Obama on the Home Front

Domestic Policy Triumphs and Setbacks

John D. Graham

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780253021151
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Parties
• Index: Politics & International Relations

"The best comprehensive review of the Obama administration's policies available, " by the author of Bush on the Home Front (Daniel P. Franklin, author of Pitiful Giants: Presidents in their Final Term ). Barack Obama came into office as the economy was careening into the worst downturn since the Great Depression. On the political front, he would be challenged by the same intense congressional polarization faced by Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, now exacerbated by the rise of the Tea Party movement. In this comprehensive assessment of domestic policymaking, John D. Graham considers what we may learn from the Obama presidency about how presidents can best implement their agendas when Congress is evenly divided. What did Obama pledge to do in domestic policy and what did he actually accomplish? Why did some initiatives succeed and others fail? Did Obama's policies contribute to the losses experienced by the Democratic Party in 2010 and 2014? In carefully documented case studies of economic policy, health care reform, energy and environmental policy, and immigration reform, Graham asks whether Obama was effective at accomplishing his agenda. Counterfactuals are analyzed to suggest ways that Obama might have been even more effective than he was and at less political cost to his party. As with the author's acclaimed Bush on the Home Front, this book elaborates and applies a theory of presidential effectiveness in a polarized political environment.

1

BARACK OBAMA’S ASSETS AND CONSTRAINTS

The record of any American president attracts attention, but Barack Obama is of special interest. As the first African American president in the nation’s 240-year history, he is certainly a symbolically significant figure. The symbolism is not simply about America’s bid for progress in overcoming its history of slavery but also about the opportunity that America offers to talented individuals born to families of mixed race, limited means, and family dysfunction. After all, Obama’s writings reveal that he grew up without any meaningful relationship with his father and that at key points during his childhood his mother relied on relatives to raise him.¹

The symbolism was not necessarily beneficial to President Obama as he strove to accomplish his policy agenda. His rapid rise in American politics was frightening to many conservatives and reactionaries, triggering a groundswell of grassroots opposition that is referred to loosely as the “Tea Party.”² There has been much political energy in this movement, particularly in Republican primary races for the House and Senate. In fact, Obama confronted many Republican members of Congress who perceived danger in even modest efforts to collaborate with him. As a result, he faced not only the intense congressional polarization that Bill Clinton and George W. Bush experienced but also an exacerbation of that polarization due to the rise of the Tea Party.

Fortunately, Barack Obama brought some substantial talents to the challenge. He is an intellectual, a community organizer, a legal authority on the US Constitution, a gifted orator, a skilled campaigner, and a politician with experience at both the state and federal levels of government. Michelle Obama is an impressive and appealing spouse, and Obama is father to their two lovely children. In terms of temperament, he is described as a leader who is more inclined to seek resolution than confrontation—a realist who “keeps lines of communication open and does not burn bridges.”³ Throughout his political career, he has had few personal scandals and is seen as a man of integrity, even by Republican senators.

One certainly cannot argue with Obama’s academic credentials. After starting his undergraduate studies in California at Occidental College, he graduated with a BA in political science from Columbia University in 1983. He then devoted several years to church-based community organizing on the South Side of Chicago before being admitted to Harvard Law School. Obama was elected president of the Harvard Law Review in his second year, a role that tested his mediation skills, because the Law Review was struggling with ideological conflict during this period. After law school he taught constitutional law for twelve years (1992–2004) as a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School.

For three terms (1997–2004) Obama served as an elected Illinois state senator. In 2000 he lost a primary challenge for a US House seat to Congressman Bobby Rush, but he later ran for the US Senate. After winning Illinois’ Democratic nomination for US senator in March 2004, he accepted an invitation to deliver a keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention, a speech that proved to be such an inspiring and memorable address that it helped launch his national political career. Obama was elected senator in November 2004 and served only a brief period until he launched his quest for the presidency in 2007. He served as a senator until he was elected president of the United States in November 2008 and was sworn into office in January 2009.

There is an unusual aspect of Barack Obama’s background compared to all presidents since Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ): the absence of experience as an executive. From Richard Nixon through George W. Bush, all presidents had previously served as a governor or as vice president. Obama was also the first sitting senator elected president since John F. Kennedy.⁴

In contrast to George W. Bush, whose decision making was described as intuitive and decisive, Obama is described as a cautious, analytical, and deliberative decision maker who draws on a progressive value system.⁵ Moreover, his value system is liberal, but his temperament is moderate, even conservative.⁶

On occasion Obama has taken some nonprogressive positions on issues. As a senator in the 1990s, he, like many Democrats, opposed ratification of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change engineered by Vice President Al Gore. More recently, he annoyed environmentalists as US senator and president with his support of “clean coal” and “fracking” for oil and gas (see chapters 7 and 8).

On most issues, however, Obama’s stances have been on the progressive side of America’s political spectrum. He was ranked by National Journal as the sixteenth most liberal senator in 2005, the tenth most liberal in 2006, and the most (number 1) liberal in 2007 on a composite score that includes key roll-call votes on economic, social, and foreign policy issues.⁷ During the Democratic nominating process for president in 2008, Obama generally ran to the left of Hillary Clinton, the mainstream candidate favored by much of the Democratic establishment.⁸ Thus, in both 2008 and 2012 America elected a progressive candidate for president, arguably the first progressive since Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

The Obama presidency offers fresh evidence of the challenges faced by a non-centrist—a progressive insurgent rather than an establishment Democrat—occupying the White House. In this respect Obama’s challenges resemble those faced by Ronald Reagan, an insurgent from the right, more than they resemble the challenges facing more centrist presidents such as Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George Herbert Walker Bush, Bill Clinton, or even George W. Bush. An interesting question that the Obama presidency raises is to what extent—and how—can a president from one of the ideological wings of the American political spectrum move the country’s policies in the direction that he or she prefers, given that the center of the American electorate is generally considered moderate or even conservative-moderate?⁹

