I believe one of Obama's most unheralded accomplishments is to retain much of the financial team and policy put in place by Bush. A different president might have taken a very different line of attack. It's true that bankers were not held to account, but maybe that was the wise price to pay for keeping the banking system intact.
Understandably, it is much harder to give credit for disasters averted. But Obama deserves it.
While Obama was a successful President, I think he failed badly on two fronts.
He was too much of a Wall Street President, overly committed to preserving the structure of the financialized economy we have rather than tearing more of it down and holding the bad actors accountable for the GFC. So, unlike some people in your list of commenters, I believe he squandered a historic opportunity to blow up Wall Street - commercial banks, investment banks, investment partnerships, the carried interest loophole, privileging capital over labour income, etc. etc. His primary error was putting a committed institutionalist like Tim Geithner in the Treasury rather than Paul Volcker (or Elizabeth Warren!), who knew the banks and funds for the grift machines that they are and would likely have lit the regulatory and structural equivalent of an atomic weapon on Wall Street.
His second major error, and an unpardonable one, IMHO, is Syria and Libya. Syria was probably an unforced error, and a legacy of the unholy mess that the Bush and the second Iraq war had wrought upon the region. Obama and many liberal Democrats (and probably many neoCons) also irresponsibly promoted the Arab Spring-like movements in the Arab world, most of which had no chance of success without forceful intervention by the West. And, of course, we saw how THAT worked in Libya, for which, despite his “lead from behind” line, he does bear an large portion of the blame. Obama had a shot at leaving well enough alone, but did not resist his advisors or his own impulses enough. In the Middle East, the opposite of secular authoritarianism is mostly illiberal theocracy, not liberal democracy. The US State Dept does not seem to realize this, and Obama allowed his idealism to trump what should have been common knowledge.
For all that, I voted for him twice. And would have done so again if he had been allowed to run for a third term.
First if all, great piece Noah. I really enjoy your work. Second, Obama is and was an excellent role model no matter your race. He was certainly better than thrice married demagogue Donald Trump. Third, he could have accomplished more if the GOP wasn't dead set on blocking everything he tried to accomplish. And finally, to those who say that race relations got worse under him, they could be right. But it's not his fault. Because haters gonna hate.
Maybe the problem is -- as you and several commenters demonstrate -- fandom itself. How odd it is that so many people have so many emotions about the role of president. Emotions, fandom, Beatles-type screaming at rallies -- these things are not so healthy. "The strong rum of party" as Emerson (or maybe Channing) put it. As a sci fi fan can you imagine how this may look to other civilizations? Rabid crowds cheering leaders?
Odd that you don't mention the Iran deal, a great foreign policy success.
But Libya was very bad indeed -- it sent exactly the wrong message to NK and Libya's ally Russia. You cut a deal with the US, your reward is death a decade or two later after the American attention span moves on and forgets about the deal. That was the message we sent by killing Gaddafi.
Has politics, anywhere, at any time, ever involved anything other than endless cycles of irrationally euphoric hope and irrationally despondent disappointment?
In the US, during my relatively long lifetime, politics on both the left and the right has been driven by True Believers. And the True Believers tend, psychologically, to be emotionally labile, easily aroused, and easily deflated, reflexive catastrophizers, and filled with the messianic despair and hope of the Old Testament prophets. Things are always worse than they've ever been; we're always on the brink of catastrophe; only our candidate can save us from the demons clawing at the door. Most of us aren't like this, don't want to spend time with these people, but don't have the time or the energy to wrest control of our politics from them, and so we just let the drive them bus. And, because they're terrible drivers, we're always very close to being driven off a cliff, and so we keep our seatbelts securely fastened, and pray (many of us to gods we don't really think exist.)
Hype and unfulfillable promises are what get people elected and unelected. The actual work of governance -- making the trains run on time, solving problems to whatever extent possible with whatever resources are available, trying to formulate and effectuate policy in a universe of unfathomable complexity and nearly total uncertainty -- is really carried out largely by nameless, faceless, unelected career bureaucrats who usually never get thanked or reviled or blamed or rewarded for what they do. If I believed in god, I'd ask her to bless them.
I was also a huge Obama fan. Obamacare was an incredible accomplishment. But I was hoping he would do more to address the Unitary Executive theory. As he was a constitutional scholar I was sure he would understand how dangerous the Bush years were.
