Fifteen Months of Barack Obama

J. Bradford DeLong

Fifteen Months of Barack Obama J. Bradford DeLong Professor of Economics, U.C. Berkeley Research Associate, NBER April 25, 2010

After fifteen months, it is clear how Barack Obama wishes go to govern the United States of America: from the center.

On fighting the recession, he decided that a fiscal stimulus program about half the size of the one recommended by his Democratic economist technocrats was what he would push for, and he decided to count that as a total victory rather than press for expanding half a loaf into the full amount--so much so that even now, with the unemployment rate kissing g10%, he will not grab for the low-hanging fruit and call for an additional $200 billion of federal aid to the states over the next three years so that there would be no further layoffs of teachers and thus no further decline in our commitment to the education of the next generation. Instead, he has shifted his focus to the long-run goal of balancing the budget even while the macroeconomic storm is still raging.

On moving to long-term budget balance, he has appointed a budget arsonist—Republican ex-Senator Alan Simpson—as one of his fire chiefs —one of the two co-chairs of his deficit reduction commission. Alan Simpson never met an unfunded tax cut proposed by a Republican president that he would vote against. Alan Simpson never met a balanced

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deficit-reduction program proposed by a Democratic president that he would vote for. Partisans whose commitment to deficit reduction vanishes whenever a Republican president makes a proposal simply do not belong running deficit-reduction commissions.

On dealing with the banks, he has acquiesced in the Bush-era policy of aiding the banks without demanding anything of them in return--no nationalizations, no imposition of the second half of Bagehot's rule that aid be given to banks in a crisis only on the harsh terms of a "penalty rate"--thus positioning himself not just to the right of Joe Stiglitz, Simon Johnson, and Paul Krugman but to the right of his advisors Paul Volcker and Larry Summers as well.

On environmental policy, he has pressed not for a carbon tax but instead for a cap-and-trade system that for the first generation pays the polluter: if you were a major emitter in the past, then for the next generation you are given a property rite to very valuable emissions permits whose worth will only rise over time.

On policy toward discrimination, the repeal of the military's don't askdon't tell policy is on an extremely slow track--if, that is, it is hooked up to an engine at all.

On policy towards the rule of law, the closure of the mistake that is Guantanamo Bay is also on an extremely slow track; and Barack Obama joins George W. Bush in claiming powers for the presidency that no British monarch has claimed since the accession of Charles II Stuart early in the seventeenth century.

On healthcare reform, Barack Obama's proudest moment, his achievement is... drumroll... RomneyCare! Healthcare reform has as its centerpiece the imposition by the government of sthe requirement that people choose responsibly and provide themselves with insurance--albeit with the government willing to help to provide a price break for the poor and bargaining power for the weak.

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In all seven cases Obama is ruling, or rather trying to rule, from the bipartisan center by taking a position that is the technocratic goodgovernment center of gravity, and then taking two steps to the right— sacrificing some important policy goals—in the hope of adding Republican votes to his coalition and of demonstrating his commitment to bipartisanship. Anti-recession, banking, long-run fiscal, environmental, anti-discrimination, rule of law, healthcare--on all of these policies it is possible to close your eyes and convince yourself that, at least as far as the substance of policy is concerned, the President is in fact a moderate Republcan named George H.W. Bush or Mitt Romney or John McCain or Colin Powell.

Now don't get me wrong. My complaints about Obama are not that he is too bipartisan or too centrist. I am at bottom a weak-tea DeweyEisenhower-Rockefeller social democrat small-s small-d myself. My substantive policy complaints are all that he is not technocratic enough, that he is pursuing the will-of-the-wisp of “bipartisanship” too far, and that as a result many of the policies will not work well, or at all—although I understand that politics is the art of the possible and that good-government technocracy is limited to the attainable, for we dwell not in the Republic of Plato but in the Sewer of Romulus.

But there does remain one question not about the substance of politics but about the rhetoric of policy: what happened to the transformational aspirations of the 2008 campaign? What happened to the candidate who would say that we should wait no longer for things to change or waiting for someone to lead us across the Red Sea, for “we are the ones that we have been waiting for; we are the change that we seek”?

As I see it, you need to understand four things in order to understand what has happened: First of all, you need to understand that no president can change the world.

No president can be a Moses to carry you across the Red Sea. No president can be the change in your life that you seek. You have to change the world yourself. You have to walk on your own two feet from Adibiya

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to Ras Misalla, rather than hoping a president will carry you. And the American tendency to identity the president with the Anointed One of David will always--well, my favorite bumper sticker during the 2008 presidential campaign read: Barack Obama: this time be disappointed by somebody new!

Second, you need to understand that what a president can do is provide good government. A president can administer policies in a way that works and that makes the country a better place. A president can push legislators to enact new policies that make America a better place so long as he is able to push without getting too far outside the comfort zone of the centrist legislators.

Third, the hope is that good technocratic government will--on average and over time--be popular. A better country will make voters more likely to favor candidates whose preferences and values are in line of those with those of the president. A record of success will shift the comfort zone of legislators. A record of success will lead to the election of new legislators with a somewhat different comfort zone. And it will lead to the election of legislators who are proud to support rather than anxious to distinguish themselves from the president and his policies. But politics is the long slow boring of hard boards.

And, fourth and last, you need to remember that even though politics is the long slow boring of hard boards, eventually the drill breaks through and bites into the air. Thus one day people wake up. They look around, and they discover that good government in the past has given them the tools to remake their lives. They have been able to change the world around them.

They turn around and find the Red Sea not in front of but behind them.

They find, indeed, that they were the change that they had sought. They find that indeed they were the ones that they had been waiting for to lead them.

Thus the Obama administration has a five-part plan:

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Rule from the technocratic bipartisan center.

Provide good government.

Voters will see results on the ground and come to trust the administration.

The press will notice—and say—that Republican opposition to bipartisan good-government policies is simply insane.

Voters will respond.

And we will be the ones we have been waiting for; we will be the change that we seek.

Is it working?

In a word: no.

The depression—and the compromises with technocratic rationality needed to assemble a ruling legislative coalition during the depression— makes it next to impossible for people to recognize that good governmetn is making their lives better than they would otherwise be, even though good government is making their lives better than they would otherwise be.

And the mainstream Washington press corps is incapable of covering policy substance or assessing the rationality of arguments at all.

So I believe that the way to bet is that we will not be the ones that we have been waiting for, and that we will not be the change that we seek. Other peoples in other nations than the United States of America will, instead of us, lead world civilization in the twenty-first century.

February 3, 2010: 1478 words

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