What Obama's done right -- and wrong

Posted By Will Inboden Wednesday, December 28, 2011 - 2:29 PM Share

In assessing the most important things that the Obama Administration got right and got wrong in 2011, there are an abundance of choices in both categories.  National security-wise, the Administration had a very mixed year -- genuinely so, in terms of a number of notable successes as well as a number of significant failures.  The former include an improved strategic posture in Asia, the discovery of a freedom agenda for the Middle East and Asia, helping engineer Qaddaffi's ouster in Libya, and of course killing Osama bin Laden, Anwar Al-Awlaki, and other Al Qaeda High-Value Targets.  The latter category includes being repeatedly behind the curve on the Arab Spring, waffling on Iran's nuclear program, botching the drawdown and military exit from Iraq, losing Pakistan, further alienating Israel, and getting left holding an empty bag on the Russia "re-set."  While any of the above would be legitimate choices, my main criteria for selecting the best and worst is how each will look in the light of history.  In other words, 25 or 50 years from now, what might historians look back on and evaluate as the best and worst of the Obama Administration's policies in 2011?  I honestly don't know, and anyone who insists we can know history's judgments in advance is committing historical malpractice.  But that doesn't mean we can't at least speculate -- and admit it is mere speculation -- on what might have the most enduring consequences.  Here are mine.

The Obama Administration's Most Significant Success: Creating a new strategic posture in Asia.  If the Obama Administration's initial Asia policy consisted of naively pursuing an illusory "G-2" with China while neglecting our regional allies and universal values such as human liberty, than 2011 marked a substantial course correction in the Indo-Pacific.  A renewed commitment to allies such as Japan and Australia, increased attention to emerging partners such as India and Indonesia, outreach to potential partners such as Vietnam and Burma, and an upgraded strategic posture across the region were all features of a substantially improved Asia policy that has the potential to pay dividends for a generation. 

The Obama Administration's Most Substantial Failure: The National Debt.  Recently retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mullen frequently called the national debt "the single biggest threat" to our national security.  Yet it was also the biggest failure of the Obama Administration during the year, a failure that might hurt America for decades to come.  What was the White House's fault on this?  Part of it was, to paraphrase Governor Mitch Daniels, a failure of arithmetic: presiding over the increase of the debt to the unfathomable amount of $15 trillion (an unprecedented increase of $4 trillion just since Obama took office) without making any effort to reform entitlement spending.  But the bigger part of the failure was the White House's cheap demagoguery that attacked any credible plan such as Paul Ryan's, and the cynical disregard of bipartisan efforts such as Obama's own Simpson-Bowles Commission.  All of which further poisoned the political environment and put any prospects for fiscal sanity on life support. 

Why is this a national security failure?  For the obvious reasons of how the debt strangles needed resources for the defense, diplomacy, and development budgets, or how it gives China economic leverage over us, or how it threatens the dollar's status as the global reserve currency.  But more perniciously, the debt is a national security failure because of how it undermines one of the main pillars of American power and global preeminence: our economic dynamism and our model of an opportunity society.  Ryan Streeter astutely calls this a "crisis of aspiration," and a national debt that now equals our national GDP cuts at the heart of American exceptionalism and leadership. 

Mark Wilson/Getty Images

EXPLORE:2012 ELECTION POSTER 5, FLASH POINTS, NORTH AMERICA, BARACK OBAMA, ELECTION 2012
 

WOLFBOY

3:26 PM ET

December 28, 2011

This post is badly, badly wrong

You (the unsigned author) say:

"Part of it was, to paraphrase Governor Mitch Daniels, a failure of arithmetic: presiding over the increase of the debt to the unfathomable amount of $15 trillion (an unprecedented increase of $4 trillion just since Obama took office) without making any effort to reform entitlement spending."

There is so much wrong with just this one sentence:

Mitch Daniels, as the OMB head who developed and sold the 2001 Bush tax cuts on the ludicrous (and obviously false at the time) basis that we were in danger of paying off the nation debt too rapidly, arguably bears as much responsibility for the size of the current debt as any person. He is a singularly poor source of authority.

