A blow-by-blow breakdown of the young president's first year reveals that today's frustration stems not from a lack of policy so much as a lack of common ground. The myth of the American center looms in this, the second part of a week-long series on our country since the 2008 election.
BONUS QUIZ: How Well Do You Know the News of 2009?
By: John H. Richardson
Read more of Esquire.com's "The Year of Obama" series with part one from Charles P. Pierce, part three from S.T. VanAirsdale, part four from Thomas P.M. Barnett, and part five from Scott Raab
I have figured out The Problem With America Today. My inspiration was the recent one-year-later cover of Newsweek, which encapsulates the current conventional wisdom about President Obama in a single headline: YES HE CAN (BUT HE SURE HASN'T YET). Or, as Saturday Night Live put it, President Obama's two biggest accomplishments thus far are "Jack and Squat." You can find other versions of this perspective from Matt Lauer and David Gregory on NBC, from thousands of obnoxious bloggers, even from the hapless governor of New York.
These days, the argument that Obama hasn't accomplished anything may be the only example of real bipartisanship in America.
Here's the conventional wisdom in a single paragraph: Three hundred and sixty-four days after he was elected president, Obama is still stuck in Iraq, hasn't closed Guantánamo, is getting deeper into Afghanistan, hasn't accomplished health-care reform or slowed the rise in unemployment. His promises of bipartisanship are a punch line (see above). And there's still no peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. What a failure! What a splash of cold water in the face of all our bold hopes!
But the conventional wisdom is insane. Consider the record:
A week before he was sworn in, Obama jammed part two of the bank bailout down the throat of his own party — a $350 billion accomplishment.
Two days after he was sworn in, Obama banned the use of "harsh interrogation" and ordered the closing of Guantánamo.
A day later, Obama reversed George W. Bush's funding cutoff to overseas family planning organizations — saving millions of lives with the stroke of a pen.
Three days after that, Obama gave a green light to the California car-emissions standards that Bush had been blocking for six years — an important step on the road to cleaner air and a cooler planet.
Two weeks after that, Obama signed the stimulus bill — a $787 billion accomplishment.
Ten days after that, Obama formally announced America's withdrawal from Iraq.
A week later — we're in early March now — Obama erased Bush's decision to restrict federal funding for stem-cell research.
In April and June, Obama forced Chrysler and GM into bankruptcy.
In June, Obama reset the tone of our relations with the entire Arab world with a single speech — an accomplishment that the Bush administration failed to achieve despite a series of desperate PR moves (anyone remember Charlotte Beers?) and a "public diplomacy" budget of $1 billion a year.
Also in June, Obama unveiled the "Cash for Clunkers" program, a "socialist" giveaway that reanimated the corpse of our car industry — leading, for example, to the billion-dollar profit that Ford announced on Monday.
I haven't even mentioned Sonia Sotomayor, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the order to release the torture memos, Obama's push for charter schools, his $288 billion tax cut, or the end of Bush's war on medical marijuana. Or the minor fact that he seems to have — with Bush's help, it must be said — stopped the financial collapse, revived the credit markets, and nudged the economy toward 3.5 percent growth in the last quarter.
Oh, and one more thing: President Obama is now a month or two from accomplishing the awesome and seemingly impossible task that eluded mighty presidents like FDR, LBJ, and WJC — health-care reform.
No comments:
Post a Comment