Is Barack Obama As Bad a President As He Seems?

The easy answer is yes and is one conservatives eagerly embrace.  But the easy response, I suggest, is not always the right one.  (No pun intended.)

Of course recent events lend credence to the view.  The Obamacare roll-out highlighted incompetence; the Administration’s handling of Syria’s chemical weapons use displayed weakness and vacillation while Snowden’s disclosure of national secrets caused international embarrassment to the President and harm to the country.

Yet some of these reflect merely bad luck in timing.  (Snowden’s treason could have happened under any Administration.)  Still, Obama has benefited from that very factor.  (Would he have won the presidency in 2008 if Wall Street’s near meltdown had occurred in December of that year instead of September?)

He didn’t seem so bad two years ago. (Don’t misunderstand.  I’m not suggesting that Barack Obama used to be a right-winger.  I’m talking about job performance.)

The President set a goal early on to enact radical health care reform.  He succeeded.  He vowed to change the course of American foreign policy by being more solicitous of the attitudes of allies and foes (the “reset” with Russia.)  He promised disengagement with Iraq and delivered.  And, of course, the killing of Osama Bin Laden came on an operation Obama set in motion. 

In a sense, the former community organizer, state legislator, and two year U.S. Senator has performed better than his supporters had any right to expect. 

But his deficiencies five years into his Administration have become obvious, even to formerly ardent media fans.

 

He may be so enthralled by the fawning attention to which he has been accustomed that he cannot distinguish the difference between his wishes and reality.  He may think that his wish becomes transformed into reality because that’s the way his world works. 

So when he told Americans during the debate on Obamacare, for instance, that no one would lose his current health insurance policy, he may have been expressing his wish that that was so.  [But it wasn’t true.  The law, unread by Congress and perhaps by the President as well, proscribed insurance policies which did not meet Obamacare’s coverage minimums.]

Of course, there could be another explanation.  He was simply lying, saying whatever would serve his immediate political interest and policy objectives.

Excuses for Benghazi (an anti-Muslim video was to blame); Syria (what red line?) and the computer disaster with health law enrollment (no one warned me) are evidence for this cynical view.

Whatever the explanation, and both have merit, Barack Obama has been exposed as a deeply flawed president independently of what I suggest have been generally unwise policies promoted by his Administration.  To be sure, a fair assessment of his forty-two predecessors would cause such a label to be applied to some of them, too.

 

He may prove on balance to be a bad president who, like James Buchanan declining to take necessary action to stave off a civil war, failed to take steps against the looming bankruptcy facing the country.  Or, he may experience an epiphany and follow suggestions from his erstwhile conservative opponents. 

Alas, I am unable to confuse the wish with the reality.  I don’t live in the President’s world.