Barack Obama: a noble failure
(Dan here…NDd takes a shot at evaluating the President Obama legacy.)
by New Deal Democrat
Barack Obama: a noble failure
Let me preface this essay by saying that I voted for Barack Obama twice, in both 2008 and 2012. In fact in 2008 I supported him in the primary against Hillary Clinton, who I believed had a ceiling of support at about 52% or 53% even under even under the most favorable of circumstances (which certainly seems correct now!). I believed Obama was simply more capable of winning the Presidency, and I believed he could overcome his weaknesses and grow into the job. By and large he did, but it took 5 full years before he finally gave up on his central, failed approached to governance. I believe that failure is going to cause him to be ranked, over time, in the bottom half of all Presidents.
“There is no red or blue America,” Barack Obama declared in the 2004 convention speech that first brought him fame. His presidency was largely based on that premise. I think very few people would agree with that statement now. This worldview was epitomized in his 2009 Inaugural Address:
On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord. On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.
….[E]verywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act ……..
What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them — that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply.
For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness…. [W]e cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve ….
But on that very same day in 2009, Mitch McConnell and other GOP leaders also met, and resolved a strategy of total intransigence, to deny Barack Obama any bipartisan victories whatsoever.
Asked about that strategy early on, Obama replied that if Republicans would not come to the table with him, then they would miss the chance to have their imprint of the solutions to big problems. Rather than be shut out, they would negotiate with him for bipartisan Great Solutions.
Eight years later, on the eve of the inauguration of Donald Trump, a man who more than half of all Americans believe lacks the basic temperament to be President, the strategy of complete intransigence must be judged a spectacular success. Obama’s entire governing philosophy is in shambles. Few people now would agree with Obama’s inaugural proclamation that old political battles are over, or that “the lines of tribe” have dissolved.
Barack Obama achieved three notable domestic victories in his time in office: the 2009 stimulus, Obamacare, and his “evolution” on gay marriage which helped lay the groundwork for the apparent success — so far — of that ruling. Internationally he got American troops out of Iraq, brokered a nuclear deal with Iran, an agreement on global warming, and kept significant numbers of American “boots on the ground” being committed to any new conflict anywhere.
But while Obama acknowledged in his 2009 inauguration speech that the economy was in crisis, he aimed a firehouse of money at the financial sector, while leaving homeowners helpless. The “TARP” program was barely implemented at all; mortgage cramdown bankruptcy legislation, which he asked be delayed in 2008, he declined to press at all once he took office.
As a result, Wall Street and corporate America rebounded to record profits quickly. Jobs came a little later, but even now after 8 years few would argue that we have returned to full employment. And wages languished for years, even now only growing at 2.5% a year for nonsupervisory personnel.
Meanwhile he failed at a basic task of administration: nominating and having confirmed candidates for hundreds of Federal vacancies, including not just judgeships, but also several appointments to the Federal Reserve, and *every one* of the nine administrators of the Postal Service. All of these will be gleefully filled by his adversaries after January 21.
And should any of the Supreme Court’s liberal justices — or even Justice Kennedy — pass away or retire from the bench in the next 4 years, the odds are very good that 5 hardline conservative jurists will roll back Obama’s victory on gay rights, along with abortion rights and perhaps even going so far as to reinstate the Lochner ruling which essentially declared all Federal economic welfare legislation unconstitutional.
Great presidents do not see their signature legislation repealed within 30 days of their departure from office. And nobody with working brain cells would deny that the nation of red and blue states is further apart than ever, with people actually making choices about where they want to live based on the political leanings of the state and locality. Great presidents do not see the number of elected offices held by members of their party shrink to near 100 year lows.
Meanwhile Trump also promises to roll back all of Obama’s international deals. And TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, didn’t even survive to January 20, dying at the ballot box on November 8.
The root cause for all of this misfortune is that Barack Obama consistently overestimated the power of his charisma, and underestimated the determination of his opposition. He thought that the merits of his proposals and accomplishments would sell themselves. Thus as early as summer 2009, he allowed the argument about his healthcare legislation to be ceded to “tea party” protesters who appeared at Congressional town halls.
Trump takes to Twitter to use it as a megaphone when he at least temporarily saved 800 jobs at Carrier. Obama never made sure Americans understood that Obamacare had given coverage to some 20 million people, and that medical cost growth had slowed.
