At 7:59 p.m. and 50 seconds Pacific Standard Time, as polls on the West Coast were about to close, a countdown appeared on the screen.
Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six.
Just like New Year’s Eve except the poignance of the moment was real, so much more freighted than the fairy dust of empty resolutions.
Five. Four. Three. Two. One.
The words “BARACK OBAMA ELECTED PRESIDENT” appeared on the screen and the room exploded with cheers and hugs and kisses and ecstatic smiles and sighs of relief and tears of joy and sky-high expectations.
Most criticisms of Obama come from small and misinformed people on the right who live in a counterfactual alternate universe (“Obamacare is a government takeover!!”) or well-intentioned people on the left who don’t understand how a bill becomes law (“Why didn’t he push single payer? What a sellout!!”), but detractors have some legitimate points.
In the two years in which he had Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, Obama wasted precious time trying to play nice with congressional Republicans whose sole aim was to block every item on his agenda. Massive numbers of deportations and raids on medical marijuana facilities continued through Obama’s first term. When punked by obstructionist Republicans in the 2011 debt hike fight, Obama unnecessarily offered major concessions—including cuts to Social Security—rather than try to use his powers under the 14th Amendment to circumvent Congress. Elements of his education policy, such as the push toward charter schools and standardized testing, bore much resemblance to Republican policies designed to undermine public schools. Worst of all, Obama locked into place much of the Big Brother apparatus erected by George W. Bush, from warrantless wiretaps to attacks on whistleblowers, powers which could truly threaten our democracy when placed in less scrupulous hands.
But no president is remotely perfect. Not Mount Rushmore alumni Thomas Jefferson, who owned over one hundred slaves, or Abraham Lincoln, who foolishly chose racist Southern governor Andrew Johnson as his running mate a year before he was assassinated. Not historians’ consistent consensus choice as the best president of the past century, Franklin Deleanor Roosevelt, who interned Japanese-American citizens in prison camps during World War II.
To be accurately assessed, presidents must be weighed on a curve, opposite other flesh-and-
By this objective standard, Barack Obama is clearly the best president in my lifetime.
I was born during Richard Nixon’s first term. Despite his foreign policy success in creating openings with China and Russia, and domestic accomplishments (e.g. The Clean Air and Clean Water Acts), Nixon is ultimately defined by being the only president to resign in disgrace.
His successor, Gerald Ford, achieved little and lost to Jimmy Carter.
Carter pointed the way forward on environmental policy, and worked miracles in the Camp David Accords—where he forged a lasting peace agreement between Israel and Egypt—but was politically ineffectual and too wedded to fiscal conservatism to get much done domestically, despite having Democratic majorities in Congress.
Ronald Reagan had a couple big things to his credit—brisk economic growth and a role in speeding the end of the Cold War—but had a long list of notable failings, from tripling the national debt accumulated by the 39 presidents before him to doing virtually nothing to stop the AIDS epidemic to heading an administration known for its “sleaze factor,” with over 100 officials who were indicted, prosecuted, or resigned under ethical clouds, to enthusiastically pimping the gospel of deregulation which led to the S & L crisis (and ultimately, the great crash of 2008).
Which leaves us with George Bush Sr., George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton.
Between enabling the worst national security failure on continental soil by ignoring reams of intelligence warnings about Al-Qaeda, manipulating the fear generated by 9/11 (and the trust vested in him) to lie us into a disastrous war of choice in Iraq, gutting and privatizing FEMA and leaving New Orleans for dead in the days immediately after Katrina, and helping to usher in the most devastating economic crash in 80 years by deregulating Wall Street and being slow out of the blocks when the first shocks hit the housing market, George W. Bush is easy to dismiss. The only question is whether W. was the worst president in American history or simply one of the worst.
