On the issue most completely under his control, foreign policy, my view is that the President and his team have performed masterfully. I give him an A+. (Remember I heartily approve of the President's Afghanistan policy. YMMV.)
It is on the domestic front that President Obama has seemed most trapped in his Post Partisan Unity Schtick. This mistaken governing philosophy has been coupled with the Bystander President concept when it came to formulating specific policies, particularly regarding health care issues. The President decided to make health care the signature issue of his first year (make no mistake, it is the President who has made health care the front burner issue, not Congress) and then left it in the hands of Max Baucus and Co. That was simply an unfathomable mistake. Perhaps it was spurred by memories of Daniel Patrick Moynhihan (Lawrence O'Donnell was a top Moynihan hand at the time)and other Senate Dems blocking the President Clinton's plans. If so, President Obama learned the wrong lessons. President Clinton's problems were of his time, not Obama's. Obama had the political power and mandate to push for the plan he wanted. He chose not to. (I understand there is some dispute on this, but I personally believe initially the President had a more ambitious health bill in mind, including one with a public insurance program.)
The Village Dems will try and tell you that the Senate health bill is the "most progressive legislation since 1965." We all know this is laughably ridiculous. There is no real, effective reform in the bill. There is no real check on the insurance companies. There is no real check on health care costs.
The best that can be said about the Senate bill is that it does include a large increase in Medicaid funding (no small thing) and it may provide a framework that could, in some distant future, be used as a platform for real reform. (To be clear, I think the affordability credits are close to being a joke.) All that said, it is better that it be passed than not be passed. But in terms of substance, not passing it is not that big a deal. (One could argue that this will doom health reform for 40 years, but I doubt that. I imagine some bill with most of the elements in this bill could be passed, even with a GOP Congress after 2010.)
In terms of the economy and regulating Wall Street, President Obama's performance has been mediocre. Here it is not clear to me what Obama actually believes. Particularly with regard to regulating the financial industry. His stimulus proposal obviously was better than no stimulus at all. But it was also obviously not good enough. And it was obvious WHEN IT WAS PASSED.
President Obama's major failing, both in terms of politics and policy, has been his inability to grasp the problems of Main Street and to use them to forward policy and political goals.
It upsets the Village Dems when Obama is compared to FDR, and really, it is unfair to compare any Democrat to the greatest Democrat. But I thought Obama could approach those heights. But he has not even tried. As John Judis wrote:
Where Obama invited a voter backlash was by letting the burden of reducing health care costs appear to fall on senior citizens and those middle-class workers who had acquired good health insurance through decades of union battles with management, and not on the insurance and drug companies. Obama ceded too much to the policy wonks who were devising intricate schemes to show they could cut the deficit. He took his eye of off the political imperative of keeping middle America in his corner.
(Emphasis supplied.) Some attribute Obama's reticence to the need of an African American President to not appear threatening. Perhaps there is something to this. I do not think this is a sufficient explanation. Obama has never shown a fighter side. It may not be in his nature. In the end, Obama's political skills may not match the times. Time will tell.
Speaking for me only
