So as we come down to the midterm elections and the last two
years of President Obama’s administration, how might one rate this administration?
I would argue that in national politics “intentions” count for nothing; only
results count! So what have been the results?
1. The Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare).
Passed without the support of a single Republican, and only by some dubious
hardball politics in the House, ObamaCare still remains unpopular with a
majority of Americans. Personally ObamaCare has been a disaster. Despite the
glib promise (which Obama himself apparently knew was not true) that if we liked it we could keep our current plan, my health plan
disappeared, as did the plans of some estimated 5-6 million other
Americans. Despite the promise that our
premiums would go down, ours went up, as did those of millions of other
Americans, and despite the higher premiums, our new plan covers less. And despite
the promise that 7 million uninsured would now have insurance, the current ”real”
numbers (not the ones the White House is desperately spinning these days) suggest that
most of the new enrollments are from people who were previously insured, many
of who were paying their own premiums but now have government subsidies. In the
end it looks like the true number of newly insured will be somewhere in the
range of 1 – 1 ½ million, not much of a result for the massive dislocation the
rest of us have gone through. And of
course nothing in the act addressed the fundamental underlying problems with
the US health care system that are driving costs through the roof. On balance I would give this whole effort a
solid F.
2. The economy. Six years after he took
office, although the stock market is up, the economy as a whole is still
struggling, with a whole new cadre of permanently unemployed. I attribute this
in part to Obama’s decision to divert most of his political capital in his
early months to getting his ideological child ObamaCare passed, at a time when
he should have been focused aggressively on improving the economy as fast as
possible. In the five years since he has proposed precious little to address the
problems with the economy, and his latest proposal (to raise the minimum wage)
shows a poor grasp of economics (jobs that aren’t worth the new minimum wage
will simply disappear, expanding the ranks of the permanently unemployed). I would
rate him no better than C in this area.
3. The national debt and federal deficit. The national debt grew significantly under
Bush administration, much to my dismay (so much for Republicans being fiscally
responsible), but the Obama administration has made the problem much worse, in
a much shorter time. Obama has proved to
be a classic tax and spend Democrat, and without much to show for it. I give him a D in this area.
4. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Well,
he promised ever so eloquently to get us out of both wars, but in fact we are
still in both wars, still spending enormous sums and still taking American
casualties. We will finally get out of both in the next few months, but only
because we are, in essence, being thrown out by the governments involved, not
because he got us out. I would rate his
performance here about a C-.
5. The promised Russian “reset”. Crimea. Nuff said. Putin’s choice to
invade the Crimea was no doubt influenced by Obama’s weak and naïve “lead from
behind” foreign policy in his first years. Performance
= D.
6. Syria. There are good arguments both
for more active involvement and for staying away from the whole issue. But
Obama’s painful waffling between one position and then the other was terrible
foreign policy, and terrible leadership. Performance
= C-
There are other, less important issues, but this is enough,
I think to give the Obama administration a pretty poor grade – something like a
C- at best. I wouldn’t have thought any
administration could be as bad as the Bush administration was, but I think on
balance this one has been slightly worse.
Of course he has had to work against an obstructive Republican House,
but that doesn’t explain his questionable choice of issues to push, his clear failure
to even try to work across party lines, and his naive foreign policy (if he has
any policy at all).
There is probably a good reason why so many Democrats up for re-election in the Senate and the House are distancing themselves as fast and as far as possible from their president.
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