So what has been accomplished thus far….?

It seems a little unfair to judge the accomplishments of President Obama’s administration after only 9 months in office, though that logic apparently didn’t deter the Nobel Prize committee. But since the issue has now been raised, let’s consider it.

There is no question that President Obama is one of the most personable and eloquent presidents we have had in recent decades. And there is no question that he is fighting for noble causes – financial recovery, nuclear disarmament, global warming, health care, closing Guantanamo prison, better relations with our international partners, and some resolution of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So what has been accomplished on these fronts thus far?

On the financial front, although the stock market has had a recent partial recovery, there is little beyond speculator hope to support the rise in share prices. Unemployment continues to rise, though that is to be expected since employment recovery generally lags economic recovery by 6-12 months. Credit is still tight, since banks are hording cash for their own safety rather than lending it. Many major banks are still in precarious condition, still carrying billions in “toxic assets” on their books. Despite the Treasury Department’s concern that this recession was exacerbated by having institution “too big to fail”, the Treasury’s own actions have a made a few of the “too big to fail” banks even bigger – especially JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Well Fargo Bank. Since the beginning of 2008 some 84 banks nationwide have failed, and there are predictions of up to 1000 more local bank failures. The Federal bailout certainly helped some of the major Wall Street players to survive, or find shelter in other institutions, but it has done little for local banks without such political connections. And multi-million dollar bonuses are still being paid on Wall Street, even in banks that were “saved” by taxpayer money.

The administration and Congress would like to take credit for the apparent “improvement” in the economy, arguing that the trillion dollar stimulus plan worked. But in fact only some 15% of the stimulus money has been spent thus far, so the recovery thus far isn’t likely to have been driven much by the stimulus money. It might have been, if President Obama had been willing and able to strong-arm Congress into passing a more effective, less pork-laden stimulus package, but he was largely absent in those negotiations. And along with this, the Federal deficit has skyrocketed with no plan in place to throttle the red ink or pay any of it back.

On nuclear disarmament, the goal that apparently most impressed the Nobel Committee, nothing substantial has really happened yet. President Medvedev of Russia has discussed reducing (but certainly not eliminating) its nuclear arsenal. Prime Minister Putin (who is probably the real power in the government) has made no such suggestion. No other nuclear nation has said a word yet about reducing their nuclear arsenals. Certainly the Chinese, Israelis, Indians, Pakistanis and North Koreans have no intention of giving up their nuclear arms. And the Iranians are still hell-bent on becoming a nuclear power. So despite the Nobel prize, nothing really has happened yet on this front beyond the same sound bites that have been spoken by leaders for decades now.

On global warming, little effective has happened yet. The carbon cap-and-trade proposal is mired in Congress, held up by coal-state members of Congress. We are still subsidizing corn-based biofuel, even though it actually takes more petrochemical energy to produce it than we get out of it (but it buys votes in the corn-belt). President Obama chaired an extraordinary one-day session at the UN, but nothing came out of it but vague generalities. Given the difficult Congressional battles to come on the cap-and-trade issue, he may well go to the Copenhagen Climate Meeting in December with nothing tangible from the U.S. to offer.

The health-care debate has dominated Congress for months now, and although the Senate bill now being discussed does eliminate some of the more radical and unworkable ultra-liberal proposals in the three House bills, it still doesn’t attack the core problems in our health care system. And it does add almost a trillion more dollars to the Federal budget over the next decade. Although the CBO has finally been browbeaten into scoring the current bill as essentially revenue-neutral in the long run, this is true only if a number of unlikely assumptions prove to be true – such as that Congress (and physicians) will go along with cutting physician Medicare payments by 20% starting next January and growing to 40% by 2016.

No doubt there will eventually be a health care bill of some sort, and it may even include some useful things, like forbidding insurance companies from refusing or dropping people because of health problems or preexisting conditions or age. Of course the law of unintended consequences is always in action – if insurance companies have to accept everyone, that substantially changes the statistics in their risk pool, and inevitably will require that they raise everyone’s rates. But thus far, nothing really has happened except a lot of talk and debate.

Closing Guantanamo prison, as the administration has now discovered, is easier to promise on the campaign trail than to deliver in actuality. It turns out everyone wants it closed, but no one wants the prisoners in their own back yards. The only action Congress has thus far taken on this issue is to delete all money for moving prisoners to American soil. Not a promising start.

In terms of better relations with our international partners, there is no question that the Asians, the Europeans and the Muslim world like President Obama better than they liked President Bush. But thus far that has not translated into any noticeable tangible gains for American interests. Russia thus far has been no more accommodating on Iran sanctions than before. China thus far has been no more accommodating on pressuring the North Koreans than before. The Muslim world thus far has been no more accommodating on fighting Islamic terrorism than before, or on helping to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Israel has not stopped building and expanding settlements. Everyone likes us more, but no one has actually done any more than before to help our interests.

The military and security problems in Iraq and Afghanistan remain difficult. The only noticeable improvement in the past year was driven by President Bush’s “surge” in Iraq. To be sure, the problems in both places are largely intractable, rooted deeply in the respective cultures and in centuries of conflict, so it isn’t fair to fault President Obama for not having solved them yet. But neither has he any tangible accomplishments to point to yet.

So on balance I have to say that I think the Nobel Committee was premature in their judgment. Promises are nice, but only accomplishments really change things. President Obama has certainly said the right things, and has said them eloquently. But he hasn’t yet shown that he can take on international opponents, a dysfunctional Congress, or even his own party, and make things happen.