Barack Hussein Obama

George W. Bush had had some successes as president, but had left his party in less than ideal shape as the 2008 election season rolled around.   Collapsing housing prices and unpaid mortgage liabilities led to a potential disaster in the banking industry that was already sending ripples across the entire economy.  Bush’s first response to the initial economic slowdown a stimulus that sent $500 to taxpayers directly.  It didn’t do any good.  Soon we were in a real economic crisis—and Bush and the Democrats in Congress responded with TARP—the toxic assets relief program--$750 billion to bailout the banks, etc.  Now the majority of Dems voted for TARP, the majority of Republicans against it.  But the Republicans got the blame: the president was a Republican, after all, and he could have vetoed it. This meant the Democrats had a solid chance to recapture the White House.

At first, it seemed the Democrats were going to go back to the Clinton's for leadership, and Hillary became the front-runner for the nomination. Enter Barack Obama. another example of the generalization I made earlier in regard to Clinton and Bush.  No matter what one thinks of Barack Obama as a statesman, he is certainly a skilled politician and a good example of the generalization that nations get the leaders they deserve.

In evaluating a politician’s skills, one might first of all consider exactly how difficult it might be to defeat one’s opponents.  And certainly defeating Hillary for the 2008 nomination meant overcoming some difficulties. Hillary had far greater name-recognition, huge amounts of money in her campaign coffers, connections all over the place—and the core of hard-core supporters who really wanted to see a woman president and who especially identified with Hillary as a symbol of the struggles women faced as they tried to advance into leadership positions.

But was Hillary really that hard to beat?  How much elective experience had Hillary had?  Military experience?  Executive experience?  Now if the only qualification for the presidency is that she happened to share a bed with a previous president—well, Jennifer Flowers was just as qualified. 

And another question: could Hillary win?  What would happen if she were the Democratic nominee? Whitewater, Cattlegate, Travelgate, Filegate, the Foster suicide—it all would come back—and, this time, the “it’s all about sex” mantra wouldn’t work.  Now, of course, Obama had all this as ammunition himself to use against Hillary—but he didn’t. 

Why not?

It took some real skill to defeat Hillary without throwing away the general election.  The Democratic primary ended in a strange and (to those of us who love South Dakota) a disappointing way.  South Dakota typically has very little influence on who becomes president. But in 2008, it looked like South Dakota might be the decisive factor!  South Dakota's primary comes in June at the end of the primary season.  Usually, someone has the nomination locked up before South Dakota holds its primary. 

Not this time  The delegate count was extraordinarily close, and every vote counted.   

Obama was here in Aberdeen.  Bill was here on the Northern campus.  Hillary came to South Dakota as well, and when the votes were counted up, Hillary had won the state.  At this point, she had more elected delegates than Obama, and the victory she eventually won in South Dakota should have given her momentum heading in the Democratic convention.

So what happened?  Long before the polls in SD closed, the press announced that Obama had locked up the nomination.  How?  Was there an official vote?  No!  The press canvassed delegates (including the super delegates) and, by their count, Obama had won. 

Talk about a stolen election!  Hillary certainly could have insisted that the issue go to the convention floor, that the delegates had to actually cast their ballots before the nomination was decided. She certainly should have had a chance to try to win over some of the super-delegates--who, after all, were not bound by either primary or caucus commitments. 

Thirty percent of  Hillary's supporters claimed they would cross over and vote for McCain.  Somehow, though, most of these voters  came home to the Dems and voted for Obama.  Making that happen took some skill, and probably a concession or two.  Did Obama have to promise to make Hillary Secretary of State (a good stepping stone to a future presidential run) in order to get Hillary on board?  Possibly.

But even with Hillary supporters back in the Democrat fold, Obama had to get past John McCain—who, for years, had been a press darling.  It’s true that McCain was old and had relatively tepid support from the conservative side of the Republican party—but he had lots of experience, and he was quite clearly the non-Bush.  McCain had been a thorn in the side to Bush for years, and trying to tied him to Bush-era negatives wasn't going to work.

So—how did Obama win the 2008 election?

“Hope and Change” he promised. Tired old slogans—but Obama made them work.  How?  Whereas Clinton found out what people wanted to hear and told them that, Obama had an even more impressive ability—an ability to get people to project on to him their own ideas.  Critics of Obama pointed to the fact that he had no executive experience, no business experience, no legislative record: but that was just the point!  Obama was something of a blank slate, and you could read into Obama whatever you liked.  Obama was careful not to let anything destroy this ability.  Past associates included Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright.  Obama even took his book title from a Wright message: The Audacity of Hope.  But when Wright became controversial because of things like his “God damn America” sermon, Obama quickly disowned any connection to him.  Whey critics brought up Ayers past (his tie to the radical Weatherman organization and to terrorist activities), Obama claimed Ayers was only a guy he happened to know.

Now this is a tricky thing to be able to do!  You may alienate your core constituency by dissing people they like and admire.  But Obama succeeded—perhaps by conveying the idea that, well, I am still with you, but lie low until we win the election, and then you’ll get everything you want.

In any case, Obama won the election—and, for a time, enjoyed tremendously high approval ratings.

