I didn’t want to write this. Perhaps that’s why it has been more than a year since I last updated my presidential rankings blog. I apologize to my three avid readers. The reason is simple. As a history teacher, most folks (including students) respect your opinion when discussing American history even if they don’t agree with it. They assume, I suppose, that you’re well-versed in the subject, have studied it extensively, and have come to your conclusions in a logical and respectable manner. Yet, when you apply the same methods of analysis to modern politics that you used when studying the past, they automatically pass judgement. If they agree with you, you really know your stuff. If they disagree, you’re a political hack whose perspective shouldn’t be taken seriously. This is why I didn’t want to write this blog entry and why I don’t like teaching about 21st Century American political history. That being said, take everything I’ve written with a grain of salt. If you agree, great. If you don’t, it’s a free country and you’re entitled to your opinion. Here goes… 2004 was a big year for a political nerd like me. It was the first election in which I was legally old enough to vote and I was excited. I was turned off by the Bush Administration. The disastrous war in Iraq that started during my senior year of high school was the first event that really caused me to examine my own political beliefs. I had made the decision that I was going to vote for Senator John Kerry. However, as excited as I was to vote. As enthusiastic as I was with the prospect of making George W. Bush a one term president, I can’t say that I was overly enthusiastic to vote for John Kerry. The Massachusetts Senator was more than qualified. He had served our nation during Vietnam and I found that I agreed with him on many policies. But I didn’t feel any political excitement. Truth be told, I didn’t even support Kerry in the primary. I was hoping General Wesley Clark would win the nomination. Nevertheless, Kerry was the nominee and he had my vote. However, as I sat watching the 2004 Democratic National Convention I felt political excitement for the first time. A State Senator from Illinois came to the podium to deliver the keynote address. The speech he delivered that night would change his political life and set into motion a series of events that would forever change America. Like the vast majority of Americans, I had no idea who Barack Obama was in 2004. Within a few years, everyone in the country would know his name and, likely, have a strong opinion about him. “This guy should run for president.” I thought. As it turns out, millions of other Americans had the same idea.
Barack Hussein Obama was elected President of the United States in November 2008. His election was historic by any measure. The biracial son of a Kenyan father and a white mother from Kansas, Obama’s story is one that could seemingly only happen in America. He managed to defeat the Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton during the primary before challenging Senator John McCain in the General Election. It was during the fall campaign that the juggernaut that was the Obama Campaign gained traction. A multiracial coalition of young voters, midwestern moderates, and coastal liberals proved to be too much for the McCain campaign, and many down-ballot Republicans, to overcome. There was a very real sense when Americans went to the polling place in 2008 that they were participating in something historic. After all, Barack Obama is black. Had he been born a little more than 100 years earlier, he would have legally been considered ⅗ of a person and had no legal rights. Now, he was President of the United States. Historic is an understatement. Obama’s election represented a level of racial progress that previous generations could scarce have imagined. America had resoundingly chosen a black man to lead the nation. No one should diminish the significance of such an event. And yet, Obama’s ascent to the nation's highest office exposed the ugly truth that America had not achieved the post-racial society that so many pundits of the time predicted. Racism still exists and, as enterprising politicians soon learned, could be used to rally support for their cause. Obama and his family were attacked because of the church they attended. Ironically, at the same time, the President, a professing Christian, was labeled a secret Muslim hellbent on implementing Sharia law on an unsuspecting nation. He and his wife were depicted in political cartoons as terrorists, black nationalists, and various other hateful caricatures. Right wing media questioned why the Obama’s didn’t have any “white dogs” in the White House. All the while, mainstream conservative commentators proclaimed that the President had a “deep-seated hatred for white people” and played songs such as “Barack the Magic Negro.” This all culminated with the rise of the racist lie that Barack Obama was not born in the United States and therefore was an illegitimate president. This lie was perpetuated by "Celebrity Apprentice" host and one time steak pitchman Donald Trump who used it to launch his political career. Anything that could be used to otherize Barack Obama was used to undermine his presidency. These were not principled policy debates. This was fodder for a quickly shrinking segment of voters who felt threatened by an ever changing America. An America represented by Barack Obama. No other president in American history had to endure attacks of such a vitriolic nature. In spite of this, Obama left office after two convincing elections with an approval rating approaching 60%. No President since Roosevelt had entered the White House with such a challenging economic situation. From the final months of 2008 through the first 3 months of Obama’s presidency in 2009, the nation was averaging more than 700,000 job losses per month! The economy would continue to see negative job numbers until the earliest months of 2010. As it approached the end of his first year in office, the Obama Administration was staring at double digit unemployment and a rapidly contracting GDP. Such dire economic numbers are generally the opening line of political obituaries. Yet for Obama