This list of Obama's Top 50 Accomplishments is a useful political resource for everyone.
It's easy to be partisan in the big picture, but it's in specifics that actual policy gets done, and that's where binary thinking might give way to nuanced and thoughtful evaluation. I suspect moderate Obama boosters will find things to dislike just as moderate Obama detractors will find things to admire.
And everyone can use this to judge just how liberal or moderate the president really is. We tend to make such judgments out of the ether - cobbled together from half-forgotten blustery speeches and media-framed characterizations. Poring over the actual policy decisions is a wonderfully clarifying exercise, and the authors have done a great job of making this list tersely coherent, so it can be read through in just a couple of minutes.
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3 comments:
Jim, I think this list is a bit much:
1) No one truly believes that Obama's bill is going to cut health care costs. Obama basically said, oh health care costs are high, what are we going to to do cut health insurance costs? There's a huge disconnect there. Health insurance costs are only high because the underlying health care costs are high! Until we start looking at the reasons that health care (as opposed to health insurance) costs are high (a primary reason is occupational licensing and the substantial regulations on providing health care, for example, the certificates of need necessary to open a new hospital), health insurance costs are not going to decrease. Making something "free" does not in fact decrease the costs.
2) The stimulus is only a success when you look at the model created before the stimulus was passed. Sure, plugging in the numbers to the model yields positive results, but the predicted decrease in unemployment failed to materialize. Unemployment actually stayed higher than the predicted rate, yet Obama continues to claim that the stimulus worked. You have to ask yourself, what would had to have happen for you to admit the stimulus failed? Is there any possible series of events that would have caused you to admit that?
Jim, if the stimulus could have really worked, I'm at a loss to understand how the recession happened in the first place. Bush increased federal spending and the deficit by a dramatic amount during his presidency; if fiscal stimulus is such a sure thing, I guess I don't understand how a massive increase in spending could possibly occur right before a massive recession.
3) There was already something called Basel I in place prior to the financial crisis, that, among other thing, prided itself on its capital risk requirements. Obviously it failed. Dodd-Frank just creates more jobs in the fed gov for regulators, without looking at the underlying reasons for the crisis. People act like there was no regulation prior to the crisis, when in reality the banking and financial services industry was heavily regulated (think Fed Reserve, SEC, CFTC, etc.).
4) Fantastic job, although by moving troops out of Iraq he was following the schedule set forth by Bush. And for some reason, he seems to be repeating the whole Iraq debacle with his attitude towards Iran (right before an election, huh, who would have guessed?), although I'm sure you'll be able to distinguish Iran from Iraq. In fact, this list even praises the sanctions on Iran! Wow, not even a hint of irony there.
5) Troops in Afghanistan have skyrocketed since Obama took office. I think it's great he's moving troops out of there, but he's only decreasing the high level that occurred during his presidency.
I'm happy to go on(and discuss how the race to the top is just another failed attempt to reign in public servants, this time with testing,and how federal intervention in the student loan market is a huge reason education costs have skyrocketed in the past 30 years without providing any serious returns, or how with a straight face you can claim that the torture policy ended when it's now okay to assassinate American citizens.
Should have been "rein in", my mistake.
Hi, Noah, thanks for the comment.
I don't want to argue point by point (for one thing, my reason for recommending the link wasn't booster-ish in the first place; I tried to explain that). But to address just one thing:
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If the stimulus could have really worked, I'm at a loss to understand how the recession happened in the first place. Bush increased federal spending and the deficit by a dramatic amount during his presidency; if fiscal stimulus is such a sure thing, I guess I don't understand how a massive increase in spending could possibly occur right before a massive recession.
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Timing.
Bush's spending wasn't intended to stimulate the economy. Indeed, it didn't need stimulating. That was a whole other thing. So your equation of GWB's unbridled spending with Obama's stimulus is false. It's a difference of timing and intent.
The right tried to spin the stimulus as just more of that same old free-spendin' liberal big government socialist stuff. That was just political hot air. First, unbridled spending characterizes Republicans (e.g., per your example, GWB) more than any Democrat we've seen in half a century (McGovernism was soundly beaten, though lives on as a straw man). And, second, serious economists of both persuasions backed this particular stimulus.
"Free spending" as ongoing gov policy is definitely not good for our economy. But you can't treat a horrendous recession/depression with austerity. That's what Hoover tried to do in the early 30's, and what Japan tried to do in the 90's. Disasters both. When the private sector won't circulate capital, there's nobody but gov to reboot a locked-up economy. It's horribly inefficient (which is why gov as ONGOING spender is a bad idea) but sometimes you have to go with the lesser evil just to pull out of the very worst holes.
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