I am unable to join in the worldwide chorus of adulation. Obama has done nothing much other than getting elected. In his early days he had some unsatisfactory associates and his election to the Senate is a murky business. As a Senator he has toed the party line and kept a low profile. His election campaign was excellently run by I believe, young and committed supporters. That is an achievement but running a campaign and is not the same as running a country. A campaign has a clear objective and requires the projection of the right image. Running a country involves many objectives and image is not enough.
Obama won because he is young, personable, and a decent speaker- and he hasn’t much baggage. But mainly he won because he personifies change. All the qualities I have mentioned contrast with Bush and also with Hilary Clinton. But much more, his exotic background and his colour mark change and change was his recurrent election theme. Americans want change and that is hardly surprising. At home there is recession, foreclosure and the famous fluid society is fluid no longer. Abroad the U S is disliked and even loathed. Iraq has been a mess and Afghanistan no better. Iran goes its own way and North Korea shilly-shallies. China grows ever stronger with India coming behind. The country is in hock to the Chinese and to the oil-rich Arabs.
Americans are rather vulnerable to a Messiah. They look to Obama to lead them to the Promised Land and Obama has promised to lead them there- wherever the Promised Land may turn out to be. Not an overmodest programme but someone who has written two autobiographies before the age of forty is no shrinking violet. With him “the oceans will cease to rise and the planet begin to heal”; “freedom will be reborn”. But his slogan, “Yes we can” is the answer to a question that he has avoided posing. We can do what? All this it would seem gets one elected at a time of widespread disillusion, but it raise expectations. It is not just that the expectations are unrealistic, it is that they are vague: no one knows what they are, least of all Obama. Of course some of his supporters will have a vision if an amorphous one. My guess is that the young committed look to “environmental” matters, with the change in outlook that implies. His older supports I suspect hope that he will lead them back to a future where there are well paid jobs for all, where America is again the unchallenged super power and where everybody loves Americans. Both will be disappointed inevitably. Of course there will be improvements over the Bush years; it would be difficult for it to be otherwise. Relations with other countries and the U N will be better; foreign policy will be modest in scope not least because concern lies elsewhere. The economy is the overriding challenge. That presents Obama with two difficulties. Firstly, the problem is not America’s alone and cannot be solved for America by actions only within that country. Secondly, the way the financial crisis and the economic downturn are to be dealt with is widely agreed, and the major action has already been taken. Obama can offer only more of the same.
There seem to me to have been only three recent successful radical governments in Britain and the US; Roosevelt’s New Deal, the post war Attlee government that created the Welfare State, and Thatcher’s free market administration of the ‘80s. These were quite different in their composition and organization but all had a clear vision and a programme. Roosevelt was a leader. His administration was composed mainly of the young, dedicated, idealistic and intelligent. Attlee was a manager keeping together a group of able and ambitious ministers already well known. Margaret Thatcher chose sycophants; her criterion was, “Is he one of us?”
Obama has said, ”Understand I will be setting policy. I will be responsible for the vision that this team carries out and I will expect them to implement that vision.” In the words of Mandy Rice-Davis, “Well he would say that wouldn’t he” although he shouldn’t need to say it. He thus claims to be a leader not a manager. But he has chosen neither sycophants nor idealists. He has chosen largely experienced politicians of the Clinton era and respected academics. Obama has said he wishes to encourage discussion and variety of ideas. Again it sounds fine but a team needs to have a shared vision. There is no evidence that the team members or the team leader have any vision at all. If one is to judge from the composition of the team, Obama’s “vision” will be limited and conservative.
Obama is faced with specific problems that he will have to try to solve, but solving specific problems was not what he promised to do, nor why he was elected. And when it comes to the problems – and there are certainly plenty- how will the solutions be arrived at? Take the case of health care. Health care costs too much and leaves out too many. How will Obama proceed? One does not need a vision but a solution that stands a chance of getting into law. Does Obama have the answer that these experienced Ministers will dutifully carry through? Or will each have a scheme and wrangle over which one is best and say “I told you so” when the chosen scheme runs into difficulties?
A comparison with the creation of the British National Health Service is instructive. In 1945 the aim was clear- a national service that provided for everyone, free at the point of delivery. The government was elected pledged to establish that. Every member of the government was a committed supporter. The credit by the way belongs not to the Prime Minister but to Nye Bevan. The doctors fought the plan bitterly but Nye “stuffed their mouths with gold.” Obama is not committed to a specific plan. There will be dozens to choose from. All will have their opponents inside and outside the administration. The outcome will be a compromise, perhaps a decent compromise but perhaps a bad one, but not a clear radical success. One thing is certain; what is created will not be a National Health Service.
The people Obama has selected may not have political ambitions – for most their future is behind them- so in one sense they are not a threat but for the same reason they have little to lose by making public any disagreements they may have with what Obama does.
The case of Hilary Clinton is interesting. The general view seems to be that by bringing her inside the tent he has scuppered her chance of running against him in four years time. I do not see it that way. Other Secretaries of State have become Presidents. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan come under the Pentagon not the Secretary of State. If Iraq descends into anarchy and Afghanistan gets worse not better – the former is possible and the latter likely- Obama will get the blame. If Hilary Clinton manages progress on Palestine, Darfur, Somalia, Congo, Zimbabwe, North Korea and Iran she will get the credit. If she does not - as is all too likely -no one will blame her. If she establishes cordial relations with Britain, the European Union, and Latin America, as I am sure she will, she will get the credit. She can scarcely lose. Clinton will not be left dangling like Colin Powell partly because Obama is unlikely in the extreme to launch a disastrous war. If Obama fails to revive the economy and becomes unpopular - all too likely after the extravagant hopes he has encouraged – Hilary Clinton can allow herself to be drafted. If she were outside the administration, criticism would seem disloyal.
The parallel is not with Roosevelt, for much the same reason as health reform for Obama is not the same as the problem that faced post war Labour. The New Deal was new and radical and imaginative. Keynesianism turned the orthodoxy of the time on its head. But Obama comes after 40 years when Keynes has been discredited. His analysis has been totally rejected both practically and as something not far off socialism. However, governments the world over have been forced to try Keynes’ cure for recession but in the US especially, reluctantly and with ill grace. The country where the free market was morally as well as practically right has been forced to nationalize on a near Communist scale. Obama will find it difficult to make that into a crusade.
The closer parallel is with Kennedy. Young, intelligent, charismatic but Kennedy did not deliver much. Of course he might have done more had he lived, although there is little to suggest that he would.
It is to be welcomed that a person of colour has become President, though as Dr Johnson said of a dog walking on its hind legs, “What is remarkable is not that he does it well, but that he does it at all”.
I look forward to Obama’s future with interest. My bet is that he will be a one term President. Any takers?
Dec 2009