Bush Sr. signed the Americans with Disabilities Act put forward by a Democratic Congress, and gets some credit for winding down the Cold War. Otherwise he did little of note other than continuing to saddle taxpayers with the crippling deficits of the Reagan years and replacing civil rights giant Thurgood Marshall with Clarence Thomas, arguably the least qualified and most reactionary Supreme Court justice to sit on the bench since the departure of the segregationist judges that stalled Franklin Deleanor Roosevelt’s New Deal legislation.
Bill Clinton signed the Family and Medical Leave Act, presided over record economic growth, and got our fiscal house in order after the profligate Reagan-Bush Sr. years, leaving the United States on course to be completely debt-free. But major legislation eluded him other than Republican bills such as so-called welfare reform, which stuck it to our most vulnerable citizens while doing nothing to solve the underlying causes of poverty, and The Telecommunications Act, which opened the way to more monopolies (see: Clear Channel’s acquisition and homogenization of one independent radio station after another).
Unlike all of the presidents mentioned above, Barack Obama combined grand accomplishments with little in the way of major shortcomings. Here are 10 of the many reasons Obama was clearly the best president in my lifetime.
1. Obama saved the United States—and by extension the world—from economic collapse.
The U.S. economy shed 818,000 jobs the month before Obama took office. At the time, it
Through Federal Reserve action to lubricate the economy and keep interest rates low, TARP legislation to steady our financial system, stress tests to monitor the stability of big banks, and passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (the “stimulus” bill), which pumped close to a trillion dollars into the economy, the Obama administration stopped the free fall, saved 8.5 million jobs, and paved the way for a record 75 consecutive months of steady growth (112 months as of February 2020), a drop in the unemployment rate from 10%-4.7%, and a net gain of 10.5 million new jobs in eight years—more than three times the number of jobs created in twelve years of father and son Bush.
Obama also went against public opinion (and the braying of many Republicans) to prop up American auto companies, in the process saving 1.5 million jobs and putting the industry on a path to a healthy rebound, with record sales in 2015.
Republicans attacked Obama for the slow pace of the recovery, but the U.S. rebounded more strongly than all other developing countries but Germany, and job growth would have been more vigorous if not for austerity measures imposed by Republican state legislatures, whose Draconian budget cuts sent hundreds of thousands of public sector employees to the unemployment line.
2. In hopes of warding off another economic crash, Obama signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act—with the help of just two Senate Republicans.
Building on the consumer-friendly tenor of the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act Obama signed in 2009, Dodd-Frank includes protections for homeowners from predatory mortgage loans and transaction charges, limits on credit card fees, more transparency in derivatives trading, stronger capital requirements, oversight of debt collectors, credit agencies, student lenders, and check-cashing companies, and the right to sue banks who engage in predatory practices.
To set up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau at the heart of Dodd-Frank, Obama chose a then-unknown economic populist by the name of Elizabeth Warren. Alarmed at Warren’s passionate concern for consumer rights at the expense of obscene corporate profits, Republicans blocked her from becoming the permanent head of the agency, so she decided to run for Senate instead.
3. Like Bill Clinton before him, Obama cleaned up a Republican fiscal mess.
Advocating a second round of tax cuts for the rich in 2003, Vice President Dick Cheney countered treasury secretary Paul O’Neill’s fiscal objection to the cuts by saying, “Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter.” Cheney wasn’t claiming that tax cut-driven deficits were without consequence; he was simply pointing out that pissing away trillions of hard-earned taxpayer dollars on windfalls for the wealthy wasn’t a political liability.
Between tax cuts, steroidal defense spending, an expensive and yet inadequate prescription drug plan written by pharmaceutical company lobbyists, and a war of choice in Iraq, the Bush Administration, who had inherited record budget surpluses, left Barack Obama with a 1.3 trillion-dollar deficit.
After pumping stimulus into the economy to keep the bottom from falling out (see #1), Barack Obama reigned in spending and cut the annual deficit by three-fourths, leaving Donald Trump with a vastly better hand than he had been dealt.