In 2010 retiring democratic Representative Marion Berry of Arkansas captured Obama’s quintessential shortcoming in one devastating vignette:
“[Barack Obama] just kept telling us how good it was going to be. The president himself, when that was brought up in one group, said, ‘Well, the big difference here and in ’94 was you’ve got me.’”
Disaster ensured. And ensued again in 2014 as well. And most especially in 2016, with the essential continuation of the United States as a republic more at risk than at any time since 1861.
Barack Obama had noble ideals, and a noble concept of the politics of governance. But his goals were scotched, and his accomplishments are all on the verge of extinguishment. He is well known for taking the “long view,” but sadly for him – and for us – in the long view history will likely judge Barack Obama’s presidency a noble failure.
The Bonddad Blog: “Barack Obama: a noble failure”
As a leftist who voted for Obama both in the primaries and the general election back in 2008 (but then abstained in 2012 before voting only for Bernie in the 2016 primaries), I think you are going WAY too easy on him. There was nothing “nobel” whatsoever in his complete sellout of his supposedly progressive agenda (coincidentally, his Nobel Prize is a permanent stain on that particular honor). In retrospect, he was a bought and paid for tool of Wall Street, corporate America and the defense contractors before he ever got into office. Saying the Republicans “thwarted” his agenda is to let him off the hook for not even trying from 2009-2011 when the Dems had total control of Congress.
I’ll even go you one further, had he been true to his progressive principles by punishing the big banks, prosecuting the Bush era war crimes and torturers, passing Medicare for all instead of the corporatist Obamacare sellout, making job creation his number one priority, stopping NSA spying, stopping predator drone strike assassinations and completely ending all of our disastrous military interventions, the Democrats would have won sweeping victories in the last four election cycles and would be the dominant political party today.
Any realistic historical judgement will place Obama not in the “lower half” of American presidents, but in the bottom five along with both Bushes, Clinton and Reagan. They are the monsters who unleashed neoliberalism and neoconservatism upon America and the world, and under Trump America is about to get its just desserts as what the evil they have wrought upon the lives of countless millions around the globe comes home to roost.
I agree with everything Karl Kolchak wrote until the words “bottom five.” I just don’t see Reagan, Bush the Elder, and Clinton being judged that poorly by history. There were positive outcomes to major events and initiatives under each of these three, and thus, enough fodder for supporters to argue they were successful.
Does anybody know of or recall any time in our own history that the opposition leader in Congress vowed to insure there would be n bipartisan legislation with the new President and then carried out that mandate?
Seems to me that this was a strategy not only to make every effort that the first black President (a Democrat naturally) in our nation would not be successful and thus be viewed as a failure, justifying the white supremacist’s beliefs that blacks are inferior humans, but that it also was a strategy to insure greater partisanship and increase national divisions — ostensibly to make the divisions clearer than ever, precluding compromise as a means of governing.
lol, bottom five? No chance. Sorry, he never was a ‘leftist” period. If you believed that, you are a idiot. A useless idiot easy to control. I think he will rank in the middle and be forgotten generally, unlike GWB who because of bad luck and his own failings, will be remembered forever for 2 different things: Iraq and the financial crisis.
Obama’s tenure will be known by it crazy stability as I call it. Sorry Dan, but full employment is indeed here from the capital pov. You look at the BLS data from a present projection and ignore trends, I look at the lags. Indeed, that 2.5 will be 3.0% in 2017. Guess what, from the modern view, that is full employment. The U-6 does not lie. It is at the same level when Bush was pushing SS reform in the spring of 2005 and when Clinton was banging Monica starting his 2nd term. Your in denial there and it shows. Yet, that was done why the Republicans tried to hurt Obama, yet the crazy stability won out.
From a “accomplishments” pov, well, he never really had a shot. Voters gave him a whopping 2 years with control of the house and that simply is not enough time. Pure and simple. They can “undo” his accomplishments, but that doesn’t mean much. Most of the Trump/Republican “accomplishements” will becoming “undone” by this time 4 years from now as well. The days of big accomplishments are over. Just don’t make a mess and you get your bust in the middle of the hall of Presidents. Unseen, people nobody will talk much about.
Oh yeah PS, TPP is coming back. The fact you think it died cracks me up, I mean, seriously dude, are you dumb?
I credit Clinton with the 2001 recession, although the NBER start date is March 2001.