they were merely the first tremulous act in a successful two-term presidency. In the final days of the Bush Administration, during the earliest days of what would come to be known as the Great Recession, the financial sector was on the verge of collapse. The failure of Lehman Brothers, the stock market crash, and a hemorrhaging housing market had many economists worried that we were heading for a 1930s level economic catastrophe. President Bush proposed the hugely controversial Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (aka The Bank Bailout) that begrudgingly received bipartisan support, including by then senators Obama and McCain, which may have prevented a second Great Depression, but did little to address the long term impact of the crisis. Those consequences would have to be addressed by the next administration. So how did President Obama try to fight the recession? In February 2009 Obama signed into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The price tag of $787 billion seems small in comparison to the spending spree we’ve seen in recent years, but at the time it was hugely controversial. Conservatives attacked it as government overreach and liberals attacked it as too limited. The law included government investment in healthcare and infrastructure but also included targeted tax cuts. The struggling automotive industry was assisted through loans and American consumers benefited from the “Cash for Clunkers” program which increased demand. Meanwhile, the Dodd-Frank Act reformed Wall Street regulations to try to prevent future financial crises and the Credit CARD Act sought to ease the debt burden faced by millions and outlaw predatory lending practices. By late 2009, the economy was showing steady signs of improvement. The job market however, was the last to recover. The Obama Administration was saddled with frustratingly high unemployment through much of its first two years in office. However, once the job market began to rebound near the end of 2010, it began a string of 75 straight months of job growth. By the time he left office in January 2017, unemployment was 4.7% below historic averages. In the post-WWII era, Obama trails only Clinton and Reagan in terms of net job creation with more than 11 million jobs added. On the world stage, Obama had mixed results. From the signing of the Paris Climate Accords to the seemingly intractable American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama focused heavily on repairing relationships with NATO allies after years of disagreements between the US and Europe during the Bush years. While he no doubt made progress in the area of climate and counter terrorism, he was rightfully criticized for downplaying the threat posed by Russia; going so far as to mock Republican candidate Mitt Romney for voicing concern during a 2012 presidential debate. The Middle East was a focal point of foreign policy during the Bush years, and the Obama Administration would be no different. Early in his presidency, Obama fulfilled a campaign promise by delivering a speech in Cairo, Egypt aimed at addressing the increasingly strained relationship between the United States and the Arab world in the years following 9/11 and the War in Iraq. Middle East policy would be a challenge for Obama just as it had been for many of his predecessors. Obama pursued a policy of direct engagement, not only with our partners in the region, but also with our advisories. This can be seen with his multilateral negotiations with Iran that resulted in the much debated Iran Nuclear Deal. When the Arab Spring erupted resulting in mass protests against authoritarian regimes in the region Obama had to walk a tightrope between being supportive of the protests, while also acknowledging the instability that would inevitably come to the region. Instability that contributed to the disaster in Benghazi, Libya and the increase in violence in Egypt, Iraq, and Syria where ISIS soon began to take hold. Obama’s approach to ISIS was to rely upon international partners, including those in the region, in support of limited military engagement by US forces. A policy, that while slow and frustrating, seems to have been largely successful. However, whatever his failures or successes, Barack Obama’s foreign policy will always be remembered for a renewed focus on al-Qaeda and bringing to justice the mastermind of the September 11th attacks: Osama bin Laden. After an initial international manhunt following 9/11 the hunt of bin Laden had become an afterthought for the Bush administration by 2008. When asked about finding the al-Qaeda leader during the 2008 campaign, then candidate Obama promised to once again make it a priority and suggested that he would be willing to take unprecedented steps to locate bin Laden. Those steps were taken in the Spring of 2011, when the CIA reported that they believed they had located bin Laden in a compound in Pakistan, our ally in the War on Terror. Obama made the controversial decision to send a team of Navy SEALS to the compound to conduct a raid to kill bin Laden and recover his body. The raid was a success, al-Qaeda was weakened, and justice was done. Much like foreign policy in general, Obama’s handling of the so-called War on Terror was a mixed bag of successes, frustrations, and failures. The killing on bin Laden and the weakening of al-Qaeda was no doubt a success. However, the expanded use of drone strikes to target suspected terrorists, and his failure to close the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba highlight the complicated nature of Obama’s efforts. However, in the years since leaving office it appears the Obama Administration, like the Bush Administration before it, maintained a vigilant and steady approach to addressing the national security of the United States no doubt making the US less vulnerable to foreign attack than two decades earlier. Barack Obama impacted the judiciary in a significant but limited way. During his first term, Obama appointed two new justices to the Supreme Court Sonia Sotomayer, the first Latina member of the court, and former solicitor general Elena Kagan. However, beyond these two appointments, Obama’s ability to appoint justices in accordance