How appropriate, though, was the relatively constant barrage of criticisms with little praise for our 44th President, Barack Obama at the recent round of Democratic presidential candidates’ debates covering his administrations’ healthcare agenda to his immigration policies?
Several of the more progressive candidates aired their opposition to Obama Care based on the private insurance system rather than on a “single-payer” government structure.
Obama understood the severity of the medical insurance crisis and the overwhelming lack of coverage and under-coverage of over 100 million residents of our country. While he favored a single-payer system that has provided security virtually universally in peer countries, he knew as well that political circumstances made integration of such a system impossible in the U.S.
He, therefore, spent all of his political capital during the first two years of his presidency to make it possible for millions more people to obtain quality insurance that covered pre-existing conditions and cover young people on their parents’ policies up to age 26.
Obama imagined his plan as transitional toward an eventual single-payer system.
Regarding his immigration orders, two candidates during the Democratic presidential debates, Cory Booker and Bill de Blasio, took Obama and his Vice President, Joe Biden, to task for sending over 3 million people who did not obtain documentation back to their home countries – an action that garnered Obama the moniker “deporter-in-chief” by those who opposed the policy.
After the debate, John Sandweg who occupied chief positions under Obama at the Department of Homeland Security and later served as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement spoke out to BuzzFeed News:
It was an unfair attack, based on false premises,” said Sandweg. “It is a gross misrepresentation of President Obama’s track record on immigration….[We] inherit[ed] an agency charged with deporting people here unlawfully — 9,000 officers spread out….With all the reforms we made, where toward the middle, only a small minority of people deported didn’t fall into the convicted-criminal or just-crossed-the-border category.
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Obama also issued an executive order protecting “Dreamers” from deportation.
While Sandweg’s justifications do not and should not fully excuse Obama administration actions, the Congressional context in which they were forced to execute the laws and attempt to change legislative policies was severely circumscribed two years into Obama’s presidency by a Republican takeover. The new Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell’s one and only priority was to ensure that Obama was a one-term president. He sought to accomplish this by killing Obama’s full legislative agenda.
Throughout the coming presidential campaign season, Democratic hopefuls, if they wish to attack former presidents, would do well to focus their criticisms on George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan.
David Corn of Mother Jones has superbly chronicled specific misstatements, exaggerations, and lies perpetrated by the George W. Bush administration, which unfortunately were used successfully to commit the United States to a contrived, needless, and deadly incursion into Iraq.
While Bush, Cheney, Powell, and Rice claimed Saddam Hussein stockpiled “weapons of mass destruction,” then CIA Director, George Tenet, argued in early 2004 that the intelligence community had no evidence of “specific information on the types or quantities of weapons agent or stockpiles at Baghdad’s disposal.” Therefore, these supposed “massive stockpiles,” as we learned clearly, were manufactured in the minds of Bush administration leaders and hacks.
W’s attempt to work out his Oedipal insecurities against his father, H. W. – who had the good sense not to drive U.S. forces into Bagdad to topple Saddam Hussein, which would spark a civil war – threw reason to the wind and blew the United States into an entrenched and disastrous war, one that resulted in the deaths of nearly 300,000 civilians and combatants, and many more seriously injured.
George W. Bush deserved prison for crimes against humanity and treason against the United States instead of four more years.
And Ronald Reagan was not the model politician and leader that most Republicans worship today. The real Ronald Reagan forwarded policies that enormously increased the wealth gap between the very rich and the remainder of the population.
He expanded the rate of people living in poverty with his doublespeak “trickle-down” economics. He illegally and surreptitiously sold arms to Iran and furtively redirected the profits to fascist Central American dictators to fund and equip their death squads of thugs.
And most of all, the immoral Ronald Reagan functioned as the Co-conspirator-In-Chief in the deaths of people infected with HIV during the early years of what became a pandemic under his so-called “watch.” Ronald Reagan should have been charged and convicted of genocidal murder, rather than seen as the much-venerated pseudo-saint who he has been anointed by the conservative Republican Party.
In addition, Pat Buchanan, Reagan’s Chief of “Communications,” spoke viciously for many by calling AIDS nature’s “awful retribution” that did not deserve a thorough and compassionate response, and later said:
With 80,000 dead of AIDS, our promiscuous homosexuals appear literally hell-bent on Satanism and suicide.
Uninformed and prejudicial statements coming from the White House and the halls of Congress, from the State Houses, and yes, from some houses of worship during those trying times only encouraged the ceaseless bigotry and discriminatory actions against people with HIV.
Though he could have been a major force in leading the efforts to contain a crisis, Ronald Reagan failed miserably by commission and omission, and for that, he must be held accountable for the deaths of thousands of people during his years as derelict and criminal Commander in Chief on the war on HIV.
Of course, Barack Obama had several less-than-stellar policy initiatives. Some of the policies we may criticize today, for he may not have had to take these as far as he did. Also, he was stymied by the politics of the times from taking his progressive ideas as far as he would have wanted.
We cannot forget that President Obama returned dignity, intelligence, integrity, and a clear-minded ability back to the White House. He served over a virtual scandal-free administration. He didn’t simply promise, but he actually tapped the best and brightest for key positions.
His love of public service over personal fame and wealth shone brightly, for he knew he could make a positive contribution to the country he loves. And he set a shining example of real family values in the way he raised his children and in his deep abiding and close relationship with his wife and mother-in-law.
No, Barack Obama was not a perfect president, but when we include “perfection” as a progressive litmus test, we are always destined to face disappointment and resentment.
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