The interesting thing about the reaction many conservatives have to the Obama presidency is that they describe him as being "the most racist president ever" or someone who "made everything about race." Which is ironic from a liberal standpoint, because many of us feel that he didn't do enough about race relations and that he spent so much energy trying to not be the "black president" that he wasted an opportunity to make a difference.
This is a pretty complete evaluation of the Obama Presidency. I dissent on two items:
(1) The way he managed the Great Recession certainly favored (Republican style) top down economics. Most commentators agree the focus on rescuing the banks and Wall Street was important, but the inept attention to Main Street and those who suffered most (loosing homes as well as jobs) was both tragic at the time and fueled the long term popular trend toward alienation from and distrust of government.
(2) The ACA was probably mostly the politics of the possible. It had one main drawback: It increased the number of insured with direct tax revenue subsidy of their out of pocket expenses - a windfall to health insurance companies. It had two main innovations (both unmentioned here): (a) As designed it created universal national health insurance for all the poor. This would have gone a long way toward eliminating the structural racism embodied in Medicaid. This was, of course, snuffed out by the Supreme Court. (b) It was partially financed by new taxes on the wealthy - to the tune of $600 billion/10 years - which is the, usually unstated, reason the Republicans hated the ACA so and a tax which they repealed at the first opportunity. It should be noted that the ACA financing structure as designed was the biggest improvement in USA inequality since 1965.
Other than slowest recovery from recession on record, despite zero interest rates and massive QE that inflated asset prices and heightened inequality, accepting China’s occupation and militarization of the South China Sea, rewarding Russia with an “unconditional reset” after its invasion of Georgia and annexation of S Ossetia et al, leading to its 2014 decision to annex Crimea, choosing a path of racist hate mongering and populist division after the Dems lost congress in 2010, leading directly to the campaign styles of Trump and Bernie, weaponizing the IRS and intelligence agencies to spy on and harass political opponents including using the NSA intercept database and “unmasking” for political spying, abandoning a stable Iraq to an Iranian coup in 2010 which led to sectarian warfare, the birth of ISIS, hundreds dead in Europe, war in Syria and Iraq, 5 million refugees (a good slug of which tried to get to Europe and were waved in by Merkel….leading to Brexit. ..::No, other than that, I agree Obama was wonderful!
Oh - has anyone ever gone to the St. Louis Fed real hourly earnings database to look at Obama and Biden’s combined record on real wage growth? (Jan 2009- Dec 2016 and Jan 2021 to present)?
Dear God. Obama was NO FDR. How on earth could you think Obama's handling of the GFC was good? He designed HAMP specifically to maximize evictions and bank profits. To get the votes for TARP he promised congress he would support cramdown, it passed and then he went with HAMP instead of cramdown anyways.
"The cynical view is that HAMP worked exactly to the Treasury's liking. Both Senator Elizabeth Warren and former Special Inspector General for TARP Neil Barofsky revealed that then-Secretary Geithner told them HAMP's purpose was to "foam the runway" for the banks. In other words, it allowed banks to spread out eventual foreclosures and absorb them more slowly. Homeowners are the foam being steamrolled by a jumbo jet in that analogy, squeezed for as many payments as they can manage before losing their homes."
All that because he refused to consider any meaningful reform to Wall Street.
"The widespread, vocal opposition to the TARP was evidence that a once complacent populace had been roused. Reform, if proposed with energy and confidence, wasn’t a risk; not only was it badly needed, it was just what voters wanted.
But incoming president Obama failed to act. Whether he failed to see the opportunity, didn’t understand it, or was simply not interested is moot. Rather than bring vested banking interests to heel, the Obama administration instead chose to reconstitute, as much as possible, the very same industry whose reckless pursuit of profit had thrown the world economy off the cliff. There would be no Nixon goes to China moment from the architects of the policies that created the crisis, namely Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, and Director of the National Economic Council Larry Summers.
Defenders of the administration no doubt will content that the public was not ready for measures like the putting large banks like Citigroup into receivership. Even if that were true (and the current widespread outrage against banks says otherwise), that view assumes that the executive branch is a mere spectator, when it has the most powerful bully pulpit in the nation. Other leaders have taken unpopular moves and still maintained public support.
Obama’s repudiation of his campaign promise of change, by turning his back on meaningful reform of the financial services industry, in turn locked his Administration into a course of action. The new administration would have no choice other that working fist in glove with the banksters, supporting and amplifying their own, well established, propaganda efforts.
