Obama's Second-Term Slide Mostly About Us, Not Him
Leon Panetta, a former defense secretary and CIA director under Obama, added fuel to this long-running narrative in recent interviews to promote his new memoir.
"I think the difference is that (President) Bill Clinton (for whom Panetta also worked) likes politics, likes the engagement in politics," Panetta told Fox News' Bill O'Reilly. "Barack Obama does not like that process of engaging in politics, and I think that hurts his presidency. It hurts him in terms of getting things done."
Yet as a fair historical accounting will show, Obama did get some things done. He reversed the recession with a stimulus that injected billions into the economy. Recovery has been sluggish and low-wage workers have not benefited as much as upper-income earners. But unemployment is down, so is the deficit, and the stock market, for all of its bounces, has hit record highs.
The president's health care plan still suffers in the polls, but not enough for Republicans to carry through with their plans to make attacks on "Obamacare" a central theme of their midterm campaigns.
As for social issues, the Obama era has reversed the conservative culture wars, particularly in women's rights, same-sex marriage and reproductive rights, among other issues.
Yet there's little doubt that he could have done more had he engaged his relentless opposition more effectively early on. He still has two years. He still faces such weighty issues as immigration, Ebola, the Islamic State, Iran nuclear talks, new trade agreements, federal budget disputes and who-knows-what crises that we have not even imagined yet.
Gary Younge, at Britain's liberal newspaper The Guardian, observed that Obama's campaign slogan, "Yes we can," seems to have become, "At least he tried." The next two years offer him a big opportunity to try harder.
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E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.
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