with his constitutional duties would be scuttled by the man who would prove to be his arch-nemesis: Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. In 2010, McConnell stated that making Obama a one-term president was his most important goal. Of course, McConnell failed miserably in this pursuit as Obama was reelected by a strong margin in 2012, however in terms of hurting the Obama agenda, McConnell used every tool in the tool box. The filibuster is a senate rule adopted in the early 1800s, but rarely used until the latter half of the twentieth century, that requires a 60 vote margin in order to pass most legislation in the US Senate. You will not find this rule in the Constitution. For decades the Senate passed a tremendous amount of legislation passed without the threat of a filibuster, and when one was used it required that a senator (or group of senators) take the floor and refuse to yield. As time went on, the filibuster morphed into what it is today, a procedural vote that requires 60 senators to agree before any issue can advance. Mitch McConnell used this to his benefit, at times bringing the Senate to a halt. McConnell, the Senate minority leader, instructed his caucus to stop everything; most importantly judicial appointments. The GOP minority filibustered more judicial appointments in Obama’s first 5 years than the previous 40 years combined. Vacancies on district and appellate courts were left unfilled for months, sometimes years, at a time. It is for this reason that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid invoked the hyperbolically named “nuclear option” and removed the filibuster for all presidential appointments except for Supreme Court nominees. When McConnell became the Majority Leader in 2015, he doubled down on his obstruction using his new power to prevent even more appointments going so far as to refusing to even hold a confirmation hearing for Obama Supreme Court Nominee Merrick Garland to fill the vacancy created by Justice Antonin Scalia’s death. In doing so, McConnell personally changed the size of the Supreme Court to 8 justices for an entire year. In two years under McConnell’s leadership, the Senate confirmed fewer justices (20) than any other Congress had in more than 50 years. By the time he left office, there were 105 vacancies on the federal bench. Obama nominated judges to fill many of these vacancies while Mitch McConnell refused to allow the Senate to vote on their confirmation. Congressional obstruction and gridlock came to define the Obama years. A new GOP emerged in the post-Bush years. No longer united by conservative values, they were now singularly defined by the opposition to Barack Obama. Not since the earliest days of the Whig Party in the 1830s had a political party been united by nothing more than opposition to a single president. Issues that used to be table stakes for Congress like raising the debt ceiling and confirming secondary level executive branch appointments, had now become political wars of attrition. For the GOP, opposition to Obama was the coin of the realm. Even when the bipartisan “Gang of Eight” put forward an Immigration Bill that easily passed the Senate, the Republican Speaker of the House John Boehnor (who supported the bill) refused to bring it to a vote. It would have passed with bipartisan support, but the extreme right of his party opposed it because it would be signed into law by President Obama. Many of the folks that were swept in office in 2010 and beyond came to Washington with little interest in governing. They came to disrupt, obstruct, and grandstand. A critique shared by their former leader, Speaker John Boehnor: "Most of these guys who poke their heads up and vote 'no' on every compromise claim they're doing it all for 'conservative principles' don't actually give a sh-- about fiscal responsibility. It's not really about the money. It's not about principle. It's about chaos." No doubt, many in the TEA Party movement were genuinely concerned about taxes and the growth of government, but many others had little interest in promoting a governing agenda for America. Their opposition was not based upon deeply held ideological convictions. Their opposition was to Barack Obama the man. A black man that many in their caucus falsely believed was born in Kenya. Fed a daily diet of misinformation from a growing right wing media apparatus that gave a platform to the most extreme views, GOP voters in 2010 and 2014 supported primary candidates that challenged traditional conservative members of Congress that were interested in governing. Over the course of several election cycles, fiscal and culturally conservative Republicans were weeded out in order to make room for performative propagators of outrage and conspiracy. A sad reality that has persisted in the years following Obama’s departure from Washington. The inability of Congress to govern through much of Obama's presidency will always be a dark spot on the history of House and Senate; making a mockery of the Founders' intentions for the First Branch. It was a result of this legislative dysfunction that Obama leaned into executive power. To his critics, Obama's use of executive orders was proof that he was a tyrant. Meanwhile, his liberal allies often lamented that he didn't exercise more executive authority. For the record, Obama issued fewer executive orders than either of his previous two predecessors and in eight years in office issued only 56 more than his successor did in four years. Such executive action can only be properly understood when presented within the context of legislative inaction. After the horrific mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012, President Obama issued 23 wide-ranging, but limited, executive orders aimed at reducing gun violence and enhancing school safety while calling on Congress to do more. In typical Senate fashion, a minority of Senators used the procedure 60 vote threshold to block passage of two bipartisan bills designed to keep deadly weapons out of the hands of individuals determined to hurt other people. Obama's executive orders would be the only federal response to the tragedy. However, some orders were more impactful. When Congress failed to