4. Obama not only extended healthcare coverage to four million disadvantaged children through the Children’s Health Insurance Authorization Act, but
Critics complain about insurance company rate hikes, but health insurance premiums for
Meanwhile, the benefits of The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) are many. The bill keeps insurance companies from discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions and imposes annual and lifetime caps on the amount insurance companies can charge. It has reduced the number of Americans who have died from hospital errors and saved as many as 24,000 lives annually, brought the rate of uninsured young to a record low by allowing children to piggyback on their parents’ coverage up to age 26, decreased medical debt for the poor, forced insurance companies to cover substance abuse treatment, and brought us closer to funding parity for mental and physical health.
American women in particular have been big beneficiaries, as the ACA prohibits discrimination (in the form of higher premiums) against women and extends free birth control and preventive services—pap smears, breast cancer screening, and domestic violence screening—which have helped tens of millions.
Last but not least, Obamacare has provided healthcare coverage to twenty-two million Americans who otherwise would not have it—while lowering healthcare expenditures.
Yes, you read that right. TWENTY-TWO MILLION.
And the Affordable Care Act would cover millions more if it had been implemented as written. Due to Republican Supreme Court judge John Roberts’ decision to allow states to opt out of the Medicaid expansion portion of the bill, and the mean-spirited Republican governors who have refused to participate in the expansion—though the federal government is picking up the lion’s share of the costs—at least 2.5 million American citizens have been denied the human right to healthcare that people in every other first world country have had for decades.
5. According to a report from the Council of Economic Advisors, which findings are echoed in a Congressional Budget Office assessment, President Obama has overseen "the largest increase in federal investment to reduce inequality since the Great Society.”
The Affordable Care Act, which received much of its funding from cuts to corporate welfare
 |
| A president of the people |
Rather than follow Ronald Reagan’s lead by sticking it to Americans in the bottom half of the economic ladder with grim budget cuts in the middle of a recession (when government assistance is more necessary than ever), Barack Obama helped tens of millions of struggling Americans in his first year through both the stimulus bill and his opening budget proposal, which was called a “Robin Hood budget.”
Included were child tax credits, tax credits for higher education, and an increase in the Earned Income Tax Credit, big boosts in funding for school lunches, the Women and Infant Nutrition Program (WIC), the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the Emergency Food Assistance Program (EFAP), senior nutrition programs, and childcare block grants to the states, and $60 billion to support cash-strapped local schools and reduce pink slips around the country.
Over the course of his presidency, Obama allocated generous amounts of money for early
Obama cut the number of homeless veterans in half and created federal rules to raise the minimum wage for employees of federal contractors, regulate drug prices, and give overtime pay to millions of Americans who otherwise would have been shortchanged by their employers.
His Labor Department increased collection of back pay from unethical businesses by one third while his National Labor Relations Board consistently supported the right to organize, to howls from Republicans.
His FCC appointees fought state laws allowing monopolization of broadband networks, expanded government subsidies to bring Internet service to the poor, and protected net neutrality, which keeps telecom companies from discriminating against average ratepayers and small businesses.
Between taxes levied on the wealthy to fund the Affordable Care Act and a 2013 budget deal with Republicans that raised the estate tax and increased the income tax rate on Americans making over $450,000 annually, the most privileged Americans now pay the highest rates since before Reagan slashed their taxes.
Unlike Republican economic plans, the results of Obamanomics have truly trickled down. As cited in a recent feature article in The Atlantic Monthly, “This month's Census data, one of the final report cards on Obama’s presidency, was historic in its optimism. It found that real median household incomes rose by 5.2 percent in 2015, also a record. Poorest Americans are seeing the fastest wage growth of all groups, not to mention the fastest wage growth they’ve ever experienced. After years of stagnation, average real wages are up nearly 6 percent since 2012, ‘more than all wage growth from 1973-2007.’”