Beyond this disqualification, and his obvious motivation to obscure his own culpability, blaming Obama for the increase in debt since 2009 is far off the mark: the US has experienced the most significant economic downturn in the lifetime of any SG contributor; revenues have plunged; costs of safety-net programs have increased. Essentially the same deficits would have afflicted any president during this period.

As to reforming entitlements, the author may have missed it, but the PPACA passed last year included multiple significant cost-cutting reforms to medicare.

Rep. Ryan's plan is a credible approach to reducing debt? Maybe only to one who thinks it is appropriate to support an assertion of demagoguery against Ryan by linking to Mr. Ryan himself.

Have you actually reviewed the Ryan Roadmap? The principal component of this plan is permanent extension of the Bush tax cuts, augmented by very large additional tax cuts on high incomes. For this reason Ryan's plan leads to much larger deficits in the next decade than existing law. To make room for this massive revenue reduction, Mr. Ryan shrinks medicare outlays as a share of the economy over the following decades, so as to bring debt as a share of GDP back down to its current level by ... around 2060. (http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3114)

Offers for hundreds of billions of dollars of new spending cuts from Obama have been rejected repeatedly by congressional Republicans unwilling to contemplate allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire.

 

14159265

10:02 PM ET

December 28, 2011

beast=starved

They announced they would do it, they did it, and yet its not at all part of the deficit "debate" as Rome burns ever hotter

 

DRENAGEM11

11:18 AM ET

December 29, 2011

'Alienating Israel?'

i Agree in Furthermore, you can't do that when you are wasting $5.5 trillion on wars based on lies orchestrated by AIPAC nor can you do that if your central bank is effectively eroding world confidence in your currency in order to bail out wall street, the main funding source of the Israel firsters....
massagista
avioes venda

 

DRLAKE777

7:41 PM ET

December 29, 2011

You guys are so consistently

You guys are so consistently unable to be fair in your evaluation of the president it's comical! Let's look at the "failures" you mention...

1) Being "behind the curve" on the Arab Spring?'. WTF does that mean? You wanted him to invade Egypt? Syria? You wanted him to throw a long-term US ally like Mubarak under the bus quicker than he did? WHO (if anyone) was ahead of the curve on this? How could anyone be in that position? Your evaluation is shoddy partisan BS, nothing more.

2) Waffling on Iran's nuclear program? Again, WTF does that mean? That he's unwilling to violate international law and numerous treaties we've signed by engaging in a military strike? That he doesn't conclude on the basis of ambiguous information that Iran definitely has a weapon program and intends to deploy nuclear weapons? Again, nothing but partisan BS here.

3) Botching the drawdown and exit from Iraq? Again, WTF are you talking about? Do you think he needed to try to strongarm the Iraqis into revising the SOFA to keep US combat troops there, even though that was impossible? There is nothing wrong with how he executed this, except in the partisan fantasy world you live in.

4) Losing Pakistan? How can you "lose" a hostile state like Pakistan? More to the point, how could you avoid losing them, when they are already hostile to us and acting contrary to our interests?

5) Further alienating Israel? F**k Israel! They are damn close to our worst "ally", repeatedly disrespecting our president and acting contrary to our interests.

6) Left holding an empty bag in the reset with Russia? Given how badly George "I looked into Putin's eyes" Bush screwed up, this is pure comedy. Yes, the idea of a reset was stupid, but so is the notion (which you seem to have) that any US president could have done better. We have no leverage over Russia.

7) The National Debt? Ah, so somehow this is Obama's fault? When it doubled under Bush, where were you? When the Republicans blocked the tax increases necessary to cut the deficit, where were you? When the Republicans played games with the budget and prevented reforms that would have saved money, where were you?

Given the quantity of horseshit you're dishing out in this essay, I hope you never again get anywhere close to a position of power.

 

PATRICKRAMIRO

6:58 AM ET

January 27, 2012

Rep. Ryan's plan is a

Rep. Ryan's plan is a credible approach to reducing debt? Maybe only to one who thinks it is appropriate to support an assertion of demagoguery against drinkingblog Ryan by linking to Mr. Ryan himself.

 

Shadow Government is a blog about U.S. foreign policy under the Obama administration, written by experienced policy makers from the loyal opposition and curated by Peter D. Feaver and William Inboden.

Read More