Thus Obama’s incentives are to come up with “solutions” that paper over problems, avoid meaningful conflict with the industry, minimize complaints, and restore the old practice of using leverage and investment gains to cover up stagnation in worker incomes. Potemkin reforms dovetail with the financial service industry’s goal of forestalling any measures that would interfere with its looting. So the only problem with this picture was how to fool the now-impoverished public into thinking a program of Mussolini-style corporatism represented progress."
I was an Obama voter, but with the benefit of hindsight I disagree with Noah.
As mentioned by others his foreign policy was a disaster (aside from the gutsy call on Bin Laden); the Iran deal, ISIS, Syria, Russia/Crimea, China, even the Paris agreement was done in haste and therefore has fallen apart. In short he subordinated American interests and as a result the public rebuked his policies.
The ACA was well intentioned, but it tried to address a supply side problem (need to reform the healthcare complex- insurance co, doctors, hospital systems, drug companies) with a subsidy. With hindsight it's no surprise that healthcare outcomes have not improved and costs continue to climb. The costs should not be underestimated as Democrats continue to pass subsidies to hide them from the public (latest being in the IRA).
Also, student loans are even more of a problem today than they were 14 years ago. This relates to the ACA as part of the funny CBO math used to pass the bill.
Dodd-Frank was fine and has helped strengthen the banks (and payment system). However, risk was simply transferred to other parts of the financial system which is why the Fed had to do far larger QE and buy corporate bonds. QE directly leads to more wealth inequality.
The perception of the voters from the Rust belt and middle and low wage earners was that he saved Wall Street and didn’t do enough to prevent people from foreclosures
This lead to disaffection and Trump’s election
Your article is very good but Obama governed as a centrist, and didn’t tackle Main Street’s real problems
Glad to see you and Yglesias (Thursday’s column) making similar arguments in defense of Obama. I’m very happy that IRA is getting signed but I do think the important lesson in terms of legislative accomplishments is to win more seats, not play Overton Window/negotiating games.
I think Obama deserves more credit for the TPP but far more blame on his Russia and ME policies. It’s clear now glad handing Russia was a mistake and that taking a less interventionist approach to the ME was proper. I give Obama credit for learning from his Libya mistakes. But he didn’t learn them fully.
I agree with your assessment.
I believe one of Obama's most unheralded accomplishments is to retain much of the financial team and policy put in place by Bush. A different president might have taken a very different line of attack. It's true that bankers were not held to account, but maybe that was the wise price to pay for keeping the banking system intact.
Understandably, it is much harder to give credit for disasters averted. But Obama deserves it.
While Obama was a successful President, I think he failed badly on two fronts.
He was too much of a Wall Street President, overly committed to preserving the structure of the financialized economy we have rather than tearing more of it down and holding the bad actors accountable for the GFC. So, unlike some people in your list of commenters, I believe he squandered a historic opportunity to blow up Wall Street - commercial banks, investment banks, investment partnerships, the carried interest loophole, privileging capital over labour income, etc. etc. His primary error was putting a committed institutionalist like Tim Geithner in the Treasury rather than Paul Volcker (or Elizabeth Warren!), who knew the banks and funds for the grift machines that they are and would likely have lit the regulatory and structural equivalent of an atomic weapon on Wall Street.
His second major error, and an unpardonable one, IMHO, is Syria and Libya. Syria was probably an unforced error, and a legacy of the unholy mess that the Bush and the second Iraq war had wrought upon the region. Obama and many liberal Democrats (and probably many neoCons) also irresponsibly promoted the Arab Spring-like movements in the Arab world, most of which had no chance of success without forceful intervention by the West. And, of course, we saw how THAT worked in Libya, for which, despite his “lead from behind” line, he does bear an large portion of the blame. Obama had a shot at leaving well enough alone, but did not resist his advisors or his own impulses enough. In the Middle East, the opposite of secular authoritarianism is mostly illiberal theocracy, not liberal democracy. The US State Dept does not seem to realize this, and Obama allowed his idealism to trump what should have been common knowledge.
For all that, I voted for him twice. And would have done so again if he had been allowed to run for a third term.
First if all, great piece Noah. I really enjoy your work. Second, Obama is and was an excellent role model no matter your race. He was certainly better than thrice married demagogue Donald Trump. Third, he could have accomplished more if the GOP wasn't dead set on blocking everything he tried to accomplish. And finally, to those who say that race relations got worse under him, they could be right. But it's not his fault. Because haters gonna hate.
Maybe the problem is -- as you and several commenters demonstrate -- fandom itself. How odd it is that so many people have so many emotions about the role of president. Emotions, fandom, Beatles-type screaming at rallies -- these things are not so healthy. "The strong rum of party" as Emerson (or maybe Channing) put it. As a sci fi fan can you imagine how this may look to other civilizations? Rabid crowds cheering leaders?