Since Obama is the only 2 term president without a recession starting on his watch, he will be seen in the top half. I note that some rankings are meaningless as the Fox News commentariat will credit Obama with recession that ended June 2009.
Clinton of Greenspan? Clinton didn’t increase the Fed Rates in 2000.
Better President than the vast majority of this country deserved.
Nauseating to hear these comments on a left leaning blog.
Clueless green lanterns with no knowledge of history, or our government, suffering from a lifelong case of the terrible twos.
Beyond tiring.
EM:
That this blog is left-leaning leaves it open to other opinions, right or wrong.
“Clueless green lanterns with no knowledge of history, or our government, suffering from a lifelong case of the terrible twos.”
Exactly the attitude that ensured a Trump victory: unadulterated hagiography of the incumbent, coupled with doubling down on underestimating, demonizing, and ridiculing the opposition.
Welcome to AB.
Ultimately, Obama was both too good a politician and too poor a politician. I voted for him in 2008 but not in 2012 because he let the GOP best him in order to win a second term. Based on the last 4 years I would have voted for him in 2016 rather than Trump or Hillary and based on the data I have seen he would have won a three way race easily. He is leaving office more popular than Dumbya or Trump. In that regard his caution during his first term when he could have done more– but not much more even during the first two years given the Blue Dogs in both the House and Senate was perhaps too timid. His other failing as a politician was to believe that there were statespeople in either party. That ended with Reagan and unless and until it returns there will be no bipartisan anything–they can not even agree whether we should punish or praise Putin. Similarly, there will be no big things even when one party controls Congress and the White House unless it is politically popular because there is always fundraising and the next election. So I would not call the Obama presidency particularly noble or a failure. I suspect he will get more not less credit in the future, particularly compared to his immediate predecessor and successor
Karl Kolchak’s list supported by some others frankly looks pretty naive. Several of those items would have been blocked by Congress, especially Medicare for all. Some others would not have helped him or the Dems one bit in any of the subsequent election, e.g. stopping NSA spying. How many people voted on that issue? Those midwestern middle income rural people who put Trump in (not industrial working class, sorry), would not have voted for HRC if he had stopped NSA spying or stopped dropping bombs from drones. Get real, please, and it is the election of Trump that is what is making him look like a failure, however noble or not.
BTW, nobody has mentioned his most important foreign policy successes (he certainly had some failures), both of which Trump may undo, one of which is already being undone by Putin. The first was getting a new nuclear arms agreement with Russia, just as Putin was coming back into office again, which nobody talks about, and it is being undone, but was a big deal.
The other is the Iran nuclear deal, which is a very big deal and involved support and cooperation from Russia (and Putin) to pull off. This latter has been loudly targeted by Trump and some others and was supported by zero Republicans in Congress. But like Obamacarfe, it is going to turn out that there are no intelligent or reasonable alternatives, even if Bib Netanyahu likes to claim there are. We may well end up with Iran back to enriching uranium in a whole lot of centrifuges in the near future again, with none of these dirt bag Republicans recognizing what an achievement it was to get this stopped without fighting a war.
In any case, that one especially was a noble success and one of the few things he did that would warrant his mostly ill-begotten Nobel Peace Prize. But, unfortunately, it looks in serious danger of being undone in as stupid a manner as it looks like the incoming gang will undo Obamacare without any replacement of any use at all.
Barkley:
Thank you . . .
with respect
Obama was just noble enough to bring the whole liberal enterprise down with him.
he talked beautifully.
and did essentially nothing for the victims of the giant bank fraud, tried to sell out Social Security, dissed his leftist supporters in “private” and gave us Romneycare with no effort to sell single payer to the people…. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan go on, killing Americans and destroying American credibility in the Middle East, and as a “moral” country. The Iran nuke deal… arguably a good thing… will be undone…
you can’t beat the Republicans if you don’t try. And you can’t beat them if you are one.
The many accomplishments of Barack Hussein Obama II
First, he brought eloquence, style, respect inspiration, character and class back to the White House. There were no scandals. This is not a small thing.
Second, he prevented a second Great Depression. Yes, there were many others involved, but the topic is the Obama Presidency, which covers everything. Much more important, there was no second Great Depression despite strong GOPer efforts to undermine the economic recovery at every possible step along the way.