And Obama did all of this despite unprecedented levels of obstruction from the GOP. Had Republicans not blocked numerous Obama proposals—such as a minimum wage increase, a proposal to create 1.9 million jobs, free community college, federal money for maternity leave, a national childcare program, and unemployment extensions—his already-historic record of investment in everyday Americans would be even more impressive.
6. Though major cap-and-trade climate change legislation was killed by Senate Republicans, Obama amassed a formidable environmental legacy.
Unlike the administration of George W. Bush, who chose extraction industry lackeys for environmental “protection” posts, Obama appointed a "green dream team" of top-notch
Over the following years, Obama reversed one Bush policy after another, allowing the regulation of carbon dioxide, smog, mercury, methane, and fracking. His Environmental Protection Agency was very busy—protecting waterways, reducing the amount of sulfur in gasoline, forcing emissions reductions from semis, buses, and planes. He made states who received federal disaster relief come up with climate change plans, initiated stricter standards for development on public lands through passage of the Public Lands Management Act, his “no net loss” policy, and an aggressive push to create national monuments, including “the largest protected place on the planet,” in his home state of Hawaii. He blocked drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, as well as the expansion of the Keystone pipeline and the pipeline that would have plowed through a sacred Indian burial site at Standing Rock, North Dakota.
On a bigger scale, Obama played a key role in both the international agreement to ban hydrofluorocarbons and the Paris Agreement, a multilateral effort to lower the level of greenhouse gases, mitigate the impact of climate change on civilization, and incentivize a switch to sustainable fuels. As part of the Paris talks, Obama joined other world leaders in a green investment agreement with Bill Gates similar to the public-private partnership model used in the stimulus bill.
The pivot from the toxic fuels of yesterday to the clean fuels of the future has been swift and revolutionary: when Obama took office, the United States got roughly half of its electricity from coal and only ten percent from renewables; today, the two are at rough parity, with renewables set to become our main source of electricity.
In the words of Rob Sargent, the energy program director for the advocacy group Environment America, “President Obama and his Administration deserve tremendous kudos for jumpstarting America’s clean energy revolution. Today we have 20 times more solar power and three times more wind energy compared to when he took office eight years ago, and energy efficiency is now more than a ‘personal virtue’—it’s the basis for our energy policy. History will judge the Obama years as the turning point in America’s shift to 100% renewable energy.”
7. After hemming and hawing on the campaign trail in 2008, Obama fully embraced gay rights as president.
During his first year in office, Obama signed the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which extended federal protections to the LGBT community. In 2010, Obama repealed Bill Clinton’s brainchild, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (the Pentagon, at Obama’s urging, would later
In Obama’s second term, the administration supported the Employment Non-Discrimination bill, but the legislation was killed by the GOP. Faced with congressional
And all through his presidency, Obama appointed a record number of gay, lesbian, and transgender Americans to federal posts, including the first transgender White House employee and the second openly lesbian black judge, Staci Michelle Yandle.
8. Obama markedly improved the diversity and ideological bent of the federal judiciary.
Obama appointed more female judges than any president in history; among them were Supreme Court justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic SCOTUS judge. He also appointed the first openly gay black judge, the first Native American woman, and the first Asian judge on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
In all, Obama appointed one-third of the judges now on the federal courts, making for a much more just and forward-thinking judiciary than the one that existed when Obama took office, i.e. a court system more protective of a woman’s right to choose, gay rights, environmental protections, consumer rights, voting rights and civil liberties, and more responsive to the needs of the disenfranchised, the marginalized, and people who work for a living.
9. Barack Obama restored sanity to U.S. foreign policy and repaired America’s image abroad.
While running for a first term, Obama set the tone for his future presidency (and subjected himself to a lot of cheap criticism) by saying that he would be willing to negotiate with Iran without preconditions.
