Ryan Lizza has an article in The New Yorker, “The Obama Memos: The making of a post-post-partisan Presidency.” It’s one of the more interesting accounts I’ve read of the Obama White House, internal debates over policy, and Obama’s evolving conception of the presidency. As with all new presidents, the presidency has been a learning process for Obama
Obama promised to transcend forty years of demographic and ideological trends and reshape Washington politics. In the past three years, though, he has learned that the Presidency is an office uniquely ill-suited for enacting sweeping change. Presidents are buffeted and constrained by the currents of political change. They don’t control them.
Lizza’s piece is long—over 11,000 words—but well worth the read. Here are some of the key passages
George C. Edwards III, a political scientist at Texas A. & M., who has sparked a quiet revolution in the ways that academics look at Presidential leadership, argues in “The Strategic President” that there are two ways to think about great leaders. The common view is of a leader whom Edwards calls “the director of change,” someone who reshapes public opinion and the political landscape with his charisma and his powers of persuasion. Obama’s many admirers expected him to be just this.
Instead, Obama has turned out to be what Edwards calls “a facilitator of change.” The facilitator is acutely aware of the constraints of public opinion and Congress. He is not foolish enough to believe that one man, even one invested with the powers of the Presidency, can alter the fundamentals of politics. Instead, “facilitators understand the opportunities for change in their environments and fashion strategies and tactics to exploit them.” Directors are more like revolutionaries. Facilitators are more like tacticians. Directors change the system. Facilitators work the system. Obama’s first three years as President are the story of his realization of the limits of his office, his frustration with those constraints, and, ultimately, his education in how to successfully operate within them. A close look at the choices Obama made on domestic policy, based on a review of hundreds of pages of internal White House documents, reveals someone who is canny and tough—but who is not the President his most idealistic supporters thought they had elected.
Yes, the limits of office. Something that Obama’s lefty critics tend to lose sight of
Obama was learning the same lesson of many previous occupants of the Oval Office: he didn’t have the power that one might think he had. Harry Truman, one in a long line of Commanders-in-Chief frustrated by the limits of the office, once complained that the President “has to take all sorts of abuse from liars and demagogues. . . . The people can never understand why the President does not use his supposedly great power to make ’em behave. Well, all the President is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway.”
And then there’s the system
…our political system was designed to be infuriating. As George Edwards notes in his study of Presidents as facilitators, the American system “is too complicated, power too decentralized, and interests too diverse for one person, no matter how extraordinary, to dominate.” Obama, like many Presidents, came to office talking like a director. But he ended up governing like a facilitator, which is what the most successful Presidents have always done. Even Lincoln famously admitted, “I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events controlled me.”
And the conclusion
The private Obama is close to what many people suspect: a President trying to pass his agenda while remaining popular enough to win reëlection.
Obama didn’t remake Washington. But his first two years stand as one of the most successful legislative periods in modern history. Among other achievements, he has saved the economy from depression, passed universal health care, and reformed Wall Street. Along the way, Obama may have changed his mind about his 2008 critique of Hillary Clinton. “Working the system, not changing it” and being “consumed with beating” Republicans “rather than unifying the country and building consensus to get things done” do not seem like such bad strategies for success after all.
I’ve been dumping on Obama for much of the past three years but have put all that aside for the time being. The only thing I care about now is that he is reelected, as the alternative is just not something I want to think about. C’est tout.
I think Edwards is right about directors and facilitators. I think it’s wrong, though, for everyone to accept that the best we should hope for is a good facilitator. We need much more than that and no one should glibly accept less simply because it’s more difficult to achieve more.
And the claim that Obama’s first two years stand out in modern history borders on hagiography. It certainly doesn’t bear scrutiny. Obama “saved the economy from depression”? What a strange claim. Obama got a stimulus bill passed that was half again what it needed to be and then he accepted even more dilution by putting fully half of the stimulus in the way of tax rebates and cuts. The economy proceeded to go nowhere, unemployment stayed at unconscionable levels (still is) and Obama, having burned all his political capital (his facilitator capacity, as it were) has done nothing since. The economy may or may not have gotten much worse without the stimulus package (I think it would have), but to claim it would have entered depression is a bit much. The fact is that George Bush and Hank Paulson, by these standards, can be said to have saved the economy from depression Bush’s last year in office.
Obama passed “universal health care”? But what fevered imagination does someone come up with this kind of claim? Obama walked away from the best opportunity since 1965 to have a nationalized health care system. He even backed away from any kind of public option whatsoever. Instead, the US will have a terrible system driven by private insurance companies. And there is a real risk that the Medicaid program, which is surely one of the shining lights of the American health care system, will be utterly decimated by Obama’s program.
Obama “reformed Wall Street”? This may be the most absurd claim of all. Obama bailed out big banks that should either have failed or been nationalized. He then failed to prosecute a single financial industry felon for the crimes that were committed against the American people. He finally has managed to avoid any substantive reform legislation.
These claims are simply wrong. And there are many in the American political and economic analyst class who have pointed it out over and over again. Paul Krugman, Yves Smith, Dean Baker, the writer of the Tom’s Dispatch blog,, the people at Firedog Lake, etc. etc.
I certainly understand the need to grasp at straws in order to justify a vote for Obama in 2012. It’s hard, after all, to vote for a man who has kept Guantanamo open, has signed an indefinite detention law, has killed an American citizen without benefit of charge or trial, has used drone missiles to kill an unknown number of innocent people, has maintained a destructive embargo of the tiny island of Cuba, has accepted settlement building by the Israelis, and made a farce of any even-handedness for the Palestinians, has ignored the victims of the housing bubble even while supporting the people who caused it, and on and on.
