President Obama's Moment
By Hunter Baker, Associate Professor of Political Science and University Fellow
Feb 18, 2011 -
Barack Obama has not been elected to the presidency he wanted. The president rose to prominence in an America that was embroiled in controversial wars, but was otherwise growing and prosperous. Dark clouds loomed, but we'd been hearing words like "subprime lending crisis" for some time, and the bomb never seemed to go off.
Shortly before the president's election, the subprime bomb detonated and the American economy teetered on the edge of real disaster. Men on Wall Street, who have lived lives where nothing could touch them, came to understand existential fear during those hard days. While quickly considered legislation and Federal Reserve action managed to stabilize the system, significant damage had been done to the economy and to confidence developed in financial institutions over many decades.
As a result, the America President Obama inherited was not the one he planned to run. He aspired to take over a country where things were going smoothly on the domestic front. His goals were relatively simple. He intended to reduce our military commitment to the war on terror and to develop more multi-lateral relations with other powers. That part gave him immediate appeal.
At the same time, he would increase taxes in the higher brackets and achieve a further redistribution of wealth through expansion of the social welfare state. Unhappily, he finds himself in an America suddenly rolling out trillion dollar deficits annually, reeling from high unemployment and uncertain of the effects of a mega-historic, mega-dollar stimulus.
So, today, Obama has to make a decision. He can bask in the controversial glory of his legislative effort to transform the social welfare state into a still more generous entity and simply finish his presidency impressing coastal elites by not being George Bush, or he can meet the unexpected challenges of the day and use his position to lead the charge toward achieving financial stability.
His first steps post-midterm elections have not been promising. His new budget is nonchalant about the pressing fiscal crisis facing the United States. The lackluster budget proposal follows his failure to jump in and support his own deficit reduction panel of credentialed experts who recommended entitlement reform and a number of other significant cuts (as well as some tax increases).
Some have suggested that the president is being cagey. He doesn't want to take the first step in hard leadership and thus open himself up to criticisms from the Republicans. Perhaps this is so, and he is simply waiting for the moment "when everyone gets into the boat at the same time so that it doesn't tip over," as he put it. If so, the political reality is understandable, but disappointing. If we are indeed "the ones we have been waiting for," as his campaign proclaimed, then it is time for him to lead us. The fiscal challenge is not the one he wanted, but it is the one he has to face. Presidents, especially aspiring transformative ones, don't always get to choose their battles.
This article originally appeared in the Feb. 18th edition of The Jackson Sun