Odd that you don't mention the Iran deal, a great foreign policy success.
But Libya was very bad indeed -- it sent exactly the wrong message to NK and Libya's ally Russia. You cut a deal with the US, your reward is death a decade or two later after the American attention span moves on and forgets about the deal. That was the message we sent by killing Gaddafi.
Has politics, anywhere, at any time, ever involved anything other than endless cycles of irrationally euphoric hope and irrationally despondent disappointment?
In the US, during my relatively long lifetime, politics on both the left and the right has been driven by True Believers. And the True Believers tend, psychologically, to be emotionally labile, easily aroused, and easily deflated, reflexive catastrophizers, and filled with the messianic despair and hope of the Old Testament prophets. Things are always worse than they've ever been; we're always on the brink of catastrophe; only our candidate can save us from the demons clawing at the door. Most of us aren't like this, don't want to spend time with these people, but don't have the time or the energy to wrest control of our politics from them, and so we just let the drive them bus. And, because they're terrible drivers, we're always very close to being driven off a cliff, and so we keep our seatbelts securely fastened, and pray (many of us to gods we don't really think exist.)
Hype and unfulfillable promises are what get people elected and unelected. The actual work of governance -- making the trains run on time, solving problems to whatever extent possible with whatever resources are available, trying to formulate and effectuate policy in a universe of unfathomable complexity and nearly total uncertainty -- is really carried out largely by nameless, faceless, unelected career bureaucrats who usually never get thanked or reviled or blamed or rewarded for what they do. If I believed in god, I'd ask her to bless them.
I was also a huge Obama fan. Obamacare was an incredible accomplishment. But I was hoping he would do more to address the Unitary Executive theory. As he was a constitutional scholar I was sure he would understand how dangerous the Bush years were.
The interesting thing about the reaction many conservatives have to the Obama presidency is that they describe him as being "the most racist president ever" or someone who "made everything about race." Which is ironic from a liberal standpoint, because many of us feel that he didn't do enough about race relations and that he spent so much energy trying to not be the "black president" that he wasted an opportunity to make a difference.
This is a pretty complete evaluation of the Obama Presidency. I dissent on two items:
(1) The way he managed the Great Recession certainly favored (Republican style) top down economics. Most commentators agree the focus on rescuing the banks and Wall Street was important, but the inept attention to Main Street and those who suffered most (loosing homes as well as jobs) was both tragic at the time and fueled the long term popular trend toward alienation from and distrust of government.
(2) The ACA was probably mostly the politics of the possible. It had one main drawback: It increased the number of insured with direct tax revenue subsidy of their out of pocket expenses - a windfall to health insurance companies. It had two main innovations (both unmentioned here): (a) As designed it created universal national health insurance for all the poor. This would have gone a long way toward eliminating the structural racism embodied in Medicaid. This was, of course, snuffed out by the Supreme Court. (b) It was partially financed by new taxes on the wealthy - to the tune of $600 billion/10 years - which is the, usually unstated, reason the Republicans hated the ACA so and a tax which they repealed at the first opportunity. It should be noted that the ACA financing structure as designed was the biggest improvement in USA inequality since 1965.
I agree. Matter of fact I think he was a great potus under the circumstances
Other than slowest recovery from recession on record, despite zero interest rates and massive QE that inflated asset prices and heightened inequality, accepting China’s occupation and militarization of the South China Sea, rewarding Russia with an “unconditional reset” after its invasion of Georgia and annexation of S Ossetia et al, leading to its 2014 decision to annex Crimea, choosing a path of racist hate mongering and populist division after the Dems lost congress in 2010, leading directly to the campaign styles of Trump and Bernie, weaponizing the IRS and intelligence agencies to spy on and harass political opponents including using the NSA intercept database and “unmasking” for political spying, abandoning a stable Iraq to an Iranian coup in 2010 which led to sectarian warfare, the birth of ISIS, hundreds dead in Europe, war in Syria and Iraq, 5 million refugees (a good slug of which tried to get to Europe and were waved in by Merkel….leading to Brexit. ..::No, other than that, I agree Obama was wonderful!
Oh - has anyone ever gone to the St. Louis Fed real hourly earnings database to look at Obama and Biden’s combined record on real wage growth? (Jan 2009- Dec 2016 and Jan 2021 to present)?