And yet, because of the alternatives, a vote for Obama is impossible to avoid.
That doesn’t mean, though, that he should be considered exempt from condemnation for all his enormous deficits; nor does it meant that he should be falsely exalted as a successful president.
I agree with much of what you have to say, Arun, and I do recognize that Obama’s power is limited.
However as one of the 6 million American abroad currently facing serious difficulties because of legislation passed by Obama (to be fair this is a bi-partisan problem) I’m not sure I or any of the others I am working with to repeal FATCA and get a fairer implementation of the U.S. citizenship-based taxation rules are going to vote for him. Overseas Americans are facing financial ruin, divorce, and discrimination (refusal of bank services to US persons) all because of these new rules or vigorous enforcement of older ones.
Many of us are all the more angry and confused because we perceived Obama to be one of us – someone who had an experience living abroad and has a pretty cosmopolitan worldview. We simply cannot understand why he is not doing more to protect those of us who have committed no crime except that of living outside U.S. territory and forgetting to file little-known forms.
The diaspora is organizing (see the Isaac Brock society to get a good feel for the anger and despair or the ACA website). In all my years abroad I’ve never seen such a thing. I believe many of these people will vote and could influence the election against Obama. I also think that when the number of renunciations is finally known (the IRS is required to report them) this could become a campaign issue to be used against him. I don’t think this is going to end well.
Victoria, I am quite sure that Obama did not understand the consequences of the law he signed for the mass of Americans living overseas, that he did not do so en connaissance de cause. In fact, I am quite sure that practically no one in Washington understands FATCA or has even heard of it. Until you informed me about it, I hadn’t even heard about, and I’ve lived in France for some twenty years. Americans living overseas don’t exist in Washington. They have no lobby and even less electoral clout – which is all that counts in Washington – as all vote in their last place of residence in the US, not as overseas citizens (unlike other countries – and now France – which have dedicated parliamentary representation for their diasporas). Is there a single member of Congress who is willing to take up the cause of the Isaac Brock society? I have long been amazed that the US taxes its citizens overseas and is the only country in the world to do so. It’s as if for members of Congress, Americans who live overseas must by definition be wealthy tax evaders living it up on the Riveria and/or that there is something suspect about living overseas, that no person in his or her right mind who could live in America would choose not to, except for suspect motives.
So what to do about it? It seems to me that there are three options: (a) Form an interest association in Washington and then lobby Congress, (b) Lobby governments in our countries of residence – where many of us are citizens – not to undermine their sovereignty in complying with FATCA, and (c) Civil disobedience, i.e. refusal to cooperate with the IRS, but as a collective effort.
On Obama having lived abroad and with a cosmopolitan world-view, way too much is made of this. He lived overseas only between age 6 and 10, which is pretty young, and had an America-centric live ever since. He speaks no foreign language – apart from maybe a few phrases in Indonesian – and has not traveled all that much. He is not interested in Europe – which alienated him on his first trip, after he graduated from college – and only went to Kenya for the first time in his mid-20s.
But even if he were cosmopolitan, polyglot, and all that, it wouldn’t matter, as FATCA is a matter for Congress to deal with, not the White House.
I agree 100% with you, Arun. I don’t think that either Congress or Obama understand the implications of the law. Just as they didn’t understand that the Patriot Act was going to have a horrible effect on American IT (do a search on Patriot Act and Cloud Computing to what all the fuss is about).
But this issue is going to blow up in Obama’s face. It’s going to be a diplomatic mess and it’s going to hurt the U.S. economy (not to mention the harm to American Overseas). Lots of foreigners will take their money out of the US. Renunciations will hit an all-time high. It may not be fair but he will be held responsible for this.
Just for info there is a lobby called American Citizens Abroad that is working on this. I’ve also heard from Democrats Abroad and they are involved as well. Do they get any traction? Well, they have in the past. Look at MOVE, for example. I wouldn’t count them out. We’ve also seen some US politicians over here recently trying to drum up the vote and they are getting an earful.
On the EU side there are about 25 MEPs starting to ask questions and demand answers. I’m working on a letter to them and we’ll see if I get any answers. Canada, I think, is probably our best bet because they have a very large American and dual population, they are close to the US (the “not so foreign”) and because the Canadian government has said that it will not help the IRS collect those penalties.
So we’re working on it. As you so rightly point out, most Americans abroad (or “Accidental Americans” like my children) have no clue about their reporting and tax obligations to the U.S. However, the IRS today seems to be saying that the issue has now been so publicized that people coming forward in the future (filing those FBAR’s and back tax returns) should not be able to claim ignorance. That means potential full penalties for “willful non compliance” if they are caught. FATCA will greatly increase the chances of that (and your bank may close your account in any case just because you are a US person). Pretty scary, isn’t it?
Thanks for all the information, Victoria. We’re clearly on the same page here (can any American overseas not be?). It seems that one has to work on multiple fronts, lobbying both in the US and here. Working with the European Parliament and Commission will probably have the most effect, as FATCA concerns so many dual national EU citizens, and even EU citizens without US citizenship. This is a no brainer for Brussels and the MEPs, in view of the flagrant violation of national sovereignty implied in FATCA. And the Europeans (and Canadians, Japanese, and everyone else) get very upset when the US tries to extraterritorialize its laws. Confrontation is guaranteed (and where the Americans invariably back down). I think I’ll get involved in this issue.
Have a look at this presentation which was presented at a meeting of Democrats Abroad. Illuminating. THIS is the message being sent to Washington.
Click to access PPT_JJRommes_FATCA_Democrats%20abroad_final_20111207.pdf
Very good. Hope it has an effect.