On his first day in office, Obama rescinded George W. Bush’s policy supporting torture; soon
Where Bush and his Republican Party supplicants and media jackals consistently used jingoistic terminology such as “Islamic terrorism” or “Islamofascism,” Obama spoke quietly but carried a big stick. Going against his advisers, Obama ordered the military operation that killed Osama bin Laden, who had gotten off scot-free in seven years of Bush the Younger. Obama also killed a long list of other Al-Qaeda functionaries, pulled us out of the quagmire of Iraq, ended Iran’s nuclear threat—first with international sanctions which coaxed Iran to the negotiating table, then through a historic peace agreement—reduced nuclear armaments through a new START treaty with Russia, and deep-sixed a long-outdated Cold War freeze-out of Cuba. The improvement in America’s image abroad from the Bush years speaks volumes.
10. In addition to saving the U.S. (and the world) economy from collapse,
Unlike other recent popular presidents Ronald Reagan, who broke the law by trading arms for hostages and then lied to the public and Congress about it to cover his ass, or Bill Clinton, who jeopardized his whole presidency with unseemly personal behavior, Barack Obama did not have a single real scandal or substantial ethical lapse. For eight years, he was a model in class and dignity and honor, a living, breathing example of the best America has to offer.
On behalf of informed and enlightened citizens of the world: thank you, Obama.
Follow Dan Benbow on Twitter
More political writing by Dan Benbow:
ANATOMY OF A MAN-MADE DISASTER:
230 ways Donald Trump failed to keep us safe
from the coronavirus
178 reasons Hillary Clinton is infinitely better
than Donald Trump (even on her worst day)
Lingering Myths of the 2016 presidential election:
Bernie was robbed by the DNC!!!
The Master of Low Expectations: 666 Reasons Sentient Citizens
are Still Celebrating the Long Overdue Departure of George W. Bush
Wow. At first blush I thought this was going to be a piece of fluff. Instead, it was a very systematic recording and retelling of all that President Obama accomplished while he was in office. So many of these initiatives, successful though they might have been, won't be preserved in the memories of most Americans. Due in part to their selective memories and in part to his humility and choice to not 'market' himself as a symbol of greatness but such is the case of doing good for the sake of doing good; not for self-promotion. Thanks for this thoughtful post!
ReplyDeleteYou're absolutely right about Obama's humility. He is a problem-solver, not a self-promoter. And as thorough as this piece is, he accomplished much, much more on behalf of the American people that most of them will never know about (leave that to historians). Thank you for your comment.
ReplyDeleteThank you... at 62, as you might imagine, I've been through a number of White House changes. Until the Obama/Biden tenure...I could have cared less and in most cases, couldn't even remember the VP name. It took awhile, but this past 8 years has made me proud, made me sit and even stand up...for what I feel is right. Took a young black man from Chicago to help this old hippy find her voice and pick up her sign and work like hell to make things right again!
ReplyDeleteI didn't see this when it was written in January, but it's like a balm now for my wounded and embattled spirit. In the face of the embarrassing and shameful acts by the current faux-POTUS, it is ammunition in a war that is sapping our sanity. We miss the grace and dignity that Obama brought to the White House. We miss the normalcy and sanity of his beautiful family. We miss the respect and cooperation of our world allies. Hard as he might try, Drumpf will never destroy Obama's legacy. The current crazies in charge may shred his policies and turn our country back to the dark ages, but they will never, ever destroy the brilliance that marked the Obama presidency. History will place Obama with the greats. The Cheeto in Chief will be known as the man who degraded and destroyed America.
ReplyDeleteI just wish he'd have picked someone other than Timothy Geitner and went so soft on Wall Street, when people were ready to approve prison for these guys. Major disappointment! But, hey, I voted for Clinton. I'm "realistic."
ReplyDeleteAnonymous, I agree wholeheartedly. He more or less saved the economy, no small feat, but he could have saved AND transformed the economy, considering his numbers in Congress and the size of his mandate. Choosing Geithner and Larry Summers, not nationalizing banks, not using reconciliation for the stimulus (in order to get a bigger/sufficient and far more progressive bill), not prosecuting bank executives were all big mistakes he made. On balance, Obama's caution of deliberative nature were sources of strength, but they ill-served him (and us) in 2009.