As The Economist put it, “The bail-outs and stimulus implemented in his first, fraught months in office not only averted economic catastrophe, saving the banks (eventually at a profit) and the car industry: the slant towards tax credits and welfare spending arrested what might have been a gruesome rise in poverty.”
Third, he paved the way for tens of millions of people to get real healthcare, for the first time in their lives. In the words of Joe Biden, “This is a big thing.”
Fourth, he avoided the knee-jerk instinct to get involved in yet another Middle East war.
Fifth, he recognized the rapidly rising importance of the Asia-Pacific region – all of it — like no one since Richard Nixon, and Nixon only saw China (not Japan or ASEAN) as a counterweight to the USSR.
Sixth, his terms coincided with an increase in equity prices that is only matched by the collapse in unemployment.
As an afterthought, the killing of Osama bin Laden, restoring relations with Cuba, containing Ebola, the dramatic drop in the black-white high school drop-out rate, the end to official tolerance of torture and the Paris climate-change deal.
Well done, Mr President.
Disagree and quite frankly appalled by the lack of completeness of the article.
I love the way people forget about the budget fights, debt ceiling holdup, etc.
And I am beyond tired of listening how he “tried” to cut Social Security when if you read the budget that action was attached to a poison pill that took it right off the table. It was negotiating tool. But somehow that is ignored.
EM
it was a ‘negotiating tool’ that gave credence to the idea that SS needed to be fixed, and that robbing the elderly was an acceptable way to do it. it also gave Simpson and Boles a platform to sell their “SS is broke and will be a crushing burden on the young unless it is cut” program
i suppose Lot offering his daughters to the mob to rape instead of his male guests was also just a “negotiating tool.”
Meanwhile, having the praises of the Economist for avoiding another Great Depression may or may not be a meaningful endorsement, but doing nothing for the victims of the bank fraud, and not demanding at least the firing if not the jailing of the high officers of the bank and bank like companies,… i suppose is another eleven dimensional chess move that the working class simply can’t understand…. and so voted for Trump. ignorant ingrates.
I could understand bailing out the banks as necessary to save the economy. But not bailing out the bankers.
I could even understand leaving the banks running the economy as probably necessary until we find some New Dealers who know as much as the bankers. Of course the New Dealers are all dead, so there is no one left to defend it.
Before Obama took office, the FED had saved the banks with more than $10 Trillion in loans and guarantees. He did not save the banking system. Just like he could not have stuffed reform down their throats in return for the cash, he wasn’t in office. And please do not mention Tarp, that was window dressing.
And I understand that people think it would have been easy to punish the bankers, but that is not true. It was true in the S&L scandals, but that was easy compared to the twisted instruments that would have been all but impossible to link to the big dogs.
“The Alchemists,” a Barkley recommendation. Made good airplane reading.
EM
some day i may know as much as you about Obama policy and history, and then i may agree that Obama was a noble person holding back the racist tide.
but until then i form my impressions the way the rest of ignorant americans form their impressions, and whether Obama could have done better, or did do better, i never heard him, or saw any evidence of his, trying to do better.
unjust perhaps.
and compared to what’s coming, maybe the last, failed, hope of America.
no doubt the history books will show that Reagn won the cold war, Bush saved us from terrorism and the mushroom cloud, and Obama prevented a second Great Depression.
And just a word in reply to someone above:
Reagan in Granada, and Bush Sr in Panama restored the honor and glory of American arms… yes?
This is awesome! If you read Karl’s comment and David O’Rear’s comment you’ll see the wisdom in Gore Vidal’s quip that history is the agreed upon myth.
E Michael: Whether it would have been easy or not is beside the point. First and foremost should have been the effort less to punish per se under s stndrd of beyond a reasonable doubt than to try to claw back under civil law tens if not hundreds of billions in ill-gotten bonuses and similar compensation derived from fraudulent practices. The lack of effort was political malpractice that played a big role in the 2010 debacle, the worst mid-term loss in Congress in over a century. It made it look like despite the hopes he inspired, he was just another Wall Street-friendly Democrat, despite the substantive value in Dodd-Frank.
I would try to blend what David O’Rear and the author (Dan Crawford) said. Some good things happened, but the Democratic Party is in a shambles and a lot of the good things will be undone. Bottom 5? No way. Somewhat above the middle in performance (given what he inherited), near the bottom in political impact, near the top in historic significance, near the top in bringing honor and respect to the office.
