One Year In: President Obama's First Year In Office

Yesterday, (1/20/2010), I paused to reflect upon the events of this past year. Exactly 365 days earlier, I and millions of other Americans were euphoric as a new, young and seemingly talented man became the 44th President of the United States.

I remembered how I was almost mesmerized by the President’s call for action in his inaugural address and I remembered the thrill that went down my neck when the new President referred to the war in Vietnam—a war I had fought in but that had never to my recollection been mentioned in a Presidential inaugural address since the war had ended in 1972.

I was well aware of the many challenges facing our country on that day. Taken separately they were daunting, taken collectively they were chilling. I had faith however that this President, that so many Americans as well as people all over the globe believed in, would meet those challenges head on and bring sustainable resolution while making a down payment on our nation’s economic recovery.

Yesterday, 365 days later, I have mixed emotions. On the one hand I am pleased on several fronts. On the other, I am very concerned. Let’s take the positive first. While economists like Paul Krugman may insist that not enough money was injected into our flailing economy, in my mind the President’s American Recovery and Re-investment Act, also known as the stimulus has already stabilized the economy’s plunge to recession and kept it from becoming a plunge to depression. He has begun the agonizingly slow process of withdrawing our forces from Iraq while simultaneously managing to dissipate the fear, and in some cases hatred, from other countries towards the American people that had become so rampant under President George Bush.

For a President who was constantly accused during the campaign that he was inexperienced, he has run a competent and disciplined administration without some of the embarrassing missteps of President Bill Clinton’s first year in office. We did the positive, now here is the negative. On the whole, the President’s performance has not been too bad, except that the President has placed too much distance between himself and the political process thereby placing too much distance between himself and the American people.

It pains me to say this, but Barrack Obama has on too many occasions, remained on the fringe of the debate and consequently has failed to exhibit real honest to goodness leadership when it was needed most. Possibly because he wanted so much to be liked by the American people or he leaped at the opportunity to do the popular thing instead of the right thing, he has ultimately failed to live up to the eloquence of his campaign, his inaugural and now, the first year of his presidency.

The most telling example of the failure of Mr. Obama to lead is the looming destruction of his attempt to reform healthcare in America. It needs to be said right here that the potential dismantling of healthcare reform is not only due to the President’s failure to lead on this issue. The overall failure to provide healthcare to millions of Americans who live without health insurance today, to address the spiraling costs that seem to be such an inherent part of the system and to create leverage or at least a reason for healthcare providers to be more competitive lays squarely in the laps of the Republican legislators who from the moment the President took his oath of office, fought the President on every single issue. Republicans became the party of “No” a label some within the party would dispute while others wear it proudly. President Obama’s decision to let Congress do the heavy lifting on healthcare reform however, became a huge factor in what seems now, in the wake of the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts, a horrific death of the bill, never to arrive on the President’s desk for his signature.

It is unforgivable that the most comprehensive and progressive healthcare reform initiative had already been whittled down to a mere shadow of its promising beginnings. It is tragic and a national disgrace, that even that diluted bill may now never be passed. First the Republicans managed to reverse the engines and produce a bill that no one liked, and now, they may have managed to kill it altogether. Even Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) is calling for Congress to take a “breath” in order to re-think healthcare reform.

This is what happens when the President of the United States leaves the details to an unpopular and dysfunctional Congress, while remaining above the fray, so to speak, and allowing a legislative body that is even more unpopular than he is to attempt legislative success. President Obama’s attempt to govern in a bipartisan environment has been maniacally resisted by the Republican side of the aisle and has led to no governance at all. While bipartisanship is something that everyone likes, no one wants to be a part of it. It reminds me sadly of the expression, “Everybody wants to go to Heaven, but nobody wants to die.”

There are those of course, who claim that the President chose the wrong task first. While healthcare reform is critical, they say that the American worker is reeling from the aftershocks of the Republican caused recession. They are overworked, underpaid and in the case of 10 million workers, unemployed. This argument to me, while it has some validity, is generally unfair. Healthcare reform was the biggest plank in President Obama’s campaign for the presidency and to not focus on that right away would have been even more of a failure than the debacle we are facing today. What has angered the American electorate is the shockingly high sticker price for healthcare reform. Republicans have managed to take the focus off of healthcare and place it squarely onto the deficit. The irony is that a failure to reform healthcare will be the dominant factor in the ultimate collapse of the economy fueled by an out of control deficit.

There is no question that the country’s deficit is alarming. Today, the national debt is poised to become a $12 trillion wrecking ball by 2015. In spite of this, it absolutely made sense for the Obama administration to pump federal dollars into the economy vis-à-vis the stimulus, but beginning almost immediately, the White House needs to focus on demonstrating to the American people how the President plans to stop the bleeding. To date, the President has not presented a comprehensive strategic plan to bring the debt down. Meanwhile, the political right has seduced the majority of Americans to be more frightened of an unmanageable deficit as they are of healthcare reform.

As much as I admire President Obama and as tirelessly as I worked for his election, I fear that President Obama has committed a horrible mistake by increasing the American commitment to Afghanistan, just as Lyndon Johnson did in Vietnam in 1965. The driving force in both cases is domestic politics. President Johnson felt that he had to escalate the fight in Vietnam because otherwise the Republicans would accuse him for “losing Vietnam” the same way they accused President Truman of “losing China” in the late 1940s.

President Obama and his fellow Democrats in Congress know full well that if the United States walks away from Afghanistan now, the Republicans will accuse them of capitulating to terrorism and undermining our security. And this charge will be leveled at them for decades to come, following and haunting the Democratic Party into every subsequent election. The Democrats have no intention of letting that happen—even though ending the war would go a long ways toward resuscitating our sick economy, thereby taking a big chunk out of the American jobless rate. I fear America is in Afghanistan for the long haul and as was the case in Vietnam, more American soldiers and many more civilians are going to die in Afghanistan, and for no good or sensible reason.

All of the issues that this President is concerned about: the two wars; the economy; healthcare and global climate change now face uncertain resolution because the Presidents’ party has lost its edge in the US Senate. Scott Browns’ victory in Massachusetts means the end to a filibuster-proof Senate and if not very careful, this administration could go to hell in a hand basket.

I am hopeful however, that if somehow Americans wake up and make it clear to Congress that they will be furious if nothing gets accomplished, then we can still have the change that 53% of the Americans who voted on November 2nd said they wanted.

When the dust of recent months has settled, the truth that will be revealed will speak to the pride we all have in our country. John Nichols of The Nation wrote in November of 2008, “The pride Americans feel in their country frequently varies depending on historical circumstance. There are times when we feel better about our country and worse. There are times when we fear our government and others when we see it as an extension of ourselves.”

President Barrack Obama admitted yesterday that he had lost touch with the American people because he was too absorbed by policy-making in his first year. That may be right, I am not completely convinced. What I am convinced about however is that President Obama must step forward and lead while never allowing again, the decisions of his White House to permit Republicans to lead in his place.