idea of compromise with the party representing slightly under 50% of the population.
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2009/01/23/obama-to-gop-i-won/
The most blatant example of that is the manner in which the president and the Democratic majorities ramrodded through passage of PPACA, excluding Republicans from bill preparation, disallowing votes on Republican amendments, and using parliamentary chicanery to achieve passage.
Has anyone reading this blog ever felt that this president of the “United” States has actually believed or conducted himself as representing ALL the people? To the contrary, he has consistently refused to accommodate in any way, to any degree (call it compromise with if you will), the divergent beliefs and preferences of the “obstructive” ~50% of the country (that insists on “…clinging to its guns and Bibles.”)
And yet what did Republicans learn from all this?
Romney got as many white votes as Reagan and lost. The Republican response is to import more D voters and recycle Reagan era ideas that are totally exhausted.
Republicans need to realize that the other side is a collection of anti-American freaks that have one goal and one goal only, the subjugation and domination of Core America. They pursue this goal ruthlessly, and their hatred for Core America is of a particularly virulent variety. All of their policies are just veiled excuses to reduce Core America to facilitate their own interests.
Republicans never got his message, partly because a lot of the GOPe hates Core America too. They are an extremely decadent and immoral group of Washington Generals. And their pathetic ideological justifications for their weakness are easy to see through.
Core America though is starting to realize that the Dems have got it right. In any society in which people are too dissimilar, life is interest group politics. These freaks represent an irreconcilable group of interests to their own. They are learning from their enemy that this is a war that ends in unconditional surrender by one side or the other. And they are fighting back for their right to exist.
Ergo: Trump
Arnold:
“You have to admit that Obamacare increased the number of households with health insurance.”
Do we?
The number of households with **healthcare** contracts may have increased.
BUT, did *insurance* (the transfer of risk) increase?
OR
With the increase in deductibles (the point at which insurance and transfer takes place) is there LESS insurance.
With the changes in MANDATORY benefits structures have the desired transfers (specific risk) been reduced to provide other benefits?
Is it not likely that more people who HAD risk transfers now have incurred reductions in actual insurance greater than the amount of true risk transfers now held by others who had none before?
Given the inescapable increases in HEALTHCARE costs (separated from risk costs) it does not seem there has been any net increase in healthcare “coverage.”
His approval ratings are average with respect to post war presidents. Average isn’t bad. Not as much as hoped I am sure, but many do much worse. The stimulus did have an effect on employment not getting worse, largely at the state and local government level, but no, it didn’t do much to increase it. And his employment record is better than most given he has decreased federal employment over his term rather than increased it. Legislative accomplishments are still accomplishments given the difficulty. While insurance and health are only loosely connected, they are much better connected on public spending since it is on such basic needed care. (And yes, with 70% of spending above average, it is real coverage, though mostly it is coverage that is saving the government money who would be stuck with the bill in any event.) Syria was largely a civil war and staying out was the best option. Policeman of the world and nation builders are always misguided, and light touch foreign policy about the best accomplishment, a tremendous improvement over Iraq. If Republicans thought he should side with them over his own party and more than he did (and yes, he often did, from sequestration to tax cuts) they are just loons. Are we to believe all congressional Democrats were also polarized? The most ludicrous is that they wanted compromise as their total opposition to Obamacare and inability to offer anything demonstrated. As the majority of the majority rule they adopted showed, they were too obsessed with their own unity to attract any. It may have been their own internal strains and weaknesses that would later result in populism that drove them to this.
A “baloney sandwich on two levels” is just a baloney club.
Trying to avoid commenting here, not entirely without success obviously. Just thought I’d mention that Assad let all the jihadists out of prison so that they’d become take over the opposition and make any support for them dangerous. This was a pretty brilliantly Machiavellian move, if obviously completely amoral. Anyway in such a situation it’s about as hard to see a clear solution as it is to place blame on anybody but Assad.
IMO foreign policy is the one area where libertarians tend to be not crazy. Some of them anyways.
However else the rest of his administration grades out, Obama did a very good job on space policy, opening it up to competition and private enterprises. I would not be surprised if, 20 years from now, that is what he is most remembered for.