Dear God. Obama was NO FDR. How on earth could you think Obama's handling of the GFC was good? He designed HAMP specifically to maximize evictions and bank profits. To get the votes for TARP he promised congress he would support cramdown, it passed and then he went with HAMP instead of cramdown anyways.
"The cynical view is that HAMP worked exactly to the Treasury's liking. Both Senator Elizabeth Warren and former Special Inspector General for TARP Neil Barofsky revealed that then-Secretary Geithner told them HAMP's purpose was to "foam the runway" for the banks. In other words, it allowed banks to spread out eventual foreclosures and absorb them more slowly. Homeowners are the foam being steamrolled by a jumbo jet in that analogy, squeezed for as many payments as they can manage before losing their homes."
https://prospect.org/economy/needless-default/
All that because he refused to consider any meaningful reform to Wall Street.
"The widespread, vocal opposition to the TARP was evidence that a once complacent populace had been roused. Reform, if proposed with energy and confidence, wasn’t a risk; not only was it badly needed, it was just what voters wanted.
But incoming president Obama failed to act. Whether he failed to see the opportunity, didn’t understand it, or was simply not interested is moot. Rather than bring vested banking interests to heel, the Obama administration instead chose to reconstitute, as much as possible, the very same industry whose reckless pursuit of profit had thrown the world economy off the cliff. There would be no Nixon goes to China moment from the architects of the policies that created the crisis, namely Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, and Director of the National Economic Council Larry Summers.
Defenders of the administration no doubt will content that the public was not ready for measures like the putting large banks like Citigroup into receivership. Even if that were true (and the current widespread outrage against banks says otherwise), that view assumes that the executive branch is a mere spectator, when it has the most powerful bully pulpit in the nation. Other leaders have taken unpopular moves and still maintained public support.
Obama’s repudiation of his campaign promise of change, by turning his back on meaningful reform of the financial services industry, in turn locked his Administration into a course of action. The new administration would have no choice other that working fist in glove with the banksters, supporting and amplifying their own, well established, propaganda efforts.
Thus Obama’s incentives are to come up with “solutions” that paper over problems, avoid meaningful conflict with the industry, minimize complaints, and restore the old practice of using leverage and investment gains to cover up stagnation in worker incomes. Potemkin reforms dovetail with the financial service industry’s goal of forestalling any measures that would interfere with its looting. So the only problem with this picture was how to fool the now-impoverished public into thinking a program of Mussolini-style corporatism represented progress."
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/03/the-empire-continues-to-strike-back-team-obama-propaganda-campaign-reaches-fever-pitch.html
And don't even get me started on Obamacare:
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/08/the-history-of-obamacare-2013-2016.html#comment-2662272
I was an Obama voter, but with the benefit of hindsight I disagree with Noah.
As mentioned by others his foreign policy was a disaster (aside from the gutsy call on Bin Laden); the Iran deal, ISIS, Syria, Russia/Crimea, China, even the Paris agreement was done in haste and therefore has fallen apart. In short he subordinated American interests and as a result the public rebuked his policies.
The ACA was well intentioned, but it tried to address a supply side problem (need to reform the healthcare complex- insurance co, doctors, hospital systems, drug companies) with a subsidy. With hindsight it's no surprise that healthcare outcomes have not improved and costs continue to climb. The costs should not be underestimated as Democrats continue to pass subsidies to hide them from the public (latest being in the IRA).
Also, student loans are even more of a problem today than they were 14 years ago. This relates to the ACA as part of the funny CBO math used to pass the bill.
Dodd-Frank was fine and has helped strengthen the banks (and payment system). However, risk was simply transferred to other parts of the financial system which is why the Fed had to do far larger QE and buy corporate bonds. QE directly leads to more wealth inequality.
The perception of the voters from the Rust belt and middle and low wage earners was that he saved Wall Street and didn’t do enough to prevent people from foreclosures
This lead to disaffection and Trump’s election
Your article is very good but Obama governed as a centrist, and didn’t tackle Main Street’s real problems
Am unaccomplished presidency
Glad to see you and Yglesias (Thursday’s column) making similar arguments in defense of Obama. I’m very happy that IRA is getting signed but I do think the important lesson in terms of legislative accomplishments is to win more seats, not play Overton Window/negotiating games.
I think Obama deserves more credit for the TPP but far more blame on his Russia and ME policies. It’s clear now glad handing Russia was a mistake and that taking a less interventionist approach to the ME was proper. I give Obama credit for learning from his Libya mistakes. But he didn’t learn them fully.