Michael Hirsh: Barack W. Bush
[Michael Hirsh covers international affairs for Newsweek, reporting on a range of topics from Homeland Security to postwar Iraq...Hirsh graduated magna cum laude from Tufts University in 1979 with a B.A. in philosophy. He also holds a graduate degree from Columbia University in international and public affairs.]
Obama's approval numbers early in his term are closing in on his predecessor's. Are his policies too?
It's the difference between politics and governing—more a chasm than a difference, really. Often, after a vociferous campaign denouncing his predecessor's policies, a new president finds that not all of those policies are so terrible when viewed from the lonely promontory of the Oval Office. During the 1952 campaign, Eisenhower criticized Truman-style containment as meek. By six months into his presidency, Ike had embraced containment as the only practical way of dealing with the Soviets. In 1992, Bill Clinton belittled George H.W. Bush for botching the economy (stupid). Soon after his inauguration Clinton lamented that he was becoming an "Eisenhower Republican" as he pushed through a tax increase and fiscal austerity. George W. Bush famously despised his predecessor and tried to be the un-Clinton in his first term, especially on foreign policy. By his second term Bush was practicing a very Clintonesque brand of centrist diplomacy around the world.
Somehow, though, people expected something different from Barack Obama. The man was a political phenomenon, after all, a historic president, and Bush had left office with historically low ratings. Obama did seek to erase Bush's legacy even faster than Bush had tried to do with Clinton, repudiating W's policies even as the latter sat on the podium listening to Obama's inaugural address. But a little more than six months in, with his approval ratings now hovering around where Bush's were in late July 2001—in the mid to high 50s—the Obama administration is beginning to resemble the Bush team in more ways than you might think. It's not just a question of converging poll numbers; we are starting to see converging policy positions as well—which is a remarkable thing to contemplate considering where the two presidents began ideologically.
Consider: Obama wants to close Gitmo but can't seem to get around to it. He's facing down North Korea and getting into bed with China. He's followed Bush's economic bailout plans pretty much move for move, except for the stimulus. Obama, like Bush, has got a vice president who's out of control and staking out a harder line, for example on Russia. (OK, Jokin' Joe Biden is not exactly Dick Cheney in outlook.) He's got a Supreme Court nominee who, according to some of her senatorial questioners, sounded unempathetically like John Roberts at her confirmation hearing. And after months of fruitlessly awaiting an answer from Tehran on engagement, Obama is now being forced to adopt an almost neocon view of Iran's protest-wracked government as illegitimate. (If he doesn't, what does that say to the protesters and their liberal supporters?) The eager young president who came into office seeking foes to engage is finding that he has almost no one to talk to except for the old stalwarts that Bush liked to meet. Oh yeah, and both Bush and Obama have dug deep fiscal deficits....
Read entire article at Newsweek
Obama's approval numbers early in his term are closing in on his predecessor's. Are his policies too?
It's the difference between politics and governing—more a chasm than a difference, really. Often, after a vociferous campaign denouncing his predecessor's policies, a new president finds that not all of those policies are so terrible when viewed from the lonely promontory of the Oval Office. During the 1952 campaign, Eisenhower criticized Truman-style containment as meek. By six months into his presidency, Ike had embraced containment as the only practical way of dealing with the Soviets. In 1992, Bill Clinton belittled George H.W. Bush for botching the economy (stupid). Soon after his inauguration Clinton lamented that he was becoming an "Eisenhower Republican" as he pushed through a tax increase and fiscal austerity. George W. Bush famously despised his predecessor and tried to be the un-Clinton in his first term, especially on foreign policy. By his second term Bush was practicing a very Clintonesque brand of centrist diplomacy around the world.
Somehow, though, people expected something different from Barack Obama. The man was a political phenomenon, after all, a historic president, and Bush had left office with historically low ratings. Obama did seek to erase Bush's legacy even faster than Bush had tried to do with Clinton, repudiating W's policies even as the latter sat on the podium listening to Obama's inaugural address. But a little more than six months in, with his approval ratings now hovering around where Bush's were in late July 2001—in the mid to high 50s—the Obama administration is beginning to resemble the Bush team in more ways than you might think. It's not just a question of converging poll numbers; we are starting to see converging policy positions as well—which is a remarkable thing to contemplate considering where the two presidents began ideologically.
Consider: Obama wants to close Gitmo but can't seem to get around to it. He's facing down North Korea and getting into bed with China. He's followed Bush's economic bailout plans pretty much move for move, except for the stimulus. Obama, like Bush, has got a vice president who's out of control and staking out a harder line, for example on Russia. (OK, Jokin' Joe Biden is not exactly Dick Cheney in outlook.) He's got a Supreme Court nominee who, according to some of her senatorial questioners, sounded unempathetically like John Roberts at her confirmation hearing. And after months of fruitlessly awaiting an answer from Tehran on engagement, Obama is now being forced to adopt an almost neocon view of Iran's protest-wracked government as illegitimate. (If he doesn't, what does that say to the protesters and their liberal supporters?) The eager young president who came into office seeking foes to engage is finding that he has almost no one to talk to except for the old stalwarts that Bush liked to meet. Oh yeah, and both Bush and Obama have dug deep fiscal deficits....