Godfrey Hodgson: Barack Obama and America
[Godfrey Hodgson was director of the Reuters' Foundation Programme at Oxford University, and before that the Observer's correspondent in the United States and foreign editor of the Independent.]
When Barack Obama was elected United States president in November 2008, he was instantly compared with Franklin D Roosevelt: a leader who would use the deep financial and economic crisis he had inherited to transform American politics. The moment seemed propitious to fuse his inspiring human qualities with the clever political calculation expressed by his chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel: "Rule one: Never allow a crisis to go to waste. They are opportunities to do big things."
Even at the time, it seemed to me that a more relevant comparison was with Lyndon Baines Johnson. LBJ had assumed the presidency at a time of perceived national crisis after the assassination of John F Kennedy in November 1963. After eleven months in the White House, the former vice-president was re-elected by what is still the highest proportion of the popular vote in American history.
By spring 1965, violent confrontations over desegregation in the south coincided with Johnson’s first and fateful moves to escalate American involvement in Vietnam. Johnson’s presidency was set on a course that would eventual rob it of forward momentum. In March 1968, Johnson announced that he would not be a candidate for the presidency in that year’s election - an event that can be seen in retrospect as having opened the door to Richard Nixon and (two instances of ineffectual Democratic leadership excepted) forty years of Republican ascendancy.
In a concentrated period of decisiveleadership that lasted less than two years, Johnson passed two important acts of healthcare reform, Medicare (for the elderly) and Medicaid (for the poor); two historic civil-rights statutes (the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965); a groundbreaking series of environmental measures; and dozens of education bills, which together secured a substantial role for the federal government in elementary and secondary schools for the first time in American history.
This record, in light of Obama's current predicament and my earlier view that he might usefully be compared with LBJ, invites a closer look at the two presidencies and their contexts.
The verdict
Barack Obama’s extraordinary campaign offered the prospect of an ambitious portfolio of legislative proposals were he to reach the White House. He has now been in office for a little longer than half of that extraordinarily creative period of statesmanship under Lyndon Johnson. So far, his record in persuading Congress to accept them has been dismal. Now his Democratic Party faces the serious danger of comprehensive losses in the congressional elections in November 2010.
There are many ways to register the gap between promise and reality. Here are just three.
First, Obama pledged to restore the the United States’s reputation in the international arena by making it plain that the country opposed torture and supported fair trials, due process and the rule of law. The signal of this commitment was a promise to close the Guantánamo prison-camp within a year. But the camp remains open, the administration’s declared intention to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (the alleged architect of the 9/11 atrocities) according to US laws is uncertain, and concern with morale in the CIA seems to trump human rights.
Second, Obama the campaigner voiced doubts over the war in Afghanistan. In practice his new strategy there increases the US’s military involvement and extends its range to Pakistan, albeit as part of a plan that envisages eventual withdrawal. In other areas of foreign policy, the president has been unable to effect a rapprochement with Iran and been treated with disdain by China at the Copenhagen climate-change summit (see “Barack Obama: imperial president, post-American world, 7 December 2009).
Third, Obama’s ambitious domestic projects included cutting America’s dependence on imported energy and intensifying efforts to limit greenhouse-gas emissions. His carbon-trading plan will not reduce total emissions and is unable even to offer guaranteed business opportunities.
The picture is more mixed over two major domestic policy priorities, but even here no outstanding success can be claimed. First, Obama did succeed in pushing through Congress a vast stimulus package that has restored the profitability of the financial-services sector, but does not insist that it perform its social function by lending to individuals and small businesses. Unemployment remains high and corrosive. Second, his healthcare-reform plans have become a shadow of his original proposals and even this is reliant for progress on a parliamentary device (“reconciliation”). Washington is now waiting to see whether that will work (see “The United States: democracy, with interests”, 14 August 2009).
The context
The conclusion is unavoidable. Barack Obama, for all his integrity and talent, genuine charm and rhetorical brilliance, has - so far - failed as a president. Perhaps the most clinching evidence for the claim is that this man who sincerely wanted to bring Americans together, to “reach across the aisle” to Republican opponents, and to find common ground in the centre, has overseen a situation where America’s partisan political divisions are more acerbic than ever.
Many would argue that this summary is exaggerated, and that Obama may yet redeem some of his election promises and achieve some of his proclaimed goals. I do not accept, however, that it is unfair: the verdict could be, and often is, stated in far more critical terms.
The point of a comparison with Lyndon Johnson’s record is not to denigrate Barack Obama, still less to airbrush Johnson’s warts. It is rather to hold up a lens to the ways in which American public life has changed, and for the worse, in the years of the conservative ascendancy...
