In spite of all the excuses, as we look back on Obama’s presidency, let’s not forget the failures that he can make no excuses for.
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It’s always frustrating to argue with people who refuse to acknowledge facts, but personally, I find it most frustrating when people on my own side refuse to acknowledge facts.
I’m a proud liberal who has supported the Democrat in every presidential election since 1996, but if you’re a conservative who’s frustrated at fact-denying liberals, I’m right there with you. I was with you when liberals echoed ad nauseam that Bill Clinton was “impeached for cheating on his wife.” The facts say he was impeached for perjuring himself during a sexual harassment investigation, but don’t tell a liberal that. They’ll probably just call you a prude and remind you that Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction while Clinton only lied about an affair. They’ll say the same thing if you criticize Obama’s drone policy or suggest that he violated the war powers act. If you objectively criticize any liberal president, their response is simply, “Well, Bush was worse.”
Obama was elected to end the war in Iraq, but instead, he moved its failed strategies to Afghanistan, where they failed even harder.
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We’ve heard all the Obama excuses: he began his presidency the worst recession since the great depression, inherited an unpopular war and a broken economy from his predecessor, and was met with “unprecedented obstruction” from congressional opponents. All of that is true, but as we look back on his presidency, let’s not forget the failures that he (and his liberal supporters) can make no excuses for.
1) Afghanistan: Obama’s War, Obama’s Mess
Contrary to popular liberal belief, George W. Bush did not “get us into” the war in Afghanistan. He retaliated to 9/11 by sending special forces into Afghanistan, aided by NATO and most of our allies. Iraq, on the other had, was Bush’s failure because he did just the opposite. He ignored the wishes of his allies and mismanaged an expensive war without the resources or support he received in Afghanistan.
Obama was elected to end the war in Iraq, but instead, he moved its failed strategies to Afghanistan, where they failed even harder. Three fourths of the casualties there have occurred under Obama, and despite the withdrawal in 2014, we’re still sending troops back with no endgame in sight. So yes, Obama inherited many problems from Bush, but Afghanistan wasn’t one of those problems. Afghanistan is a problem created by Obama, which he will hand off to his reluctant successor.
2) Money in Politics
McCain wanted to take public financing, and Obama said no. Then spent his own presidency condemning Citizens United, Super PACs, and the Koch Brothers. He’s right that there’s too much money in politics, but he had a chance to lead by example–on an equal playing field, at that–and he chose not to. According to the Federal Election Commission, Obama outraised McCain by nearly $400,000 and outspent him by over $400,000. He made a point to say that big money makes our elections unfair, and then, with big money stacked against his opponent, he won the biggest presidential election in history.
In his 2010 State of the Union address, he condemned the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which allowed unlimited contributions to Super PACs. In his re-election bid, President Obama protested the law by promising not to allow a Super PAC to run ads on his behalf. Then he reversed his position the following year.
Obama doesn’t cut deals with Congress, he proposes legislation, and when they reject it, he takes executive action. It’s a far cry from the great uniter he ran as.
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Most of the money spent on the 2012 election still came from the campaigns themselves rather than Super PACs, but the Super PACs still created an unprecedented ugliness of negative advertising. Obama’s Super PAC, Priorities USA, ran an ad wherein a steel worker alleged that, by laying off workers at the steel plant, Mitt Romney had killed the steel worker’s wife. Obama and his surrogates were able to say they had nothing to do with the ad while Mitt Romney had to fight off allegations that he was a murderer. The anti-Super-PAC president became the very thing he’d been fighting against: he got to keep his hands clean while benefiting from a dirty campaign ad.
3) Bipartisanship
Obama’s whining about Republican obstructionism would have been a lot more convincing if he had ever tried to work with the few Republicans who did reach across the aisle. In a meeting with congressional leaders at the beginning of his presidency, Obama dismissed Republican Senator Jon Kyl’s concerns over his spending plan with a grin and a smug “I won.” Then, rather than compromising with Republicans on any proposed legislation (most notably heath care reform), he spent all of his energy trying to build a 60-vote Democratic majority that would wholeheartedly push his agenda through the Senate. He embraced Arlen Specter’s party switch from Republican to Democrat, he fought (and failed) to defeat Republican Senator Scott Brown, but he never reached out to Republican leadership in the Senate. He felt he didn’t need to, because as he said, he won.
Well, the Republicans won, too. They won a majority in the House in 2010 and a majority in the Senate in 2014. So don’t they have a mandate to push their agenda, just as Obama has a mandate to push his? Doesn’t this vote for divided government imply that the American people want both sides to find common ground? Obama doesn’t cut deals with Congress, he proposes legislation, and when they reject it, he takes executive action. It’s a far cry from the great uniter he ran as.
4) Libyan Bombings
On September 11, 2012, four Americans were murdered in a terrorist attack in Benghazi. Rather than mourning the tragedy, Mitt Romney and other Republicans seized the opportunity to make Obama look like a failure. It was shameless, and it lowered my opinion of Romney at a time when I was finally starting to warm up to him. I rejoiced when Candy Crowley called him out during the second debate for claiming that it “it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror.” I felt Romney had it coming, but it wasn’t until later, when I checked the facts myself, that I realized Romney was right, and Crowley had acted recklessly in correcting him.
Obama’s exact words, immediately following the attack, were: “No act of terror will dim the light of the values that we proudly shine on the rest of the world.”
So yes, he used the words “act of terror,” but he deflected the idea that it was a planned terrorist attack. He clung to the notion that the attacks were a reaction to a video, and it was in his political interests to claim this. The economy was still slow to recover, Obamacare was largely unpopular, and his foreign policy was a mess. But Bin Laden died under Obama’s watch. The War on Terror was his one major success. If his administration’s intelligence found Bin Laden hiding in Pakistan, how could they not have anticipated the terrorist attacks in Libya and stopped them in time? It made the president look incompetent and made the American people feel unsafe, which is why his administration pushed the idea that the attack was spontaneous.
The attacks in Libya weren’t Obama’s fault any more than the attacks in New York were George Bush’s fault, and there was no criminal cover-up. But I highly doubt the president ever believed this tragedy was just about a video, nor did anyone in his administration.
5) The National Debt
He said he would lower it. He said the $4 trillion Bush added in his first 7 years was “unpatriotic.” He criticized Bush for cutting taxes and paying for unnecessary wars & entitlements with borrowed money…and then he borrowed more money to fund more unnecessary wars & entitlements. In 7 years, Obama has added over $8 trillion to the national debt, twice what he said was “unpatriotic” when Bush did it.
Neither party actually wants to balance the budget, because they don’t want to be responsible for cutting popular government programs (or ending unpopular wars too hastily).
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The unfortunate reality is that both political parties are only serious about balanced budgets and debt reduction when they aren’t the ones setting the national agenda. During Bill Clinton’s presidency, the Republican-led congress promised a balanced budget amendment, but under George Bush’s presidency, they reversed that position and implemented policies that dug us further into debt. Obama capitalized on Bush’s debt woes, but once in office, our current president drove the debt up even higher. Romney attacked him for it, but when pressed for specifics on how a Romney administration would tackle our debt crisis, he offered few specifics. He refused to cut social security, refused to cut Medicare, refused to cut military spending, and promised to cut taxes. Neither party actually wants to balance the budget, because they don’t want to be responsible for cutting popular government programs (or ending unpopular wars too hastily).
So yes, Mitt Romney would have been just as bad at reducing the national debt (if not worse), but I didn’t vote for Mitt Romney. I voted for Obama, and I expected better. Stop pretending you didn’t.
Also by Giorgio Selvaggio
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Photo: Flickr/Carlos Pacheco