DeleteI'm 71 years old. My recollection of presidents goes back to Eisenhower. Obama is by far the best president of my lifetime. I'm glad I had the opportunity to live during the Obama years. He and his family gave us something I'd never seen before and it was a feeling that we were respected as a nation around the world. I miss that a lot. Today, I'm embarrassed by what I see.
ReplyDeleteAn excellent argument to get rid of the outdated notion of presidential term limits.
ReplyDeleteThere are those in this life who leave a lot for you to imagine? Had Republican Leadership in US Congress given a helping hand, where would America be now? Obama wanted the best for this country; and, did his best in humility. That's why he gained my respect. I love, Barack, simply the Best!
ReplyDeleteVery thought provoking. Really made me imagine where America could be now if the Republicans had given a helping hand.
ReplyDeleteHe was the best president in my lifetime, he made me proud to be an American. I miss him desperately & will always love him.
Simply the best, better than all the rest!
You forgot to mention how he forced people to get insurance even if they couldn't afford it. How he made them pay at the end of the year when they filed for their taxes. How he drove up the insurance premiums. How he made the police officers public enemy #1. The mass school shootings the great division of our country. How funny how he gave billions to Iran, a country who wishes us nothing but death. How he told Hillary to back down so he could get another 4 years and that she would win for sure when his 8 years was up. Thank GOD OUR dear President TRUMP stepped in and STUMPED them all. May God bless him with all the shit that has been thrown at him. Let's make America great again people!
ReplyDeleteThanks for your thoughts, Unknown. I am a strong believer in intellectual accountability, so let me address your concrete comments one by one, in order.
DeleteRe: forcing people to have insurance. That's essential to every national health insurance system. If you don't have everyone in the pool, young people (in particular) opt out. We pay for their emergency room visits, but they don't pay in, leaving the pool of people with coverage older and sicker, which makes coverage more expensive for those of us in the pool. In order to lower costs, everyone has to be in the pool, as they are in every developed country.
Re: premiums going up. This issue is a lot more complex than you make it. Premiums for people with more money (say, the top 10-15%) have gone up, perhaps more than they otherwise would have, because it's a progressive bill, but in general, for most people, premiums have not gone up any higher than they would have without the ACA. Premiums were going up significantly every year before passage of the ACA. And Republicans at many levels of government have contributed to the increases in premiums: 1) the filibuster of Senate Republicans after Scott Brown (R) won Ted Kennedy's seat forced the Dems to conference the Senate bill, which had much lower subsidies than the House bill; were it not for that filibuster, subsidies and rates would be much lower; 2) John Roberts allowed states to opt out of Medicaid, which has robbed 10 states of a lot of federal revenue, some of which would lower rates; and 3) Republicans at the state level have been less aggressive in regulating insurance companies that gouge consumers.
Re: there is no evidence that Obama made police officers public enemy #1. He actually tended to speak highly of law enforcement and was endorsed by the National Association of Police in 2012.
Re: the mass shootings. I'm not sure how you can blame Obama for gun violence when he supported gun control but was opposed by Republicans in making even minor reforms. That is a contradictory statement.
Re: giving money to Iran, that money was in conjunction with Iran's de-nuclearization. The money in the agreement made us much safer, made Iran much less hostile to the U.S. and our allies, and cost a lot less than going to war with Iran would.
Re: him telling Hillary he wanted to serve another term, this has never been reported by a valid source and would have been unconstitutional, so it's not realistic. I also somehow doubt Hillary would have been willing to wait.
Thank you.
ReplyDeleteCarey D.
You are RIGHT. Thank you for announcing his achievements so publicly, and in a way that self-involved Republicans will have a hard time denying! Thank you, again.
ReplyDelete