Of course, once the campaign was over, vague promises of hope and change had to give way to action—and Obama had no excuse not to act.  He had helped increase the Democratic majorities in the house and senate.  And, with control of the 4th branch of government as well (the press), Obama was sure to get things done.  And, in a way, he did.  He got Health Care Reform (Obamacare).  A long-time democratic goal was finally achieved.  He got two more liberal “legislate from the bench” type justices appointed to the Supreme Court.  He pushed through Congress a trillion-dollar “stimulus” package that included major rewards for all the Green-type industries that liberals love.

But, for most Americans, this wasn’t the hope and change they had expected.  The economy got worse rather than better. Obama had told us unemployment would go to 9% if we didn’t adopt his stimulus passage.  The stimulus package passed, but we ended up with 9% “official” unemployment anyway—and *real* unemployment might have been as high as 40%, depending on how your reckon it.  More than 40% of Americans 18-65 were out of the workforce.  That included full-time moms, students, those who retired early, etc., but it also included plenty of people who were so discouraged at their job prospects that they had simply given up looking for work.  As today, official government figures vastly understated the unemployment problem, just as the "official" government measure of inflation (the Consumer Price Index) tends to understate the true rate of inflation.

Obama blamed Bush for the sour economy—rather unfairly ignoring the fact that he himself was elected to the senate in 2004 and his Democrats controlled both houses of congress from 2007 on—just when the economy went sour.

In any case, Obama suffered a sharp rebuke in the 2010 midterm elections.  Millions of Americans began to associate with what was called the Tea Party Movement.  We're "taxed enough already" said tea-party enthusiasts.  With the help of the Tea Party, the Republicans took back control of the House, and made gains in the Senate.  They might have gained more had they not been feuding among themselves.  "Establishment"/big business Republicans didn't much like the Tea Party.

Obama's catering to the big-government wing of his party cost him a good deal of his cross-over popularity.  But his approval ratings dipped for another reason.  His own core constituencies were not very happy.  This has to do in part with foreign policy. 

The one really plain stand Obama took during the campaign had to do with Bush’s foreign interventions.  Well, despite Obama's insistence that intervention in Afghanistan was a mistake, we stayed right there.  And, by signalling his determination to eventually leave, Afghan opponents to the American presence took heart and redoubled their efforts.  American casualties rose, and rose some more, eventually crossing the two thousand mark.  Maybe you can’t blame Obama: it’s hard to escape military commitments even if you don’t think they should have been made in the first place.  But why were we all of a sudden in Libya?  Why did we intervene in Syria? Why did we seem to be abetting the rise of Muslim extremism everywhere? Could we be proud of interventions that led to humanitarian crises, including 5 million refugees from Syria alone?

Why was the Obama administration so good at inspiring lofty ideas but so ineffective when it came to practical politics?

Well, Obama became prominent in the first place because of a speech.  What an incredible speaker, the media told us again and again. 

Now I happen to disagree: I don’t think a single one of Obama’s speeches will stand the test of time well enough to make it into the canon of great political speeches.  You can judge for yourself.  Here's the speech that turned Obama into a well-known national figure, a speech he gave at the Democratic convention in 2004:

Obama 2004 Convention Speech

Oh, yes.  Plenty of what the speech professors call ethos, the personal experience story that helps a speaker connect with the audience.  Oh, yes, plenty of what the speech professors call pathos, the ability to create an emotional connection with the audience.  But there's almost nothing of what the speech professors call logos, nothing to persuade those who aren't already on board.

Both credit and criticism of Obama speeches should go partly to John Favreau, a member of the 2004 Kerry presidential campaign staff and eventually the head of Obama's speech writing team.  Whenever Obama didn't have a teleprompter, he struggled. Making a speech someone else wrote feel as if it's your own requires some skill of course, and, as I've noted, JFK didn't do all that well with the speeches his writers came up with for him.  

But, regardless of Obama certainly believed in his own speaking ability.  Over and over again, what did he do when confronted with problems?  He made a speech.  We had no budget for over 3 years.  But Obama made speeches about the economy.  America did a phenomenally poor job in aiding the cause of freedom and justice in the Muslim world.  But Obama made speeches about the wonderful future of Islamic countries.

Where did he get this idea that making a speech is the way to solve things?  Well, from us right here in the universities.  We are always playing with words, writing noble-sounding papers, promising pie-in-the-sky-by-and-by if only our wonderful pointy-headed intellectual ideas triumph over the ignorant prejudices of ordinary Americans. 

Obama is certainly the president we in the academic world deserve, and certainly the president the press deserves—the reflection of all our fundamental belief that words are the way to solve things.

Now ideas are important.  Words are important.  What we do here at the university is important.  But it seems to be our thinking has gone badly off track, and it’s easy enough to see where.  “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.”

At the beginning of this class, I noted that Lincoln called America, the "last, best hope of earth."  If that we're so, the world would be in a sorry state.  But fortunately, the true "last, best hope of earth" is something else entirely.  And it is to that something else, the true, last, best hope of the world that Americans have always turned in time of crisis.  It is that great hope that got us through the Revolution, through the Civil War, through the Depression and through World War II.  And if in our current crises we as individuals and as a nation would have looked to something beyond America, if we had looked once again to that one great hope, the true last, great hope of the earth, then our country would perhaps once again have been closer to what our founders hoped it would be, a city on a hill, and a light to the world.

But instead we turned to Donald Trump.