Tag: Barack Obama

Must-read: Dylan Matthews: Barack Obama: One of the Most Consequential Presidents

Posted on by Brad DeLong

Must-Read: Dylan Matthews: Barack Obama: One of the Most Consequential Presidents: “You can celebrate or bemoan these accomplishments…

…But no one can deny that the changes Obama has wrought are enormous in scale. Obamacare: a big ** deal…. National health insurance has been the single defining goal of American progressivism for more than a century… ever since its inclusion in Teddy Roosevelt’s 1912 Bull Moose platform…. It was the big gap between our welfare state and those of our peers in Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. And for more than a century, efforts to achieve national health insurance failed…. Then on March 23, 2010, President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act….

When you consider the law in the context of 100 years of progressive activism, and in the grand scheme of American history, it starts to look less like a moderate reform and more like an epochal achievement, on the order of FDR’s passage of Social Security or LBJ’s Great Society programs….

The Affordable Care Act was hardly Obama’s only accomplishment. He passed a stimulus bill… Dodd-Frank Act…. executive action to… curb greenhouse gas emissions… protect nearly 6 million undocumented immigrants from deportation… ended the ban on gay and lesbian service… made it easier for women and minorities to fight wage discrimination, cut out wasteful private sector involvement in student loans… hiked the top income tax rate… reprofessionalized the Department of Justice….

There are obviously places Obama fell short…. Monetary policy… combating HIV/AIDS and other public health scourges abroad… deport[ing] millions of unauthorized immigrants… perpetrators of torture and other war crimes from the Bush administration should have been criminally prosecuted. But… it could never be said that he accomplished little…. And on foreign issues, Obama’s record is perhaps the most successful of any Democratic president since Truman. He has reestablished productive diplomacy as the central task of a progressive foreign policy….

You can generally divide American presidents into… [the] ultimately forgettable … and the hugely consequential for good or ill (FDR, Lincoln, Nixon, Andrew Johnson). Whether you love or hate his record, there’s no question Obama’s domestic and foreign achievements place him firmly in the latter camp.

Must-read: Juan Linz: “The Perils of Presidentialism”

Posted on by Brad DeLong

Must-Read: Juan Linz’s “The Perils of Presidentialism” is a rather good analysis of Richard Nixon and his situation, but a rather bad analysis of Barack Obama and his. In a way, the McConnell-Boehner-Ryan strategy, taken over from the Gingrich playbook, was based on Linz: Block everything Obama attempts, they decided, and then his supporters who have an exaggerated idea of his power will turn against him, and we will rise to power:

Juan Linz: The Perils of Presidentialism: “Given his unavoidable institutional situation…

…a president bids fair to become the focus for whatever exaggerated expectations his supporters may harbor. They are prone to think that he has more power than he really has or should have, and may sometimes be politically mobilized against any adversaries who bar his way. The interaction between a popular president and the crowd acclimating him can generate fear among his opponents and a tense political climate…. In the absence of any principled method of distinguishing the true bearer of democratic legitimacy,, the president may use ideological formulations to discredit his foes; institutional rivalry may thus assume the character of potentially explosive social and political strife….

This analysis of presidentialism’s unpromising implications for democracy is not meant to imply that no presidential democracy can be stable; on th contrary, the world’s most stable democracy–the United States–has a presidential constitution. Nevertheless… the odds that presidentialism will help preserve democracy are… less favorable…. The best type of parliamentary constitution… [needs] a prime-ministerial office combining power with responsibility… [to] help foster responsible decision-making and table governments… encourage genuine party competition without causing undue political fragmentation…. Finally… our analysis establishes only probabilities…. In the final analysis, all regimes… must depend… upon the support of society at large… a public consensus which recognizes as legitimate authority only that power which is acquired through lawful and democratic means… on the ability of their leaders to govern, to inspire trust, to respect the limits of their power, and to reach an adequate degree of consensus. Although these qualities are most needed in a presidential system, it is precisely there they are most difficult to achieve…

Looking at Obama’s 53% approval rating and contrasting it with GWB’s 28%, it has, obviously, not worked out that way. Instead, it is McConnell and Boehner and Ryan’s supporters–not the president’s–who had exaggerated expectations that were disappointed by reality, and have now turned against their putative leaders and representatives.

Morning Must-Read: James Kwak: Tax Policy Revisionism

Posted on by Brad DeLong

James Kwak: Tax Policy Revisionism: “In an otherwise unobjectionable article…

…the generally excellent David Leonhardt wrote… In the 1950s, the top rate exceeded 90 percent. Today, it is 39.6 percent, and only because President Obama finally won a yearslong battle with Republicans in early 2013 to increase it from 35 percent.”… The 39.6 percent tax rate… was lowered to 35 percent by the 2001 Bush tax cut, which had a sunset provision at the end of 2010…. The 35 percent rate was then extended for two years by the December 2010 tax cut, which was supported by President Obama…. It finally expired on January 1, 2013, at which point the 39.6 percent rate reappeared in its original form. A few hours later, Congress passed a new tax cut for just about everyone, except households with income over $450,000, who were left with the 39.6 percent rate…. President Obama didn’t fight a battle with Republicans. He fought a battle with himself. In 2010 and 2012 he could have restored the top tax rate to 39.6 percent simply by doing nothing and letting the Bush tax cuts expire. The January 2013 tax bill also locked in big tax preferences for capital gains and dividends…. President Obama talks a good game when it comes to inequality, but he hasn’t backed it up…. [In] tax policy, his main impact has been to make permanent most of the inequality-increasing tax cuts that were his predecessor’s most treasured legacy.