Category Archives: Obama

by | May 16, 2013 · 2:55 PM

Second Term Curse?

Nate Silver is skeptical of this concept:

What’s less clear is if there is any systematic tendency for a president’s approval ratings to decline in his second term, other factors held equal — like, for example, because the public is increasingly fatigued by having the same person in office. It is also hard to make very many generalizations from only seven data points, some of which reflect different circumstances than the ones that Mr. Obama now faces. (For instance, Mr. Truman and Mr. Johnson, who had among the largest declines in their approval ratings, were serving their first elected term in their second overall term.)

Silver’s theory:

My view, then, is that the idea of the second-term curse is sloppy as an analytical concept. There is certainly a historical tendency for presidents who earn a second term to become less popular — but some of this reflects reversion to the mean. And some recent presidents have overcome the supposed curse and actually become more popular on average during their second terms.

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by | · 1:00 PM

Wilsonian Rather Than Nixonian

The New Republic despises the comparison of Obama to Richard Nixon:

Take the Nixon comparison. On the one hand, it’s true that in both administrations, the IRS engaged in outrageous political targeting. But it’s a hard to see a parallel. Yes, people from a hostile political camp were systematically scrutinized. But where Nixon’s political operation was intimately involved in targeted audits and other Watergate-era skullduggery, Obama’s IRS issues took place in the bowels of the bureaucracy, where workers focused special scrutiny on the portion of the political spectrum that featured most of the fundraising innovation between 2009 and 2012.

Instead, Woodrow Wilson is a more apt comparison:

It’s Woodrow Wilson. An enthusiastic supporter of Espionage Act prosecutions, the progressive, detached, technocratic Wilson was so convinced of his own virtue that he was willing to jail the Socialist candidate for President, Eugene V. Debs for his mild criticism of the war, even as he championed progressive reforms such as the Federal Reserve and the Federal Trade Commission, both of them designed with the help of his economic advisor, Louis Brandeis.

Wilson had a sorry record on civil liberties, and once Brandeis was on the Supreme Court, he eloquently criticized the Wilson administration for its betrayal of progressive values such as free speech and transparency, declaring that “sunlight is the best disinfectant,” and unforgettably extolling the necessity of protecting political dissent.

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by | May 13, 2013 · 6:30 PM

The IRS, AP, Benghazi, and Kurt Vonnegut

Today, there were two major stories that caught the public eye.  First, reports continue to circulate about how the IRS targeted certain conservative organizations and SuperPacs about their nonprofit status.  Second, the Department of Justice obtained two months of phone records from Associated Press editors to investigate leaked information.  Back-dropped to both of these breaking stories are new revelations about the Benghazi attack.  Needless to say, right-wing media outlets have a lot to talk about and the Obama administration is not looking good on matters of transparency.

While each of these scandals (if you want to call them that) should not be linked together as one giant plot by the Obama administration to take over the world…or guns…or something, they all show what can happen if governments are not transparent with their people and amass too much power.  In the hyper-partisan media world we live in, journalists of a certain stripe often jump to either defend the president or call these scandals “the new Watergate.”

In my view, it is possible to go after an administration on a scandal and not feel like an entire ideology is discredited.  I’m on vacation at the current moment, and I’ve been reading some Kurt Vonnegut novels to pass the time.  Vonnegut is a public intellectual who was an avowed liberal but distrusted power and the politicians who wielded it.  Voices like this rarely exist anymore, people like Vonnegut, Christopher Hitchens, Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, William F. Buckley, etc.  These men all had ideological biases, but they at least had the ability to be contrarian voices within their own intellectual circles and take on those who had power.  Of course, they had their flaws and I don’t want to be nostalgic  but in times like these it would be interesting to know what they would have to say.

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by | November 7, 2012 · 9:58 PM

Why Did Obama Shift to the Right?

William Saletan has an interesting column at Slate where he notes:

Yes, Obama imposed an individual mandate to buy health insurance. You know who else did that? Romney. You know where the idea came from? The Heritage Foundation. Personal responsibility—insisting that people carry private insurance so we don’t have to bail them out in emergency rooms and hospitals—was a Republican idea. Same with Wall Street reform: There’s nothing conservative about letting financial institutions gamble with other people’s money in ways that would force us to bail them out again. Even Obama’s cap-and-trade proposal echoed the market-based emissions-control policies of the 1990 Bush administration and the 2008 McCain campaign. And last year, when the EPA proposed a new air-pollution limit, Obama ticked off environmentalists by killing it on the grounds that it might jeopardize the recovery.

Remember how Democrats ridiculed George W. Bush’s troop surge in Iraq? Obama copied it in Afghanistan. He escalated the drone program, killing off al-Qaida’s leaders. He sent SEAL Team 6 into Pakistan to get Osama Bin Laden. He teamed up with NATO to take down Muammar Qaddafi. He reneged on his pledge to close Guantanamo Bay. He put together a globally enforced regime of sanctions that is bringing Iran’s economy to its knees. That’s why Romney had nothing to say in last month’s foreign policy debate. No sensible Republican president would have done things differently.

