Unlike many of my friends and acquaintances, I don’t feel particularly let down or cheated by Barack Obama. Back in 2008, I viewed him not as a transformative political figure but as a moderate, talented young Democrat, whose speaking skills and keen intelligence partly made up for his lack of experience. In a classic “time for a change” election, he was the right man in the right place.
As President, I think Obama has done a fairly decent job of cleaning up the financial mess he inherited, keeping the economy afloat, and restoring America’s reputation in the world. I say “fairly decent.” A bang-up job would have featured pushing through a bigger stimulus; imposing harsher terms on bailed out banks; passing a broader “Volcker Rule” with the intent of breaking up financial behemoths; and making a decisive effort to resolve the housing crisis. But none of these things was a cinch. Presented with a trillion-dollar-plus stimulus, Congress may well have balked. The Bush Administration had already dictated the terms of the bailouts. A narrow “Volcker Rule” barely squeezed through Capitol Hill. And bailing out underwater homeowners on the scale necessary to raise house prices would have been a huge logistical and political challenge.
In the nineteen-thirties, of course, F.D.R. rose to such challenges and triumphed. Obama, a habitual seeker of the center ground with little experience of running anything and a shaky majority in the Senate, was never going to morph into Roosevelt. Hopes to the contrary were daft. But every now and again, and despite my modest expectations, he does manage to disappoint me—even when he is on the other side of the world.
On Tuesday afternoon, this Associated Press headline crossed the wires: “Obama: Cities Must Make Own Decisions on Protests.” About twelve hours earlier, in the dead of night, hundreds of cops in riot gear had cordoned off much of lower Manhattan, cleared out Zuccotti Park, and arrested some two hundred people, including journalists and a City Councilman. (My colleague Philip Gourevitch has written more on the paramilitary aspect of the operation.) This is what the AP story said:
To begin with an obvious point: if Obama had wanted to comment on the breaking up of a protest that has drawn worldwide attention (and why wouldn’t he?), then rather than dispatching Carney with the message, he could have ambled back to the pool reporters who fly in the rear of Air Force One. And what might he have said? How about something like this:
Would such a statement have made a big difference to the future of Occupy Wall Street, or to next year’s election? Probably not. Would it have sent an important message to cities and states that they don’t have carte blanche in dealing with protestors? Would it have conveyed something significant about the President’s values? And would it have cheered up his supporters? Surely, it would have done all of these things.
Photograph by Donald Traill/AP Photo.