Articles:
Let Obama talk. That´s how things get done
16.10.09 Publication: The Times
Can there ever have been an American president who has been prejudged, judged and then rejudged as soon and as relentlessly as has Barack Obama? Certainly not George W. Bush in 2001, for whom expectations were low at least until 9/11 changed everything. Arguably not Bill Clinton in 1993 either, though he did begin with a whirlwind of pledges and initiatives, before being slowed down by the onrush of the Whitewater scandal in his first autumn. Even dear old Ronald Reagan in 1981 was assumed to have proclaimed that it was “morning in
All talk and no delivery; an appeaser of tyrants (and indeed of
Some of this hyperventilation may reflect the shortening of news cycles and the constant pressure on the media to produce striking or even sensational verdicts, which are escalating the demands on all political leaders. Much reflects Barack Obama’s very special status as the first black leader of
A better judgment on President Obama would, in my view, be “doing quite well in the circumstances, but has a long way to go”. It is, after all, strange to accuse a president who has presented and had passed a fiscal stimulus bill worth (depending on who evaluates it) something around $800 billion, or almost 6% of GDP, of having achieved nothing. Unemployment is still rising but the economy does appear to have stabilized, and much of the stimulus from all that spending will come this autumn and next year. To have an impact takes time.
That, certainly, applies to his main agenda, which is domestic welfare reform. It is worth noting that President Obama’s efforts to extend American welfare forms part of a global trend: all the world’s three biggest economies—
And progress is being made. This week President Obama at last had some good news on his flagship welfare issue, health-care, when the key Senate committee voted by a convincing margin to approve a health-reform bill and benefited even from a Republican vote, that of Olympia Snowe of Maine. Key committee votes and surprising bipartisan support are all very well, however, but it will be many months before President Obama will be able to declare victory on health care. The committee now has to submit a new bill to the whole Senate, garner enough votes there (60 out of 100) to beat off Republican filibuster (delaying) tactics, and then blend that bill with those emerging from the House of Representatives. This will take at least until the end of the year.
It is a crablike, cumbersome, annoying process. All the White House can do is watch, wait, lobby, and use the president’s “bully pulpit” to try to rally public opinion on to its side in order to put pressure on Congress. That is why the “all talk and no delivery” jibe gets it exactly wrong: when complex bills have to pass through Congress, the president’s only instrument is talk. Presidents who are good at that—such as Ronald Reagan and, yes, Barack Obama—are the likeliest to succeed.
In his talkathons, President Obama has sometimes frustrated even his fans, by remaining too general and failing to commit himself on the specifics. But he is nevertheless making progress, pushing health-care towards a reform that promises to bring something close to universal coverage, which
Time will, of course, tell whether he does indeed succeed. But even if he fails he has already shown two vital characteristics of presidents that history has later rated highly. One is resilience: the ability and nerve to bounce back from adversity, and look confident while you are doing so. Bill Clinton had that, as did Reagan; Jimmy Carter did not.
The other is the capacity to push on several fronts at once, without seeming to weaken your efforts or bringing confusion. This could be called the Gerald Ford test: can President Obama chew gum and fart at the same time? The evidence so far is that he can: not only has he pushed hard on health-care and the fiscal stimulus, but he (with Congress) is also promoting a climate-change bill and a major reform of financial regulation, while grappling with the quagmire of Afghanistan, the dangers of Iran and North Korea, and the ever-present nightmare of Israel and Palestine.
A president who pushes forward on so many issues at once is either delusional or unusually brave, determined and talented. Saving his effort to bring the Olympic Games to