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When Barack Obama was elected United States president in November 2008, he was instantly compared with Franklin D Roosevelt: a leader who would use the deep financial and economic crisis he had inherited to transform American politics. The moment seemed propitious to fuse his inspiring human qualities with the clever political calculation expressed by his chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel: "Rule one: Never allow a crisis to go to waste. They are opportunities to do big things."
Even at the time, it seemed to me that a more relevant comparison was with Lyndon Baines Johnson. LBJ had assumed the presidency at a time of perceived national crisis after the assassination of John F Kennedy in November 1963. After eleven months in the White House, the former vice-president was re-elected by what is still the highest proportion of the popular vote in American history.
By spring 1965, violent confrontations over desegregation in the south coincided with Johnson’s first and fateful moves to escalate American involvement in Vietnam. Johnson’s presidency was set on a course that would eventual rob it of forward momentum. In March 1968, Johnson announced that he would not be a candidate for the presidency in that year’s election - an event that can be seen in retrospect as having opened the door to Richard Nixon and (two instances of ineffectual Democratic leadership excepted) forty years of Republican ascendancy.
In a concentrated period of decisiveleadership that lasted less than two years, Johnson passed two important acts of healthcare reform, Medicare (for the elderly) and Medicaid (for the poor); two historic civil-rights statutes (the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965); a groundbreaking series of environmental measures; and dozens of education bills, which together secured a substantial role for the federal government in elementary and secondary schools for the first time in American history.
This record, in light of Obama's current predicament and my earlier view that he might usefully be compared with LBJ, invites a closer look at the two presidencies and their contexts.
The verdict
Barack Obama’s extraordinary campaign offered the prospect of an ambitious portfolio of legislative proposals were he to reach the White House. He has now been in office for a little longer than half of that extraordinarily creative period of statesmanship under Lyndon Johnson. So far, his record in persuading Congress to accept them has been dismal. Now his Democratic Party faces the serious danger of comprehensive losses in the congressional elections in November 2010.
There are many ways to register the gap between promise and reality. Here are just three.
First, Obama pledged to restore the the United States’s reputation in the international arena by making it plain that the country opposed torture and supported fair trials, due process and the rule of law. The signal of this commitment was a promise to close the Guantánamo prison-camp within a year. But the camp remains open, the administration’s declared intention to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (the alleged architect of the 9/11 atrocities) according to US laws is uncertain, and concern with morale in the CIA seems to trump human rights.
Second, Obama the campaigner voiced doubts over the war in Afghanistan. In practice his new strategy there increases the US’s military involvement and extends its range to Pakistan, albeit as part of a plan that envisages eventual withdrawal. In other areas of foreign policy, the president has been unable to effect a rapprochement with Iran and been treated with disdain by China at the Copenhagen climate-change summit (see “Barack Obama: imperial president, post-American world, 7 December 2009).
Third, Obama’s ambitious domestic projects included cutting America’s dependence on imported energy and intensifying efforts to limit greenhouse-gas emissions. His carbon-trading plan will not reduce total emissions and is unable even to offer guaranteed business opportunities.
The picture is more mixed over two major domestic policy priorities, but even here no outstanding success can be claimed. First, Obama did succeed in pushing through Congress a vast stimulus package that has restored the profitability of the financial-services sector, but does not insist that it perform its social function by lending to individuals and small businesses. Unemployment remains high and corrosive. Second, his healthcare-reform plans have become a shadow of his original proposals and even this is reliant for progress on a parliamentary device (“reconciliation”). Washington is now waiting to see whether that will work (see “The United States: democracy, with interests”, 14 August 2009).
The context
The conclusion is unavoidable. Barack Obama, for all his integrity and talent, genuine charm and rhetorical brilliance, has - so far - failed as a president. Perhaps the most clinching evidence for the claim is that this man who sincerely wanted to bring Americans together, to “reach across the aisle” to Republican opponents, and to find common ground in the centre, has overseen a situation where America’s partisan political divisions are more acerbic than ever.
Many would argue that this summary is exaggerated, and that Obama may yet redeem some of his election promises and achieve some of his proclaimed goals. I do not accept, however, that it is unfair: the verdict could be, and often is, stated in far more critical terms.
The point of a comparison with Lyndon Johnson’s record is not to denigrate Barack Obama, still less to airbrush Johnson’s warts. It is rather to hold up a lens to the ways in which American public life has changed, and for the worse, in the years of the conservative ascendancy...