Obama's done plenty, so why won't he tell us?
Obama tries to move on after big GOP win
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Jay Parini: Many impressed by Obama in 2008 let down. What changed about him?
- He's done much: Brought down unemployment, saved economy, brought health care reform
- But he doesn't communicate this. Why? Perhaps he doesn't believe in himself, he says
- Parini: Especially on foreign policy, my hope is he'll better spell out his hopes for the world
I thought he would be
another Reagan in at least one respect: He'd be a great communicator.
Listening to his speeches in 2008, I thought that this man could
connect. He had energy and vision, hope and strength.
So what happened?
Jay Parini
Somewhere along the way, disturbingly early in his first term, he fizzled as a communicator.
It's not that he didn't
do good things.
He brought the American economy back from the brink of
another Great Depression, and (by comparison with our counterparts in
Europe) we are doing extremely well. Jobs are back, with unemployment steadily falling,
and the stock market has soared, thus underpinning the retirement hopes
of millions who rely on equity portfolios to sustain them in their old
age.
We have discontinued pursuing "wars of choice," although it may take generations to recover from the mistake of invading Iraq, which will cost the
American taxpayers two trillion bucks -- with health care for veterans
taxing our children and grandchildren for years to come.
Obama withdrew somewhat
precipitously from Iraq, putting too much faith in the Shia-led
government in Baghdad and giving ISIS an opening. He may have done this
in part out of frustration over the Shia-led government's inability to provide legal protections for American troops that would have remained.
But in truth, he handled the situation pretty well in the end, as ISIS is sputtering out, slowly but surely.
Indeed, ISIS was always a ragtag (if singularly vicious) group
surrounded by natural and powerful enemies, including Turkey, Saudi
Arabia, Iran, and Hezbollah in Lebanon. They were a flash in the pan,
though a painful one.
Congressional leaders meet with Obama
Obama's second term agenda
Obama: The presidency humbles you
As for Ebola, this seems now under broad control, with the number of cases declining. Ebola was always a greatly exaggerated fear, though obviously a cause for concern that requires vigilance.
But this was the ISIS
and Ebola election, with panic at high levels on both fronts around the
country. And it was widely perceived that Obama was not reacting in a
strong way to these threats, even though -- in my view -- he was
actually doing quite a lot on both fronts behind the scenes.
His mantra has famously been "don't do stupid stuff," and
this has largely been a good and rare thing, even if critics pounce on
this as a sign of his being a wimp. George W. Bush was no wimp, but look
where that got us! He made the worst foreign policy decision in recent
history when he invaded Iraq, setting in motion waves of instability
that it will take a generation to quell and subsidize.
Health care has, of
course, been the main focus of "hope and change" for Obama, and yet he
was also defeated in this midterm election by Obamacare; denouncing it
became a mantra for his political enemies. Yet apart from its initial
rollout problems, Obamacare has been a measured success, allowing large
numbers of previously uninsured American to have access to health care.
The rollout problem was
not just the result of too much interest in the program, though there
certainly was that. It was a flawed website that couldn't handle the
demand, and it was a management failure not to have sufficiently tested
the system before it went online. But the state-run insurance exchanges
have largely been a success: Even Mitch McConnell has been forced to
support the way the exchange has worked in Kentucky, although he doesn't
support the benefits of this program for people in other states!
One would have thought the considerable positive effects of Obamacare, including the widely reported reduction in health care costs, would have helped Democrats. But that didn't happen.
Let's face it, Obama did
a lousy job of making the success of his health care program
understandable to the wider public. He also did a lousy job of
consulting with Republicans about this program before it was passed, and
he seems curiously disinterested in actually talking with the American
people about his successes, although he will occasionally give a speech
and, in what seems like a bored way, recite his accomplishments.
The problem is, I suspect, that he doesn't believe in himself. He isn't willing to buy his own story.
There must be many reasons for this. Richard Falk, in a good article
in Foreign Policy last summer, notes that, in fact, Obama has never
felt confident in separating from the macho rhetoric of Bush. He has
spoken repeatedly about America's right to act on its own in the world,
saying (for instance) in one speech at West Point: "I believe in
American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being." What he offers
is, according to Falk, a "watered down neoconservertive global agenda"--
but doesn't really seem to believe what he's saying, as he walks every
assertion like one this back in due course.
It's clear enough from
his actions in Iraq and Afghanistan that he actually wants the U.S. to
exert less, not more, military presence abroad, and to work with
coalitions and within the confines of international law, like any other
civilized nation. We are not the only country in the world, however much
we like to imagine we are.
It's crucial that we
work in partnership with other countries. What better time to do this
than now, when much of the industrialized world seems very much
anti-authoritarian and democratic? We should consider Europe and Japan,
India, Israel, and most countries in Latin America our natural allies in
the movement toward a peaceable world, where economic stability and
human rights are respected.
I will dare to hope
that, in the waning years of his presidency, Barack Obama might actually
begin to communicate with the American people about his real dreams for
a better world.
Not doing stupid stuff is fine. But it's not everything. And he knows that already.
cnn.