E Michael: Whether it would have been easy or not is beside the point. First and foremost should have been the effort less to punish per se under s stndrd of beyond a reasonable doubt than to try to claw back under civil law tens if not hundreds of billions in ill-gotten bonuses and similar compensation derived from fraudulent practices. The lack of effort was political malpractice that played a big role in the 2010 debacle, the worst mid-term loss in Congress in over a century. It made it look like despite the hopes he inspired, he was just another Wall Street-friendly Democrat, despite the substantive value in Dodd-Frank.
I would try to blend what David O’Rear and the author (Dan Crawford) said. Some good things happened, but the Democratic Party is in a shambles and a lot of the good things will be undone. Bottom 5? No way. Somewhat above the middle in performance (given what he inherited), near the bottom in political impact, near the top in historic significance, near the top in bringing honor and respect to the office.
New Deal Democrat is the author. Dan uploaded it.
Run
“The End of Alchemy” by Merwyn King (former director of the Bank of England) makes a pretty good read, too. May be a bit heavy for Airplane reading in spots.
How soon we forget.
The Trumpet isn’t even sworn into office yet and some people commenting here seem to have forgotten the separation of powers that prevailed under past administrations.
“doing nothing for the victims of the bank fraud, and not demanding at least the firing if not the jailing of the high officers of the bank and bank like companies …”
Back in the day, that used to be the prerogative of the courts, not the executive branch.
How soon we forget …
-= = = = =
The only thing wrong with the Democratic Party is organization. Not the candidate, not the message, not the policy positions and certainly not the popularity. There were plenty of votes, but they were in the wrong places.
Millions more voters than voted for The Trumpet agree with me on that.
It is purely organizational.
UL,
I share your outrage at the abuses that were not punished. Actually, my outrage is also personal. I spent years building up a small bank(acceptance corp actually) into a viable and profitable business. The abuses of the investment banks drove us to quit the business, as our real prices could not compete with their fake prices.
But you gotta look farther.
The FED and other central banks saved the banking system with huge outlays of funds before Obama took office. Even with that, it was years before the finance system came close to recovering.
If you prosecute these guys, all of them, the end result would have been another blow to the world’s banking system, and one that would have made the recession far, far worse while extending this slow recovery another decade or so.
For that we get what? Maybe a couple of lower level big shots and a couple of big guys to agree to pay fines(see Mozilo) that doesn’t change their lifestyle one bit because trying to “go for the gusto” would inevitably lead to no, or, few, wins?
Outrages me, but I see no purpose in making millions of more people across the world suffer for more years for the purpose of revenge on the mozilos of the world.
Sigh…
Just a bit more from me. Note that I said nothing about the banking issue. I mostly agree with E Michael, who largely channeled my earlier post that most of the saving of the banking system was done by the Fed in various ways prior to Obama becoming prez, with them rolling out all these odd vehicles that got rolled back in and are now supposedly outlawed (no more of that off the wall saving the banking system in a crisis stuff, for shame!). The TARP also predated Obama, whatever one thinks of it, although he did support it when it was passed. The main policy that came after he was in was the successful stress tests in March, 2009, which I do not see anybody criticizing and which played a major role in stabilizing things.
The one item where I agree with the critics on this involves lettiing the big CEOs off. It may have been hard to successfully prosecute them, in the end most probably would have mostly gotten off, but it would have been politically and symbolically and even morally wise. I also disagree with E Michael that doing so would have hurt the banking system. How? Why? I am someone who is not as nonchalant as Dean Baker or even Oliver Hart that we could have just let all those big banks go bankrupt and it would have been not that much of a big deal. But I think we could have prosecuted these top dogs with little negative impact on the financial system as a systemic whole.
Would it have swayed the all-important 2010 election? I doubt it, although it might have helped a bit, and it might have helped a bit during this past prez election, although I doubt enough to actually stop Trump. But, who knows? Maybe it would have pushed sufficiently in the minds of those rural middle class voters in southeastern Ohio, northern MIchigan, southwestern Wisconsin, and southern and eastern Iowa, who seem to have taken so seriously all that junk from Comey in the last two weeks (in PA I think maybe it was the working class in Erie and Scranton area that pushed it over, combined with low turnout of potential supporters in Philly).
