Ross Douthat has a fairly measured column in today’s NYT about Obama’s legacy. I would break it down into three parts:
- On domestic issues, he is mildly complimentary. I would agree, with more enthusiasm.
- On foreign affairs, he gives Obama a lower grade. That’s reasonable, although it cannot be proved that a more aggressive approach to Syria would have garnered a better result. In any event, the case against passivity in Syria has to come from someone like John McCain, not Douthat, who didn’t even support our limited involvement in Libya, and never attempted to offer a plausible alternative.
- While he admits that Obama is hardly the first “imperial” President, he nonetheless condemns him for that. I have mixed feelings on this subject. There is no doubt that Obama used his authority to the maximum extent possible, and sometimes pushed the envelope too far. On the other hand, what were his other choices? When he continued to try, after several failures, to negotiate in an even-handed way with a Republican Party whose only objective was to drive him out of office, he demoralized his supporters and drove his poll ratings down. Was he supposed to then tell the American public that, under the Constitution, he was helpless to pursue his agenda, and just leave it at that?
The American public expects the President to be able to act. Obama’s willingness to use his authority over GOP opposition was a response to that condition; it was not the product of some sort of messianic personality. If he had simply shrugged his shoulders and told the voters that the Constitution prevented him from getting anything done on issues like climate change and immigration, he would have been rewarded for his high-minded rejection of Caesarism with electoral annihilation. No politician in his position would have behaved differently.