pass the aforementioned bipartisan immigration reform bill. Obama issued a number of executive orders to address the broken immigration system. None more meaningful or beneficial than the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals, better known as DACA. The action protected undocumented immigrants who were brought. to the United States as children, from deportation. While it did not provide a pathway for citizenship, it created more opportunities for the Dreamers to work, get an education, and continue to build a life in the only country most had ever known. For all the discussion of executive orders, no president can be considered successful unless they have at least one significant legislative achievement during their time in office. For Barack Obama, that achievement was the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, better known as the ACA or “Obamacare.” Since the days of Theodore Roosevelt, Presidents and Congress have debated the best way to provide healthcare to the American people. Some have argued for a single-payer system with government control like those in much of Europe. While others have argued for free market solutions without the needless bureaucracy of government. In the end, the healthcare system created by the United States was one largely run by the private sector. Following WWII, health insurance became a staple of benefit packages offered by employers. The concept of tying one's healthcare to one's employer is as American as apple pie. As the decades passed the healthcare system was gradually regulated and the government began to play a greater but still limited role. Most of this change occurred during President’s Johnson’s “Great Society” reforms. And yet, despite the popularity of programs like Medicare and Medicaid, Americans have always been leery of government regulation of healthcare. Decades of insurance company lobbying and Cold War era fears of socialism made tackling America’s healthcare crisis a political third rail. See early 90’s Hillary Clinton. However, by the turn of the century American were more unhappy with their healthcare coverage than ever before. On average American’s paid more for healthcare than comparable nations and received far worse outcomes. The United States had the best doctors and hospitals in the world and yet they were financially off limits to the majority of Americans. Americans could be denied healthcare due to a preexisting condition, meet lifetime maximums in terms of coverage, and young adults could be kicked off their parents' coverage. The Great Recession exasperated the problem. With healthcare coverage tied to employment, millions of Americans lost their healthcare coverage when they were laid off through no fault of their own. The challenge of reforming healthcare had crippled the most talented of politicians in the decades leading up to Barack Obama’s election. And yet, where others had failed, Obama succeeded.
The legislative healthcare battle that occurred during Obama’s first term demonstrated the President’s pragmatic progressivism. He wanted broad support for the bill not only from progressive Democrats, but from moderates, and willing Republicans as well. In order to achieve this, some ideas were off the table. Far left ideas such as a single-payer system and eventually even the more moderate public option were not included in the final bill. Instead, Obama opted for a free market approach that would keep insurance companies in place and allow them to remain profitable, meanwhile the government would set new standards while also supporting families (and states) for whom healthcare coverage was too burdensome. “Obamacare” was modeled after a plan put in place by the Republican Governor of Massachusetts and 2012 presidential rival Mitt Romney. Obama went so far as to conduct negotiations with congressional GOP leadership on live television. However, in the end not one Republican member of Congress would vote for the final bill. Despite huge majorities in both the House and the Senate, Democratic leadership was forced to use a budget reconciliation strategy to pass the bill, which was signed into law by President Obama on March 23, 2010. Pundits predicted that the controversial new law would spell the end of Obama’s presidency and those of his Congressional allies. No doubt, for many Democratic members of Congress from moderate and conservative leaning districts, it did mean the end of their time in office in November of 2010. But for Obama, it meant a convincing reelection. Despite the disastrous rollout of healthcare.gov, the ACA has endured and has gained in popularity with each passing year. Lifetime maximums and denial due to preexisting conditions are things of the past. Three times the law has been challenged before the Supreme Court and three times it has been upheld. When the Trump administration made repealing Obamacare a signature part of their agenda in 2017, many assumed the law would be destroyed because of the Republican majority in the House and Senate. And yet, in a twist of fate, it was Republican Senator John McCain, Obama’s 2008 opponent, together with Republican Senators Collins and Murkouski that ensured that the law would survive. Before passage of the Affordable Care Act, more than 60 million Americans lack health insurance. In 2021, more than 90% of Americans have healthcare coverage in some form and premiums rose at a slower rate than before passage of the ACA. Barack Obama, knowing the political minefield he was walking into, famously claimed that he was willing to risk his presidency to achieve healthcare reform. Now, 11 years later it is arguably the most lasting part of his legacy. After 8 years of a politically fraught presidency, Barack Obama left the White House. He had presided over nearly 6 straight years of economic growth, a sizable reduction in the number of Americans lacking health insurance, a restoration of American leadership in the world, and a rapidly changing society continuing to grapple with what it means to be an American. In the final analysis, history will remember Barack Obama was a groundbreaking, consequential, effective and successful leader.
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