Walter Russell Mead
Posted on 06/08/2014 8:12:08 PM PDT by neverdem
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
Less than two years after voters gave President Barack Obama a strong mandate for a second term, the White House is struggling against perceptions that it is losing its grip.
At home, the bungled rollout of the Obamacare website and the shocking revelations about an entrenched culture of incompetence and fraud in the VA have undercut faith in the President’s managerial competency.
Abroad, a surging Russia, an aggressive China, a war torn Middle East and a resurgent terror network are putting his foreign policy credentials to the test. With the GOP hoping to seize control of the Senate in November’s midterm elections, and the inevitable decline in presidential power that occurs as second term presidents move toward lame-duck status, Obama risks being sidelined and marginalized for the remaining two years of his term.
Last week’s tempest over the Bergdahl exchange seemed to roll all the President’s troubles together into a single storm. The decision to free five Taliban fighters from Guantanamo in exchange for an American soldier with a complicated past energized the President’s opponents, befuddled and angered important Congressional allies, and renewed questions about the political instincts of the President and his closest aides. The White House apparently thought that the release would be a moment of national unity and celebration and arranged for Sgt. Bergdahl’s parents to meet Obama in a highly publicized Rose Garden ceremony that now looks like a huge political blunder.
It’s been a long and bumpy road to this point. Few American presidents came into office viewed with so much optimism and hope. Obama was swept and re-swept into office with a clear expectation that being smart — or at least not being stupid — would be enough to mend fences around the globe and at home. Things aren’t so cheery now, and not being George W. Bush may not, it appears, be sufficient.
Obama is not, however, prepared to pick up his toys and go home. Stymied in Congress, where a coalition of Republicans and red state Democrats have effectively blocked his major initiatives in both the House and the Senate, the President is determined to use his executive powers to carve out a legacy whether Congress likes it or not. The new EPA regulations to cut CO2 levels from power generators and his decision to sidestep Congress on the release of five Taliban prisoners at Guantanamo in exchange for Sergeant Bergdahl show a White House anything but resigned to the prospect of presidential decline.
In both foreign and domestic affairs, Obama has plenty of executive authority to use. Moreover, the signature accomplishment of his first term, the ACA health care law, is potentially the most significant piece of domestic legislation since the 1960s and was written to give the executive branch the power to redesign much of the American health system as the President’s appointees in the federal bureaucracy set about implementing the law. The Dodd-Frank Act, intended to stabilize Wall Street and prevent another 2008 style financial crisis, gave the executive branch broad authority to re-regulate the financial sector.
Why, then, does a feisty President with more power than any of his peacetime predecessors, one who is determined to use those powers to the max, look so much a victim of events he can’t control?
It isn’t for lack of ambition; Obama aspires to be a transformational leader at home and abroad. The ACA attempts to redesign an industry that accounts for 17.2 % of GDP. The EPA’s new regulations cover 66% of the country’s energy production. Overseas, he’s picked goals like getting a global climate treaty, destroying Al-Qaeda, democratizing the Arab world, eliminating nuclear weapons and achieving détente with Iran.
These are big goals; achieving them would give Obama a significant place in the history books. But there’s a catch; large and complex projects are hard to carry out, and the President seems to consistently underestimate the difficulties in turning compelling visions into practical programs. As a result, he now finds himself haunted by goals and expectations he set for himself, caught in a gap between promise and performance that has proved unexpectedly hard to close.
The implementation of the ACA was problematic in ways that go far beyond the famously awful website. While a substantial number of people have gotten access to health insurance thanks to the law, the implementation challenges remain epic — and the public still isn’t fully behind the new system. Many of the law’s provisions have already been suspended, amended, and reinterpreted so many times that it is now probable the President will leave office without being able to roll the whole law out as projected. Even government accountants have given up figuring out what the law means or how it will work: this week, the CBO stated that it was henceforth impossible to score Obamacare.
Meanwhile, the problems at the Veterans Administration — problems candidate Obama vowed to fix back in 2008 — erupted last month in a scandal that 79% of Americans blame at least in part on Obama’s management. A shock poll in The Washington Post showed 48% of Americans now think that President George W. Bush was better at “getting things done” than his replacement-compared with 42% who think the opposite.
Meanwhile, President’s Obama’s repeated calls for gun control legislation and immigration reform have fallen flat.
Overseas, the gap between promise and accomplishment is, if anything, more daunting. Early in his first term Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in a decision that struck even his most ardent admirers as premature; there isn’t much talk today of a repeat visit to Oslo.
Not since the end of the Cold War has an American president faced this much disorder and trouble in the world. The “reset” with Russia ended with the attack on Crimea. The Arab Spring has foundered in chaos, dictatorship and war. The President’s declaration that “Assad must go” has proved as hollow as his demand that Syria cease chemical warfare attacks on its citizens. Al-Qaeda and related jihadist groups are active and growing from West Africa through Central Asia; in some ways the terror threat today is greater than ever before. The war in Afghanistan, a war that candidate Obama vowed to win, is sputtering inconclusively toward a less than stellar close. An increasingly feisty China is challenging the United States and its allies, and North Korea grinds grimly ahead with its nuclear program.
Once again, the President seems to have underestimated how much effort would be required to achieve the goals he set out. He clearly underestimated the difficulties of building a stable and businesslike relationship with Russia and was shocked and surprised at Putin’s attack on Ukraine. He underestimated the difficulty of getting the Israelis and Palestinians to reach a peace agreement, overestimated the strength of the democratic forces in Egypt, and seems not to have fully understood the difficulties in winning the Afghan war until after he committed American troops to a surge. His administration has also seriously underestimated China’s readiness to oppose American policy in the Pacific; the South and East China seas are becoming more dangerous and more militarized by the day.