In 2010 the big GOP push was not bank bailouts or letting off bankers personally. It was, if you all have forgotten (Coberly?), Tea Party fanatics ranting about death panels, ranting at town hall meetings, and so on, with many of these people frankly further incensed over birther hysteria and similar racist drivel, while youthful and minority Obama supporters sat on their fat asses complacently not voting. So, sorry, I do not buy that the 2010 election rode on that, but I do think that prosecuting the bad guys would have helped the Dems some and would not have damaged the fin system all that much and should have been done for its own sake, if nothing else.
On foreign policy, regarding the claim that O did not stop the wars in the Middle East, well, he did actually pull US troops out of Iraq, but then we got ISIS conquering a big chunk of the country and he has been harshly blamed by many ever since for that. Afghanistan, I do not have the answer for. Unfortunately, although we do not know, if US troops were to have been pulled out of there we may well have ended up with an Iraq type outcome, a renewed takeover by the Taliban or even worse, which obviously is what O feared. Libya and Syria are both awful messes, but he did keep us from being deeper into both of them than many wanted us to be, and I do not have any easy answers for either of them.
Morally the drone warfare may be the worst thing he has been doing, but we do not know what the counterfactual would have been. Lots more US troops in places like Yemen or takeovers of even more countries by seriously bad guys? I do not know and neither do any of you, especially those of you getting on very high moral horses about the matter.
O’Rear
I guess some people didn’t forget because they never knew.
best i can suggest is read a little history, maybe a lot, to get some idea of what the Executive branch can do, either directly or as leadership.
I have interacted with my Senators and Congressmen… all liberal Democrats… and there is a great deal more wrong with them than “organization.” They are either stupid or they don’t give a damn.
EM
maybe you know a lot more than I do about this.
But my memory is that AFTER Obama was in office, there were things that could have been done that should have been done.
There were crimes committed by the banks… that means the executives of the banks. At least some of them should have been prosecuted and jailed as a lesson to others. They would easily have been replaced by eager subordinates and banking would have continued “normally,” with perhaps a little more respect for public responsibility if not the law.
Meanwhile millions of people lost their homes because of bank fraud that continued throughout the Obama administration… I saw that happen first hand. I believe there were measures enacted that could have provided those people relief, but they were not enforced.
Rosser
I don’t know that I am getting on a high moral horse about the matter… and neither do you.
I don’t claim to have all the answers. I merely point out what looked to me like major letdowns of his “base”… if not the ordinary people.
And it is a bit hard for me to follow your logic… you appear to agree with me that a few prosecutions of bankers would not have hurt and might have helped both politically and economically, but at the same time you blame the tea partiers and other lunatics for the loss in 2010 while dismissing my speculation that a better response to the effects of the bank “crisis” might have helped.
We don’t know… at least I don’t know… how successful the Republican appeal to the moron class of voters would have been if Obama had vigorously talked about at least and visibly tried to do something about the economic and human harm taking place on his watch.
that “moral horse” you see here may be a projection of your own uneasiness with finding yourself on the side of someone whose claims to morality were high, but whose accomplishments were small.
Chelsea Manning is out (will be) of jail, but John Walker Lindh is still serving twenty years for nothing more than offending Ann Coulter’s sensibilities.
Coberly,
On the moral high horse story, do not take it personally. You are hardly the only one, and I grant the drone bombs are awful, and I am very uneasy about them. But I would also like to see some of you droning on about foreign policy failures recognize just how big a success the Iran one was. That it may be undone by Trump is not something to sneer at Obama about, as some really lame morons here seem to be doing. This was an enormous and difficult achievement and involved Obama negotiating with leaders from around the world even as a small coterie of politicized idiots dissed what he did. But, of course, this achievement did not figure in the recent election other than fodder for his critics, most of whom should be taken out and shot for their lies about it that they got away with..
I agree prosecuting bad CEOs would have helped, and maybe it would have gotten some of those complacent youngsters and minorities off their butts. But enough to overcome the hysterical racist Tea Partiers screaming about death panels and birth certificates? I suspect we still would have seen a pretty solid GOP victory in 2010, but, no way to know.