The Obama presidency is of special interest for yet another reason: Obama came into office as the American economy was careening into the worst downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The general election contest of 2008 between Obama and the Republican nominee, Arizona senator John McCain, was quite competitive coming out of the Republican National Convention in August. In fact, some polls were reporting that McCain had a slight lead, even after his controversial vice presidential nomination of Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska.¹⁰ The McCain campaign (which was touting the basic soundness of the nation’s economic situation) was undermined by the unexpected housing bubble that rippled throughout the country, ultimately leading to the collapse of the financial system.¹¹ Some argue that Obama would have defeated McCain anyway; others say that he was handed the election—and an extremely difficult start to his presidency—by the rapid and frightening onset of the “Great Recession.”¹²

OBAMA THE CANDIDATE

As a presidential campaigner Obama’s track record was remarkable.¹³ He overcame the conventional wisdom that the moderate-conservative American electorate will vote for Democratic presidential candidates only if they are moderate Southerners like Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter. Obama’s two presidential campaigns were known for impressive ground games: it is estimated that in 2008 he had four times as many grassroots campaign volunteers as John Kerry in 2004 or Al Gore in 2000, and the multiple was even larger in the battleground states.¹⁴ Obama’s campaign also compiled a list of 13 million e-mail addresses of small donors and sympathetic activists and deployed new social and media technologies in precedent-setting ways.¹⁵ In addition, Obama motivated millions of people (especially youth and minorities) with weak ties to the political system to vote and to urge others to vote.¹⁶

The vote tallies speak for themselves. In 2008, against McCain, Obama won the two-party popular vote 53.7–46.3 percent and the Electoral College by an even more decisive margin of 365–173. In 2012, despite a sluggish economic recovery and an arguably stronger Republican opponent in Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, he won the two-party popular vote 52–48 percent. Romney actually defeated Obama among independents, yet Obama overwhelmed Romney with votes from young people and nonwhites.¹⁷ Obama’s second Electoral College victory (332–206) was basically a rerun of the first one, except that during the second race he chose not to campaign in Indiana and he lost North Carolina by the slimmest of margins.

Some observers question how Obama could have been reelected in 2012 when the US economy was in such poor shape. In fact, Obama’s reelection confirms two long-term patterns in American politics. First, when the rate of unemployment drops significantly in the period before a presidential election, the incumbent president wins reelection.¹⁸ In other words, what matters politically is not so much the absolute condition of the economy but how it is trending. Moreover, Americans are highly likely to reelect their president to a second term when the president was elected after a president from the other party has served. Since 1900 that has happened eleven out of twelve times (Jimmy Carter, who was not reelected in 1980, is the exception). In a sense, the American electorate seems inclined to eight-year terms after a party switch in the White House.¹⁹

When we assess why Obama was victorious in the Electoral College when his party’s predecessors (John Kerry and Al Gore) lost to George W. Bush, the answer resides in some of the key battleground states. Obama won Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Colorado, Iowa, and Nevada in both 2008 and 2012, all states (except Iowa) that Bush had won in both 2000 and 2004.²⁰ One could argue that the Republicans McCain (2008) and Romney (2012) lost not so much because they were weaker candidates than George W. Bush (2000, 2004), but because Obama was a stronger candidate than Gore and Kerry and because he was able to exploit the unpopularity of Bush at the end of his presidency.

If we entertain the notion of presidential coattails, Obama had them. In the Senate the Democratic Party gained eight seats in 2008 and two seats in 2012. The House gains for Democrats were twenty-three seats in 2008 and eight seats in 2012. Obama was particularly effective at motivating occasional voters to vote, and they voted disproportionately for Democratic candidates. Without question, candidate Obama helped the Democratic Party in both 2008 and 2012.

OBAMA’S POLITICAL STANDING

From the perspective of presidential studies, Obama’s first term is of special interest. His political standing, defined as the sum of his popular vote (measured as a percent), Electoral College vote (percent), and job approval rating (percent), was strong in January 2009, but was considerably less impressive in January 2013 (see table 1.1).

Table 1.1. Political Standing of Postwar US Presidents

Weary of the Iraq War and the politics of George W. Bush, the American electorate—in 2006 and 2008—awarded the Democratic Party progressively larger majorities in Congress. As a result, no president since LBJ began his first term with the favorable partisan circumstances that Obama enjoyed: a decisive (if not landslide) victory in the Electoral College, a relatively high favorability rating in public opinion polls (around 70 percent), a large majority in the House of Representatives, and an almost filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.

LBJ was one of the most productive lawmaking presidents in American history, and Obama began with LBJ-like advantages. Thus, the expectations for the Obama presidency were quite high, indeed dangerously high, since unrealistic expectations are a precursor to public disappointment and diminished presidential job approval ratings.²¹

Obama’s second term is less interesting from a lawmaking perspective, because he faced a conservative Republican majority in the House of Representatives, a filibuster-vulnerable Democratic majority in the Senate from 2013 to 2014, and a Republican majority in the Senate from 2015 to 2016. Like Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Obama played defense as much as offense in legislative matters during his second term.²²

An assessment of Obama’s performance is also of interest because his standing was never compromised by any major personal scandal involving himself, high-ranking officials in his cabinet, or his White House staff.²³ There was no Watergate mess and no sex-related scandal. As a result, the public reaction to the Obama administration was primarily a reflection of attitudes about the economy and Obama’s policy agenda.

THE RISE OF THE TEA PARTY

The seeds of the contemporary Tea Party movement are a matter of some disp...