By SJ Otto
Barack Obama has only a few weeks left of his presidency so
it is a good time to try to assess what kind of president he was. He goes down
in history as the first black US
president. He was only about half black or less. But he is as black as a US president
ever got so far. If he is known for anything it will be for exposing the
childish, obstructionist and even racist antics of the Republican Party and its
congress people who kept him a lame duck president for almost six years.
Let's remember that The US House of Representatives turned
Republican in November 2, 2010. These new Republicans were mostly Tea Party
conservatives who wanted to push the US to the Far Far right. They
wanted to slash all social programs to the point of no return. They wanted to
make deep cuts do all government programs including education. They wanted to
strip away regulations on businesses. They wanted to end abortion. But they had
one obstacle and that was Obama. He would not go along.
They turned on him with anger. They began to call him a
communist, a socialist a radical leftist and at times a fascist or a Nazi. Their
allies in the media often made fun of Obama's slogans for hope and change. But
the reality is that Obama was actually none of those things. He was not to the
left at all. He was not even a liberal (and many Republicans equate liberals
with communism or socialism). He was a pure centrist politician. He didn't go
along with their far far right-wing ideas, but he also did little to move the
country in the other direction. He didn't cut spending to social services, but
he didn't ad to their budgets either. Social spending
went up because poverty in the US went up. The president didn't cut
regulations, but he didn't ad to them either.
The one thing that might seem liberal was his health care
system that may now end up being repealed. Conservatives call it Obamacare, but
its real name is the Affordable Care Act. But it wasn't straight up socialist
medicine. It attempted to benefit the insurance companies at every turn, even
forcing some people to buy private insurance. It had a lot of problems. It
caused some prices to go up. It forced some people to get new insurance plans.
But it also caused a lot of working people to be insured for the first time. It
stopped insurance companies from refusing to insure people with pre-existing
medical conditions.
The rate of uninsured workers dropped
from 13.3 percent to 10.4 in 2014. That’s the largest single-year drop on
record based on data going back to 1987. And for those who fell way below the poverty
line, Obamacare provided for grants, to states willing to accept them, that
would allow them to expand Medicaid.
While all of this was good for the people who learn to use
it, it was hated by the Republican Party and its conservative supporters. The
House of Representatives had voted more
than 50 times to repeal that law. Many Tea Party governors, such as Kansas'
Sam Brownback, refused the money and refused to expand Medicaid.
On November 4, 2014 the Republicans won back the US Senate.
Now Obama had the same stiff opposition to him from both chambers of Congress. US
Senator Mitch
McConnell stated, “When I first came into office," the head
of the Senate Republicans said, "my number one priority is making sure president
Obama’s a one-term president." This became a calling for both
houses. It lead to pure gridlock. Everything Obama tried to do was stopped by
the Republicans in both houses. Even on issue were they usually agreed they
would not support him. Republicans constantly fought over defense spending
claiming that Obama was gutting the military. That was false. He kept military
spending the same. So here also he is a centrist. He was not cutting
military spending, but not raising it way up either.
"The question remains: was he
too centrist, or too incompetent? In the spirit of Obama-style bipartisanship,
I ask: why can’t it be both? This was a man who had no business in progressive
politics. But he found liberalism wanting a hero, and had us marked for easy
traffic the moment he came on the scene. If conservatives are cheap marks for
authoritarian, tribal appeals, then progressives are susceptible to the Echo of
Kennedy."
As a leftist myself, I noticed when Obama ran for office
that he made no real promises of liberal or progressive change. I didn't expect
that of him and I wasn't disappointed. I knew he was not a leftist.
So when historians look back on Obama's presidency and
wonder why these Republicans were so hostile to him it will look a lot like
pure racism. Their charges against him are mostly false. Their accusations that
he was a radical leftist are ridiculous. Any real scholar will see all of that
and wonder "why did they hate this guy so much?" The real answer is
that the Republicans had a far far right agenda and he got in their way. He
kept them from destroying the government structure they hated so much for six
years. There has to be a little tinge of racism there, just the same. And to future
historians it will look like their opposition was mostly racism. That is the
only conclusion that makes any sense.
......I plan to do another analysis on Obama's foreign
policy later.
No comments:
Post a Comment