On FB I shared a “we’re going to miss you, President Obama” post, which attracted some attention. One reader:
Speak for yourself.
Which I do, with vigor and facts. See below. Another:
We want to thank your for doubling the national debt, putting an immense burden on the future of the country and our children. What do you have to show for it, nothing beneficial.
I think this is immensely unfair and lazy, which surprises me in this reader. Where to start?
Debt? I will remind the reader that Congress holds the purse-strings, not the President, and while the President could certainly veto the spending and tax bills, there are certain compromises that must be reached in order to move government forward – Congress is explicitly in charge of finances. Additionally, entitlements are out of the reach of the President. If we want to fix the national debt, it could have been done sixteen years ago, but the GOP acted like a bunch of drunken sailors on leave for the first time in a year: the entire debt could have been tackled and no doubt taken care of. Instead, the GOP threw a party to enrich themselves and their patrons, and then chose to fight two wars without raising the taxes to pay for them.
Revere the memory of Eisenhower, who saw this coming: the military industrial complex.
It will take two to tango, Congress and now President-elect Trump. If they want to start working on the debt, the first thing they need to do is take a good, hard stare at Kansas. Slashing taxes is not a magic wand that fixes everything, as they’ve proved; and, as the Great Recession proved, slashing regulation has its own set of pitfalls. But positive steps? Consider raising taxes. Consider cutting those areas that have become bloated – unlike Obama, I advocate cutting the military. It’s a big, fat target. While painful in the short term as some weapons programs would be cut, impacting specific Congressional districts, most economists will tell you that military spending is not as productive as other spending, private or public. We need a good Defense Dept, it’s true; right now we have waaaay too much of a Defense Dept. If, as Trump advocated on the campaign trail, we “rebuild” an already robust military force, we’ll still be deeply, deeply in debt in eight years. Like two or three times more than now. That, after all, was the lesson of the oughts, now wasn’t it? A deeply irresponsible GOP that has fine marketers working for it (after all, someone has to spin their irresponsible ways) and nothing else.
But the reader claims nothing beneficial comes of the doubling in debt. It’s a vague claim, since it requires connecting programs to spending. Or perhaps it does not; perhaps we should simply note the end of the Great Recession; steady economic growth ever since, including the lowering of unemployment beyond even Mitt Romney’s projections for his own plans; the first stab at universal healthcare, the ACA, which eliminates the horrible pre-existing condition clause, gets more sick people to doctors on a pro-active basis (MUCH cheaper than emergency room care), thus removing stress from the health system; the killing of Osama bin Laden and Colonel Gadhaffi; the destruction of ISIL (not finished, yet), the Iran nuclear deal (and if you think it was bad, go read what the Iranians think of it – they hate it – they danced with the Great Satan and now many Iranians wish they hadn’t, and if that’s not a reason to rejoice in the deal, then you are not using reason – you’re just using arbitrary, unreasonable hatred of Obama); etc – including the important element of a steady, calm temperament.
The reader had best take care about reading Obama’s legacy through partisan spectacles, because a whole lot of inconvenient facts can be dumped right on top of him. My expectation? In twenty to thirty years, objective historians will put Obama in the top ten of Presidents. Partisans will hate it, but I think it’s true – his track record is quite impressive, especially given a GOP that has forgotten its duty to back the President on foreign policy. Despite every obstacle thrown in front of him by a spiteful, unreasoning GOP controlled Congress for the last 6 years, he’s executed effective policies that have improved the economy, our security, and our collective health.
And now, just to disprove charges of hagiography (besides military spending, as I suspect the reader agrees with Obama on increasing military spending, which strikes me as bat-shit insane), I’ll stick out a hand and suggest a subject the reader might pursue in which Obama could be justifiably criticized: North Korea. I’m sure we can find common ground here, although I would start out with one common-sense observation: North Korea is a hard, hard topic in foreign policy. While we may agree that he could have done better, I would not be so juvenile as to suggest he blundered or did it on purpose. Sometimes your adversaries find ways to do better than you like.