Rosser
as much as i would like not to take it personally, finding myself “not the only one” still leaves it feeling kind of personal.
i no doubt have moral feelings, but i try very hard not to get on a high horse about them
i have no desire to pass judgement on Obama as a moral being. I do think we need to take seriously both how he is perceived by at least enough of the electorate to make the difference in an election… and to consider the extent to which his policies or his “leadership” fell short.
you and i agree about much, but can’t seem to get past what look to me like very minor difference about details and reach a point where we can make some progress with what to do about the real problem.
yes the tea partiers and their ilk also can turn an election, but i am not sure they constitute such an overwhelming majority that hanging on to our own natural constituency would prevent them from being the deciding force. in any case the moron majority has been with humanity for as long as any kind of government as existed. if we want to live a better kind of life than what they would doom us to, we need to be smarter then they are… than the people who use them are.
in case anyone was offended, while i do not consider myself part of the moron majority, i do consider myself part of a moron minority. human beings are just not as smart as we’d like to think we are. we need to get past demanding respect and just get on with solving the problems… it may take some working together.
or it may be entirely impossible.
typo report
in the above “i am not sure they constitute such an overwhelming majority that hanging on to our own natural constituency would prevent them from being the deciding force.”
should have been “wouldn’t prevent…”
“as long as any kind of government as existed…”
should have been “has existed…”
Turnout, Coberly. Less than half the US electorate votes, quite aside from GOP suppression of voters. So, especially in an off year when most voters are not paying attention and get complacent and ho hum, it does not take that much extra enthusiasm in a particular direction to really swing things. So, there we were in 2010, with all those fools who voted for Obama in 2010 taking things for granted and sitting on their various behinds, while a bunch of inflamed fanatics went to the polls in a crucial year that determined congressional districts and all that, giving us GOP control of at least the House for a decade, etc. etc. etc.
So, Coberly, really, this is not personal. Really. It is just tragic, Also, really.
Do I have to counsel you two???
Really
i voted for Obana in 2008, and I voted Democratic in 2010.
it seems to me that if the R’s can turn out Tea Partiers, the Dems ought to be able to turn out, say, progressives and maybe even a few ordinary working type people.
But of course they’d have to have something to say… that people could believe.
I don’t see what we gain by saying The Republicans made us do it. Or, Obama could do nothing with the Republicans against him.
and fwiw, i heard Obama today at his last press conference. i loved everything he said… even when he disagreed with EMichael about how to talk to your enemies. He must be a good man. Just didn’t know how to be President.
and of course, us behind sitters don’t seem to know much about winning elections either.
Sending O out to fight the R’s was a bit like sending David out to fight Goliath and having Goliath chop his head off. Hay, I’m not mad at O. Just disappointed.
as for the Dems… I went to a party meeting to try to explain social security to them. they wanted to talk about asking the R’s to engage with them for more civil discourse.
well, they are only people. and they are badly led.
Run
probably wouldn’t help. i’m done.
coberly:
Just do not aggravate that which you can not withstand. Be mellow, go forth, and prosper.
Run,
You were not needed here. This was all pretty mellow with the disagreements pretty mild. Coberly and I have known each other a long time and are in general agreement on most stuff. For example, I share his frustration with Dems who were willing to put Social Security oh the table for discussion for a never to be achieved grand budget bargain, wiht indeed Obama sort of going along with that at certain points. I have even moved closer to his idea that maybe we should try to get some sort of gradual fica increase in to make sure SS remains clearly solvent, although I worry that is not passable through GOP-controlled Congress, but idea is fine.
Barkley:
I was deliberately being tongue-in-cheek in my remarks. I was looking at the words used.
Written enough about the PPACA and the constant barrage of single payer, public option, universal healthcare, etc. comments to understand Coberly’s frustration. Where I could and also not be misunderstood by Coberly, I have stuck my $.02 into the fray on SS. The conversation on both topics always goes to “well this is what we need” which is not going to happen given this political environment.
Nothing coming out of the DEM-progressive-liberal side will pass in the Republican side. Republicans since 2008 have made it abundantly clear they would block The Black Man in The Big White House and anything else. Frustrated with Dean Baker’s comments on a lack of competition in the PPACA by insurance companies. There is a solid reason for such which he does not touch upon and is brought about by Republicans treachery to undermine the ACA.
I could not counsel you Barkley. Old enough to do so; but, I would look foolish doing so. You know more than I do. And I yield to Coberly on SS. Have a good one.
BR,
The finance system depends on investors. If Jamie Dimon and all of the big time execs at Chase had been put under indictment there are not a whole lot of investors in the world that would keep their money in Chase and/or purchase an securities from them and those securities already out there would lost serious value.