With 30 months to go, Obama still may have a chance to regain control of both the domestic and international agendas, but to do that he’s going to have to change his approach. He needs to focus on the nitty-gritty, day-to-day business of governing; six years into his administration, the public is fed up with promises and hungry for concrete accomplishments.
President Obama needs to show that he knows how to get things done, or increasingly the world will move on as if he wasn’t there.
Mead is the James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Policy and the Humanities at Bard College, and edits the American Interest Online. Follow him on Twitter @WRMEAD
Walter Russell Mead
Mead is a Democrat, and has said he voted for Barack Obama in the 2008 Presidential Election. In 2003, Mead supported the Iraq War.
IT is about playing the victim card while he holds the catbird seat.
Obama has it easy. Breaking the china in a china shop is a piece of cake. Cleaning up the mess and restoring order is what will be difficult to impossible. Who ever replaces Obama will have a Herculean task on their hands. And someone on blood thinners should not even try.
Got a feeling that when Clint finally leaves this place, he will be going with a smile on his face.
Well said!
We had the middle east divided from the Bosphorous straits to the Persian gulf.
Obama walked away and proceeded to enable our enemies.
http://thpatriots.blogspot.com/2010/10/shrink-asks-what-is-wrong-with-barack.html
Because Obama will not change. He will not learn from his mistakes. He will not grow and mature from on-the-job experience. In fact, over time, Obama will likely become a more ferocious version of who he is today.
Why? Because this is a damaged person. Obama’s fate was sealed years ago growing up in his strange and poisonous family. Later on, his empty vessel was filled with the hateful bile of men like Rev. Wright and Bill Ayers.
Obama will not evolve; he will not rise to the occasion; he will not become the man he was meant to be. This is for one reason and one reason alone:
He is not capable of it.
There WAS vote fraud ...
precincts’ vote tallies were for more than the amount of registered voters....
Stuff like that.
For a good background info, see the book “Votescam” by Collier and Collier
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“Less than two years after voters gave President Barack Obama a strong mandate for a second term...”
He won by fewer votes. These people are amazing.
*****************************************************
HE WON THE SECOND ELECTION BY FRAUD...his little Acorns made sure of this.
Stupid ass liberals are having a problem right now. First of all their projection of ideas is falling apart and their belief of political reality is whacked.
Barrack Hussein Obama is going to kill them in the end. They are to stupid to see it.
I could not agree more. Einstein could be in charge of implementing the wrong policy and the results will be negative. One need only look at the career of Secretary of Defense McNamara in the Vietnam War to confirm that principle.
I have disagreed since 2008 with the reluctance of the Republican establishment to attack Obama as a radical. His foreign policies (and certainly his domestic policies) are quite rational if one is a communist. In fact, after all these years of Obama it should be inescapably clear that the single coherent philosophy which has guided this man is neo-communism.
Some have argued persuasively that the philosophy which animates Obama is anti-colonialism but I see that as a component of communism. This fits in rather neatly with an explanation of Obama that centers on his race. Others try to explain Obama in terms of Islam and his allegedly adherence to it. I have no doubt that he has secret sympathies for Islam but I believe that his neurotic narcissism prevents him from a selfless commitment to any ism which requires real personal sacrifice.
Communism provides Obama with a worldview which supports him in his narcissism. It tells him that as an elite he has special insights of truth which the masses do not grasp but of which they are in desperate need. His anointed role is to bring the world to his utopia. All his life Obama has been advanced beyond his competence because of his race and because of his leftist affiliations. He is otherwise an empty suit, a narcissist without good excuses.
If one accepts this analysis of Obama as a communist/narcissist, his actions do not appear to be those of an incompetent but to be quite coherent.
Inciting Coups in Libya, Egypt, and Syria
Obamacare
8 Trillion dollars added to the debt for a grand total of 17 trillion
A humanitarian crisis on our souther border with hundreds of thousands encouraged to enter, and now providing buses to disperse these illegals
This Bergdahl fiasco
Benghazi
His self-proclaimed support for islamofacists
The incessant lying to the American people.
And so much more
It is past time for grown up people to recognize this man, Obama, is TRYING to bring destruction to this nation. He is the enemy to this country. He is our Stalin. When will Congress do what is necessary, for the nation, to stop his planned destruction, regardless of the political consequences to themselves? Are there no patriots in the House and Senate? Obamas time is short and he knows it. He has violated, repeatedly, the Constitution. He is an enemy to this nation and needs to be impeached and removed. Whatever fallout would come from this action would pale to insignificance to what Obama will do in the next two years. We must act swiftly to get Congress to impeach..
they have nothing but lies and more lies
even those who can see through obama wont publically admit to what hes up to.
a psychotic tanned richard simmons....with a messianic complex
JUTS WHAT THE DOCTOR ORDERED!
Obama is an odd character that does feed on narcissism, while he also divides and conquers.
He can be white or black, pro America OR ANTI AMERICA.
The man is a professional chameleon, the worst sort of politician IMHO.
A born BSer, with a race card up his sleeve.
Five taliban release ping.
Thank you for that decisive post. Make sure that you get a chance to understand D’Nesh D’Souza. He explained this Bastard all to well.
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