Is Barack Obama’s the Democrats’ Reagan? The Christian Science Monitor’s Linda Feldmann, in a cover story, looks at his time in office and concludes that while Obama has a large legacy, he can’t yet be called transformative. Here are a few chunks of it:
Now, 6-1/2 years into Obama’s presidency, the outlines of his legacy are clear: a major health reform that has added millions to insurance rolls, a recovering economy, Wall Street reform, a national right to same-sex marriage, diplomatic relations with Cuba, a nuclear deal with Iran, enhanced workers’ rights, and aggressive new rules to combat climate change.
Add to that the rise of the Islamic State group and expanded use of drones to kill terror suspects overseas, two more legacy items that are less points of pride than challenges Obama will hand his successor.
Then there’s the racial turmoil of the past few years, and the national conversation it has sparked – a conversation that Obama, as the first black US president, has been uniquely positioned to participate in and often lead. That moment in June when he sang “Amazing Grace” at the funeral of the Rev. Clementa Pinckney will go down as a transcendent moment in his presidency.
The idea, in early 2008, that Obama wasn’t offering himself as “a singular figure” now seems disingenuous, at least on racial matters. Almost by definition, the first African-American president is a transformative president.
And he’s also changed ab assumption about Presidents by the way he’s conducting his second term:
Yet Obama is also defying some of the paralyzing pitfalls of a second term – at least so far. As recently as a year ago, he was shunned by members of his own party going into the midterm elections. He was considered a radioactive presence on the campaign trail, and pundits were calling him one of the weakest presidents in the postwar era.
Now, suddenly, he’s cutting nuclear deals, ending decades of animosity with Caribbean communists, forging far-reaching trade pacts, and soothing the nation on the crucible of race.
While many people virulently oppose most of these initiatives, no one can accuse him of succumbing to lame-duck status. Even though Republicans control both houses of Congress, Obama has put them on the defensive, forcing them to try to muster veto-proof majorities and go to court to block his initiatives.
All of which raises the deeper question of whether Obama will go down in history as a transformational, Reaganesque leader who has changed the overall direction of the nation. For now, it might be premature to anoint him into the kingdom of Gipper-Dem.
“Will Obama become the poster child of the Democratic left, the way Reagan has become the Republican poster child, especially for conservatives?” says presidential historian Robert Dallek. “That might be the case. But it so depends on what comes next.”
Could it be Hillary Clinton? Could it be a President Hillary Clinton totally checkmated by a GOP Congress, unable to advance the Democratic agenda or get Supreme Court nominees approved? Or could it be that the conventional wisdom — revealed more than ever early in this Presidential election cycle as an emperor with no clothes — could be more hideoously wrong than it has been so far and 2016 sees the election of Donald Trump to the Oval Office? Is this as far as Obama’s agenda goes and will it crumble in the end?
Just as Reagan was succeeded by a member of his own party – his vice president, George H.W. Bush, who continued his policies, albeit under the banner of “kinder and gentler” – so, too, does the scope of Obama’s legacy depend on the election of a Democrat in 2016. Start with the fact that the next president is likely to nominate one or more Supreme Court justices.
Then comes Obama’s aggressive use of executive power. It has allowed him to defer deportation for some undocumented immigrants, enact sweeping new climate-change rules, and go bold on foreign policy. The downside, for Obama, is that the next president could undo his actions, though as then-senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer told The Huffington Post last year, “in politics, it’s possible to deny people things. It’s almost impossible to take things away from them.”
State-led court challenges, too, could thwart his immigration and climate-change initiatives.
I’ve often noted here and in the Cagle Cartoons column I wrote that it could turn out that Obama isn’t seen by historians “another Reagan” or “another Carter” but that with the passage of time their analysis comes up with a “type” so that a future President could be called “another Obama.” And it’s too early to tell whether that’ll be a compliment or an insult.
But if there’s one thing that is certain, it’s this:
Conservatives see red when the Obama-Reagan comparison comes up.
“When a liberal invokes Ronald Reagan’s name to defend a specific policy, it is almost certain to be a policy Reagan would never have defended,” writes Tom Nichols, a professor of national security affairs at the US Naval War College, in a column in The National Interest.
Obama’s Iran deal isn’t analogous to Reagan’s Soviet deal, Professor Nichols argues, because the Soviet Union was enfeebled economically, and had given up its ideology, which Iran has not. And, he says, the verification regime the Soviets agreed to was substantially stricter than the Iran deal.
That analysis addresses a specific policy matter. But the larger question of whether Obama becomes the Democrats’ Reagan may take years, or even decades, to answer. Obama would have to embody what it means to be a Democrat and help define and shape Democratic politics for a generation, says Andra Gillespie, a political scientist at Emory University in Atlanta.
“That’s the extent of being the standard,” says Professor Gillespie. “And I’m not sure, when people define the politics of this era, that Obama will stand out as the singular figurehead, in the way Republicans hold Reagan in that high regard.”
One criticism of Obama is that he didn’t do much to help build the Democratic Party. Obama was almost seen as a blank slate by many voters when he burst upon the national scene. They could project their hopes about who he exactly was. Reagan ran for President after years of giving conservative political speeches and becoming a symbol of the conservatism championed by Barry Goldwater — a conservatism quite different than what we’re seeing in the 21st century.But Reagan was totally defined when he ran for President. Indeed, he had to overcome some of the negative definition to attract many Democrats. The Monitor goes on:
One issue is how Obama positioned himself within the Democratic Party from the beginning. When he ran for president, he wasn’t a “movement” candidate in the way Reagan was. Obama saw himself as “an individual phenomenon, above partisan politics,” says Robert Borosage, cofounder of the liberal group Campaign for America’s Future.
As president, Obama has balanced the progressive and moderate wings of the Democratic Party, leading to criticism from the left that he hasn’t gone far enough. The party’s liberal standard-bearer is Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D) of Massachusetts. In the presidential race, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) of Vermont, a self-described social democrat, is the liberal darling.
But the favorite to win the Democratic nod is former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She comes out of her husband’s centrist Democratic tradition but has tacked to the left in her second run for the presidency – a reflection of the times.
And then there’s the biggest difference:
Here’s another test in the great Obama-versus-Reagan smack down: Has Obama created a majority coalition that elects other people? And has he created a language and a philosophy about government that represents a transformation from the conservative era?
In presidential election years, at least, Obama has forged a majority coalition. Just as Reagan pulled Christian conservatives into Republican politics and turned working-class voters into Reagan Democrats, Obama has presided over the creation of the so-called rising American electorate – young voters, people of color, and single women. If they turn out in big enough numbers next year, they can elect a Democratic successor.
On the question of governing philosophy, Obama is on shakier ground. Reagan represented a sharp departure from New Deal-Great Society policies with his turn toward smaller government and lower taxes. Obama came in seeking to revitalize progressivism, but he also cast himself as a post-partisan leader and seemed determined, especially after Democrats lost control of the House, to cut deals with Republicans. Talk of entitlement reform, including cuts to benefits, frustrated liberals.
Feldmann also notes Obama’s “leading from behind,” and that even on the issue of gay marriage he was not out in the forefront. There’s a lot more — including speculation on his post-presidency. Read it in its entirety.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.