I don’t disagree with his point.  Many of Obama’s domestic policies were formerly Republican ideas and Obama stayed center-right on foreign policy.  The question is why?  Part of it has to do with hoping for bipartisan support.  During the healthcare debate, the Democrats tried a public option, which failed, and then switched to the individual mandate in order to garner some GOP votes.  Needless to say, the Republicans weren’t interested.  For other issues, like cap and trade, the Democratic Party basically gave up trying to sell carbon taxes and large scale alternative reform plans since the late 1990s, partially to protect those Democrats who live in coal dependent states.  Once again, they also hoped to get some support from Republicans, and they did for a while from Senator Lindsay Graham.

On foreign policy, the president knew he couldn’t just withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan overnight, so he took a cautious approach and used a slow timetable after his initial surge in Afghanistan.  Obama also decided to do as he promised in 2008 and begin more covert operations that target specific terrorist suspects.  Remember, many Democrats voted for the Iraq War and other “counter-terrorism” measures.  The Democrats also have a more hawkish wing of the party that the president needs to keep together (it gets ugly when the two sides split apart).

Basically, Obama’s move to right is caused by numerous trends, ranging from pragmatism to keeping certain coalitions together.  That answer is not nice and neat, but then again neither is politics.

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by | November 5, 2012 · 1:53 PM

My Endorsement of President Obama

I’m not usually a big fan of online endorsements.  For most pundits, it is pretty clear who they are going to vote for by reading their blogs. Endorsements also don’t change the outcome of the election.  No one is going to have their mind changed by tomorrow because of what I write here.  However, I do have a few thoughts that I want to share about why I will be voting for President Obama on November 6.

I am a foreign policy voter.  Not many people say that.  In my view, presidents have a lot of sway over foreign policy by acting as the chief statesman for the U.S.  In today’s world, presidents also make major calls about going to war, what regimes to support, authorizing covert action, picking foreign policy personnel, and signing treaties (until the senate ratifies them).  In 2008, I also voted for Obama because I thought Senator John McCain was too hawkish and erratic.  Picking Sarah Palin, who knew very little about foreign affairs in a world where the vice-president is a crucial decision maker for foreign policy, also scared me.

In terms of foreign policy Obama has a lot of accomplishments.  He brought to a close the War in Iraq and is continuing to drawdown troops in Afghanistan.  He signed the START Treaty with Russia.  Osama Bin Laden is dead and (though not by the hands of the U.S.) Moamar Ghadaffi is no longer living.  The U.S. participated in more multilateral efforts through the U.N. and NATO than under George W. Bush.  U.S.  The administration continues to use cautionary diplomacy on Iran, I do think that Iran is blustering more than people will admit.  Overall, I would say the U.S. image abroad is much better than under the previous administration.

With that in mind, Obama has disappointed me on a number of occasions regarding foreign policy.  The number of drones has increased in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia.  The U.S. plans to put more troops in the Pacific to curb China’s influence, which is not necessary.  Guantanamo Bay is still open as detention center.  Let’s also remember that the President also only called for the ouster of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt at the last minute.  The administration continues to add sanctions to Iran and I’m not convinced that military action is not completely off the table.  Finally, the handling of the Benghazi attack was not that impressive and there were some lower-level administrative failures that should not have occurred.

Despite the disappointments, I’m still voting for Obama because I think he has done a very good job on foreign policy.  I’m also not that supportive of Mitt Romney’s worldview.  Romney strikes me as someone who will move away from multilateral engagements and could be convinced to be a hawk on Iran or any issue by his advisers.  The two parties have a great separation on how U.S. power should be used around the world and the Democratic Party is much more in line with my philosophy.

Finally, Obama and I match on domestic policy.  While the Affordable Care Act was not perfect, and I would have liked to see a Medicaid for all system, that just was not possible at the time the bill was passed.  Obama also supports gay marriage, increased contraception for all, higher taxes for increased social services, and he did a good job at making sure the financial system did not collapse when he came into office in 2009.

In the end, most endorsements of candidates come down to ideology.  I consider myself to be a typical American liberal.  I support a cooperative foreign policy working within the international system, equal opportunity for all, a strong social safety net and more public services, and policies that save the environment.  I do not consider myself to be a deficit hawk (although I do care about it and think some structural reforms are needed).  However, I do not think we will be Greece tomorrow.  I also like pragmatic leaders who understand that the political system is complicated and that policymaking is a messy process with a lot of compromise.  I did not get everything that I wanted from the President for the last four years, but I knew that the way Washington works I wasn’t going to.  I don’t expect miracles if he is re-elected, but for the direction of the country, I think Obama is the best choice.

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