Horowitz: President Obama - A Consequential and Successful Presidency

Tuesday, January 17, 2017

Rob Horowitz, GoLocalWorcester MINDSETTER™

Ernest Hemingway famously defined courage as “grace under pressure.” These words fit President Obama perfectly.

Through victory and defeat, good times and bad, President Obama nearly always managed to rise to the occasion, conveying calm and in Lincoln’s words, appealing to the “better angels of our nature.” This is all the more impressive when one considers that he faced relentless scrutiny as our first African-American President and eight years of constant and often vicious partisan attacks. The Presidency does not build character; it reveals it and Barack Obama demonstrated an abundance of it.

Most Americans, whether they agree or disagree with President Obama’s decisions and policy proposals, admire the way he represented us here at home and around the world. This, as much as his impressive record of accomplishment, accounts for his high job approval ratings.

The accomplishments, however, are consequential. In January 2009, the month Obama first assumed the Oval Office, we lost more than 800,000 jobs and there was a real danger of financial collapse. President Obama’s actions, building on the rescue efforts of Bush Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, saved the nation from another Great Depression. He acted decisively and non-ideologically to restore fiscal soundness to our big banks and other key pillars of our financial system, saved the US Auto industry, which is thriving once again, and demonstrated steady and competent economic leadership. The unemployment rate, which reached 10% early in his first term, has been cut in more than half—the largest decrease in the unemployment rate since Roosevelt.

Similarly, President Obama’s successful drive to win adoption of the Affordable Care Act, better known has Obamacare, has brought us close to the goal of universal coverage with 20 million more Americans insured today, cutting the percentage of uninsured Americans by half. And the law benefits all of us by preventing insurance companies from denying coverage because of preconditions—a popular feature that the Republicans now threatening to repeal Obamacare promise to keep in place.

Perhaps most important, President Obama’s actions at home, buttressing his proactive diplomacy abroad, put the world on the right path to avoid the worst consequences of global warming. The landmark Paris Climate Agreement, largely a result of Obama’s efforts, is the first time nearly all the nations of the world—developed and developing nations alike, agreed to lower greenhouse gas emissions. The progress made under President Obama, along with the forward momentum generated, leave a well-marked path to maintaining a livable planet even if President-elect Trump works to dismantle these initiatives.

There are just a few of his big accomplishments. But it is the case that despite his best efforts, President Obama was not able to fundamentally change our politics. We are as divided--if not more so--than the day he took office. His attempts at bi-partisanship, such as the so-called Grand Bargain, by and large, did not succeed. While this was mostly a result of a built-in partisan polarization and Republican determination to oppose him on every front, it is fair to say that his personal outreach to members of Congress was fitful and would remind no one of LBJ or other masters in this area.

Despite these defeats in Congress, he did not demonize his opponents and remained an optimist about what he could accomplish and about the nation .Unlike President- elect Trump, who appears determined to use the Presidential bully pulpit to bully and settle scores, President Obama used it to place the events of the day in context and to offer a sense of optimism and hope firmly grounded in the promise of America.

As President Obama leaves the office this Friday, he departs not only as a successful two-term President—one who we can confidently say “left the nation better than he found it’, but as a true patriot. I end my column with the conclusion of his farewell address-words that all Americans, Republicans, Democrats or Independents should take to heart:

“My fellow Americans, it has been the honor of my life to serve you. I won't stop. In fact, I will be right there with you, as a citizen, for all my remaining days. But for now, whether you are young or whether you're young at heart, I do have one final ask of you as your President — the same thing I asked when you took a chance on me eight years ago. I'm asking you to believe. Not in my ability to bring about change — but in yours.

I am asking you to hold fast to that faith written into our founding documents; that idea whispered by slaves and abolitionists; that spirit sung by immigrants and homesteaders and those who marched for justice; that creed reaffirmed by those who planted flags from foreign battlefields to the surface of the moon; a creed at the core of every American whose story is not yet written: Yes, we can.

Yes, we did. Yes, we can.

Thank you. God bless you. May God continue to bless the United States of America”

Rob Horowitz is a strategic and communications consultant who provides general consulting, public relations, direct mail services and polling for national and state issue organizations, elected official and candidates. He is an Adjunct Professor of Political