Measured in sheer legislative tonnage, what Obama got done in his first two years is stunning. Health care reform. The takeover and turnaround of the auto industry. The biggest economic stimulus in history. Sweeping new regulations of Wall Street. A tough new set of consumer protections on the credit card industry. A vast expansion of national service. Net neutrality. The greatest increase in wilderness protection in fifteen years. A revolutionary reform to student aid. Signing the New START treaty with Russia. The ending of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
Even over the past year, when he was bogged down in budget fights with the Tea Party-controlled GOP House, Obama still managed to squeeze out a few domestic policy victories, including a $1.2 trillion deficit reduction deal and the most sweeping overhaul of food safety laws in more than seventy years.
More impressively, on the foreign policy front he ended the war in Iraq, began the drawdown in Afghanistan, helped to oust Gaddafi in Libya and usher out Mubarak in Egypt, orchestrated new military and commercial alliances as a hedge against China, and tightened sanctions against Iran over its nukes. Oh, and he shifted counterterrorism strategies to target Osama bin Laden and then ordered the risky raid that killed him.
That Obama has done all this while also steering the country out of what might have been a second Great Depression would seem to have made him already, just three years into his first term, a serious candidate for greatness.
And yet a solid majority of Americans nevertheless thinks the president has not accomplished much. Why?I will go through each of these, but basically, the reason people think he hasn't accomplished much is because he hasn't. Some of this "big things" are really just incremental and the rest is good but not big.
Healthccare reform: I like this (I think) and do agree that it is pretty big. Why doesn't it seem as big? Because few people really understand the law and how it will impact them. The bill is confusing and it is unclear how it will affect one of the two major issues in health care - costs - until the long term if at all (the other issue being the uninsured, which is addressed in the law).
To top it off, Republicans were successful in attacking the law after it passed while Democrats decided not to defend it and instead they tried to pretend it didn't happen. So the public can be excused for not understanding its benefits and not seeing why it should be a major accomplishment for Obama.
Auto Industry Takeover: it was good policy and proved successful. It was better than bankruptcy for sure. Romney should admit he was wrong. But it doesn't seem that big to me (and probably to other voters as well). What did he really do? Some government loans, maybe some restructuring of debt (and pensions)?
Stimulus: Sure the stimulus prevented the recession from getting worse. But we are only now - years after the stimulus - seeing unemployment decrease. So why would we consider a huge stimulus a major accomplishment if it didn't get the recovery going? We don't and we shouldn't.
Banking reform / consumer protections: Again, this is a big and confusing bill. And I think many people feel that this won't necessarily prevent another banking crisis because it didn't deal with some of the big problems (derivatives, too big to fail, deposit banks taking too much risk for profit). As for consumer protections, we'll see how important this is once it gets going. For too long, Obama had not even appointed a head of consumer protection.
Much of the rest of the stuff in the first paragraph strike me as good but small policies that the author is trying to say are huge huge huge: National Service Expansion, which I don't even know what that is referring to; Wilderness protection, which I haven't heard anything about; Student Aid reforms; START with Russia, which were huge when Reagan did it, but at this point is just another good step in that same direction; and the food safety laws (what?). And Net Neutrality is far from a done deal.
The one thing I will say is huge is Obama's ending Don't Ask, Don't Tell. It is big and Obama and Congress deserve a lot of credit for this. Now if they could end the Defense of Marriage Act (which Obama's administration did refuse to defend in court).
The author then highlights a $1.2 trillion deficit reduction package that Obama cannot take credit for since he was driven into it by the Tea Party and the deal doesn't at all accomplish what we need (short term spending a long-term balance). I think the public rightly thinks it was a sham, that will quickly get undone or redone, but was done so both parties could save some face. If Obama had achieved something real, along the lines of Bowles-Simpson (although hopefully more liberal), then we could call it a major accomplishment.
On foreign policy, the author gives Obama credit in Egypt, where the president deserves none. Our only help was to call for Mubarak to step down, which came too late to be seen as principled or even important. He also gives Obama credit on Libya, where I am glad Obama supported intervention, but we were following Europe's lead.
I think Obama, at least in the short term, can take credit in Afghanistan. His mini-surge has been effective (though I have questions about the long term) and so he can say he improved a bad situation. Also, killing Bin Laden was big and shows good decision-making. The sanctions in Iran seem stronger than anything we have seen before and we'll see how they turn out.
However, in Iraq, his withdrawal policy isn't different from Bush's plan. And to be fair, he was only able to achieve it after Bush' surge (which only fixed a problem Bush himself created with a terrible occupation). In other words, it's not like Obama inherited a mess in Iraq, fixed it, and was then able to pull the troops out. That would have been a major accomplishment.
As you can see, there is a common pattern. His so-called big accomplishments are incremental (instead of sweeping changes), very complicated, and don't get at the real problems. Health care isn't getting at costs, the stimulus wasn't big enough to kick-start a recovery, and the banking reform didn't fix what caused the crisis. The other things mentioned are all nice, but they don't add up to major accomplishments.
On foreign policy he has had some decent accomplishments (Afghanistan, bin Laden). But in some other cases his policy isn't different from what Bush did or what McCain would have done. And in the rest, the author is giving Obama credit for things he doesn't deserve credit for.
Now, the author also says that some of these policies will look better in history than they are treated now. Anything is possible - in fact Bush might one day be revered as Truman is, or so some people hope. But if that is the case, I will disagree with it for all of the reasons stated above (as I will disagree any positive treatment of Bush).