Then add in all the other banks.
In short. Lending throughout the US and Europe would have deteriorated well beyond what happened. .
No, EM. They would simply have been replaced by subordinates. As long as the banks themselves were not in danger of failing, and arresting their CEOS (and maybe their CFOs as well) would not do that, unless you are under the delusion that what these people do is actually worth what they get paid and that the poor banks would just fall into the nearest toilet if these top dogs got replaced by underlings.
Keep in mind, the banks basically got saved by the international deal with the ECB, the rolled out Fed vehicles since rolled back in,, and the TARP to some extent, with all that being put in place before Obama became president, and then the stress tests after he got in. With all of those things, the banks could have and would have done just fine, indeed maybe even better, if those badly behavied CEOs and CFOs had been made to at least do some perp walks, even if they ultimately got off.
Really, the big thing O did not do was bail out underwater mortgage holders. However, every time he started to approach doing that, all kinds of bipartisan opposition appeared in Congress and in the agencies,with it basically coming from people holding mortgages not underwater who would complain that it would be unfair to them to bail out all these supposedly irresponsible people who got themselves into these stupid mortgages. Maybe he could have overcome that with some effort, but he did not try to hard, for better or worse. For that he may deserve even more criticism than that he did not jail the naughty CEOs and CFOs, which would really have just been a big political show with zero consequences for the economy either good or bad.
We’ll disagree. It is not the the banks would have been insolvent, it would have been that there would have been no comparable “subordinates” that could come remotely close to replacing the financing that the investment banks provided.
Yeah, the guy trying to buy a house could have walked into his local S&L and gotten a mortgage. Then the next guy. Right up until the point (which would be reached soon) that the S&L was up against its lending limit.
The vast majority of lending in this country goes through the investment banks. Go after the leaders of these banks(and they certainly not irreplaceable), and the investors of the world are not going to by any abses from them.
One of the reasons for the slow recovery is that lending collapsed for a long time after the crash. Prosecutions against these investment banks would have caused that to continue for a long, long time.
EM,
It is not the CEOs or the CFOs of either the banks, whether commercial, investment or totally shadow, who provide the funding for those banks. Are you kidding? They are ripping those banks off and reducing their funding by taking their huge paychecks and bonuses. Fire the bastards and bring in somebody else who gets paid less, e.g. rips off those banks less.
And along the same vein, such prosecutions would not have been “of the banks” themselves, but of a handful of their crooked top dogs. You really think that this handful of crooks were/are propping up the financial system? If so, then indeed we are in disagreement. I think they were and are essentially worthless and easily replaced and are ridiculously overpaid. Get rid of them and pay their successors less, and we would all be better off.
In no way shape or form am I defending these CEOs.
Let em just ask one simple question. If you had $100,000 in savings at your local credit union, and there was no federal guarantee of that savings(like when an ABS is bought, what would you do if the CEO or CFO or President of that credit union(or all three for that matter), were arrested for fraud?
“Local credit union” is small. We are talking about entities most of whom were and are “too big to fail.” Sorry, EM,that did not do it. Nice try, though.
re EM
sounds like what you are saying is that anyone who is CEO of a big bank can do whatever he likes with no fear of jail because arresting him would cause a run on the banks.
not sure we want to establish that as national policy.
in any case, if some of the Trillion Dollars of bailout had gone to the victims of bank fraud it would have made me feel better about the whole thing. instead the fraud continued deep into the Obama administration. I doubt Obama knew about it, but I have this idea that the president needs to make sure he does know about stuff like that.
as it happened we had something of a run on the banks (loss of faith… the banks didn’t trust each other) anyway: that’s what the bailout was supposed to cure/prevent.
according to Merwyn King it didn’t quite work. (King was president (?) of the Bank of England, wrote The End of Alchemy, which to my eye makes some good suggestions about preventing this in the future.)
C’mon Bark,
If the too big to fail banks cannot sell their loans because people will not buy their loans, then lending would have become dependent on those “local credit unions” and others.
And lending would have been greatly decreased for years.
I only used the “local credit union” example to show what investors would have done with the indictments of the CEO. Depositors would have taken the money and run.
BTW,
Thinking you could just indict the CEOs and/or CFOs is a pipe dream. It would have necessitated starting at the bottom of the chain with loan officers and moving up the chain to the executive offices.