pragmatic liberal
Jr. Member
Posts: 520
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« on: October 12, 2008, 01:34:01 PM » |
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I doubt you're going to get very many unbiased answers to this question. Predictably, Republicans will think he'll be a disaster and Democrats will think (mostly) that he'll do an excellent job.
I make no secret of my own partisan and ideological preferences and I admit to having a great deal of faith in Obama. I think he's a man with extraordinary management skills. He's intelligent, prudent, and willing to take advice on a range of issues. My beefs with him are that he may at times be too overcautious. His ideology is actually somewhat small-"c"-conservative; he's been called a "Burkean liberal," before. He adheres to very progressive, liberal ideals but is skeptical of sweeping, radical changes, believing that gradualistic and bottom-up change is ultimately more sustainable and less disruptive.
On the domestic policy front, I would imagine the following:
Obama likely keeps Bernanke in place and may even keep Paulson in place for a short, interim period. The first year of his term will be heavily focused on economic matters. He will probably move towards a temporary nationalization of much of the banking sector, similar to what is being done in Britain and what Paulson appears to be moving towards.
Congress will likely pass one or two stimulus packages which include increases in unemployment insurance, investments in energy and infrastructure, increases in food stamps and the direct aid to homeowners.
I do think that an Obama Administration and a Democratic Congress will make a major effort to enact universal health care within his first term; it would be politically foolish for Obama to wait for a second term to do this, since second terms rarely have significant domestic policy achievements. I give him only a 50-50 chance of success here; the budgetary situation and the entrenched opposition to health care reform may force a watering-down of his plan. He may ultimately only pass something like what John Kerry proposed in 2004 -- a near-universal plan that includes greater choice, cost containment and an expansion of some public programs that is nevertheless less comprehensive than what Clinton, Edwards or Obama proposed in 2004. It's also possible that in order to secure health care reform, he will need to embrace proposals to reform Medicare, similar to the plans that were debated in the second Clinton term.
I also think it's possible that in an effort to pass health care reform, Obama will abandon his own plan in favor of Wyden-Bennett, which has several Republican co-sponsors. It's a more radical plan and it includes an individual mandate - something Obama has opposed. But if his goal is universal coverage and he remains pragmatic about it, then the prospects for Wyden-Bennett could be substantially better than the prospects for his own plan.
Obama will also likely push for his fairly bold and innovative technology proposals. He is likely to also push for universal broadband.
Like Clinton, Obama will likely push for several causes through the budgetary process. I imagine that infrastructure improvements, funding for alternative energy and increased aid to cities will all be written into the budgetary process.
I actually expect that the federal budget deficit may likely increase in the short and medium term. I doubt that even a two-term Obama presidency would see a balanced budget, although if economic growth is restored by 2012, I imagine you will start to see deficits reduced so that by 2017, the U.S. deficit may be about half of what it is today.
On the foreign policy front, I see Obama ultimately removing most U.S. troops by 2011 as he has proposed. There is near-unanimity on this from the Iraqi government and the U.S. government. He will, however, face some opposition from the left, as there will be some residual U.S. forces, probably based in Kurdistan and around Baghdad.
Afghanistan will likely be a mess. I expect some increase in troops in Afghanistan, but observers are very mixed in their assessments as to whether this will work. There are going to be intense pressures to open up lines of communication with the Taliban (something the Brits are already proposing), which politically may be very difficult for Obama to do.
I expect Obama will devote greater time and energy to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and he will likely dispatch a top envoy -- Dennis Ross, Richard Holbrooke or even Bill Clinton -- to the region in an effort to wring out a peace agreement within a year. But his efforts will probably fail and the region will probably have to muddle through. Though I think Obama recognizes the centrality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to America's relations with the Middle East, I doubt he will risk his political capital on a peace agreement within his first two years. He will have his hands full with enormous domestic policy challenges, huge foreign policy headaches in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and I doubt he will want to torpedo his chances of success with a quite-possibly failed effort regarding Israel and the Palestinians.
On Iran, he will likely initiate more back-channel negotiations. The landscape will shift dramatically if Ahmedinejad loses the 2009 presidential election. I could imagine a full "grand bargain" with Iran, including full diplomatic relations, but such a deal would likely have to wait for a second term.
On Cuba, I also imagine a similar softening, although again I would not imagine a full restoration of ties until later.
What do I see being the biggest potential difficulties for Obama? Well, any of the above could go wrong, but I actually see gas prices as the big Achilles heel. The truth is that the trend in world oil prices is clearly going the wrong way. Any investments in alternative energy, greater fuel efficiency and even additional coastal drilling will take years to bear fruit. In the meantime, it is very possible we could have oil at $200 per barrel by 2012. That could wreak havoc on the economy and force a mammoth shift away from automobile use and huge increases in the cost of shipping, flying and business. We have done very little preparation for dealing with that. Even if an Obama Administration and Congress enact the right policies for dealing with that reality, they may well have to take ugly short-term measures such as big subsidies for gas in order to prevent massive chaos and dislocation. It would also hugely impair any economic recovery. Gas prices remain the thing that scares me most about the next four years, and they could easily undo Obama even if he has relative success in accomplishing the rest of his agenda.
I also could easily see another bailout of the automakers in the offing. It is likely that both GM and Ford are in for major restructurings and several venerable U.S. nameplates will likely be sold or discontinued. Chrysler will probably go under.
In short, I actually think Obama's short-term prospects are fairly good. With large Democratic majorities, he should be able to enact a fairly ambitious domestic agenda during the first couple of years, but ultimately if oil prices increase and economic growth stays anemic, he could have a very difficult time getting reelected. If that happens, he'll simply have to hope that the coming GOP civil war prevents the emergence of a strong challenger in 2012 and that his approval ratings stay close enough to 50% that he can win reelection.
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