After nearly five years in office, what’s President Obama’s most significant accomplishment?
This is a serious question, so no jokes about the Nobel Prize he received for not being Bush. And no partisan GOP answers about the 2010 election, either.
Put yourself in the position of a future historian and think about what you would put in a book to describe Obama’s biggest accomplishment.
I don’t think anyone, regardless of ideology, would pick the so-called stimulus. Advocates of small government say it was a waste of money based on deeply flawed Keynesian theory.
Proponents of big government, by contrast, also aren’t big fans of the stimulus, though they’re dissatisfied because they think Obama should have wasted even more money.
Another potential answer is Obamacare. Libertarians and conservatives, needless to say, would say it was a significant accomplishment in the same sense that the Titanic had a significant maiden voyage.
Leftists, by contrast, obviously can’t be pleased by the way Obamacare is imploding in the short run, but they nonetheless may think that it will be worth it in the medium run because more people will be dependent on government (though they may regret their choice in the long run).
Killing Osama bin Laden is probably a good answer, but if terrorism and conflict with the Islamic world are still big issues in the future, then I suspect the achievements of Seal Team Six won’t be seen as making that much of a difference.
For what it’s worth, I think the change in public opinion may be the President’s most long-lasting and significant accomplishment. Take a look at these remarkable results just published by Gallup. A record share of the population now say that big government is the biggest threat to the nation’s future.
Wow. I’m tempted to say that this is strong evidence of the effectiveness of the Cato Institute (and there is independent data to support that position), but I feel compelled to admit that Obama also deserves a good bit of the credit.
Even more amazing, President Obama has done something that is probably beyond even the ability of Cato. He’s convinced partisan Democrats that big government is a serious threat. Look at how the numbers have dramatically changed since 2008.
What’s particularly amazing about the shift among Democrats isn’t that 56 percent now view big government as the major threat today, compared to 32 percent about five years ago. What’s shocking is that this change happened with a Democrat in the White House.
This is newsworthy because partisan Republicans and Democrats have a tendency to say things are good or bad depending on whether “their team” is in charge.
While these numbers are remarkable, I suppose it’s too early to say the growing concern about big government is the most significant accomplishment of the Obama presidency.
That being said, anxiety about big government may lead to big political changes in 2014 and 2016, and those political changes may then lead to big policy changes such as entitlement reform and tax reform.
And if that happens, then the shift in public opinion during the Obama years may turn out to be profoundly important. In other words, Obama may turn out to be another Herbert Hoover – a politician whose statist policies set the stage for dramatic changes in public policy.
And if that happens, Obama truly will deserve to be named “libertarian of the year.”
P.S. While big government is the biggest threat to the country’s future, big business and big labor can be very dangerous to liberty when they get in bed with big government.
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HIS “signature” achievement might be something if we could read his handwriting.
[…] sector has been a complete cluster-you-know-what for the left. It’s not only helped make the American people far more skeptical of big government, it’s also generated some first-rate political […]
[…] signature “achievement” has done more than anything else in recent years to discredit big government. I also think the flop of Obamacare has rejuvenated interest in – and support for – the […]
He has been Gun salesman of the year for the last five years. Libertarian of the year…. the honors just keep rolling in!
president Obama proved that a person of color can be elected to the highest office in the land… that’s it………… nothing else… future historians will describe his administration as being plagued by incompetence… and a profound lack of administrative and legislative substance… president Obama was a narcissistic neophyte… present at exactly the right time and place in history to merit a footnote… the real story during his years in office will be the erosion of constitutional governance… the world-wide decline of American prestige and influence… and the emergence of the surveillance state… none of it amazing… but quite predictable given the mindset of statist inspired governance… and the fiscal irresponsibility of the congress…
so much for the myth of American exceptionalism….
Well, let’s call that the supernova theory of prosperity. A star starts imploding so fast that it bounces back on its core and explodes converting a big percentage of its mass into energy in a few seconds. But I think that a black hole scenario is more likely.
I don’t dispute the opinion polls.
Yet that is one more perverse datum that the American electorate has entered the European vicious cycle to decline.
Seeing big government as a problem will not translate in electoral choices that effectively shrink the government and desire for collective control over the economy and free enterprise. It may mean that voter-lemmings will simply try a different approach. An approach that simply expands government in a different way. Like electing Republicans who will expand government in the progressive-conservative dimension, while leaving virtually all the recent left-progressive expansion in place.
The reason for this inevitability is that during decline government dependence at all levels increases, and the number of people willing to let go of the inefficient redistributing and growth suppressing hand of government keeps shrinking. In that environment, the voter-lemmings ever more desperately seek out and elect those who promise yet a slight variation of the impossible combination of both big government and growth (at least growth that matches the worldwide annual growth trendline, and can thus stave off decline). But, of course, such growth never happens, as fewer and fewer people engage the ever flatter and ever less internationally competitive effort-reward curves, and as decline compounds an ever more demoralized electorate keeps seeking more and more government help. The vicious cycle closes and voter-lemmings carry their once enviable (but less equal) prosperity down the toilet with them.
These expressions of government loathing and despise have all been nearly universal attributes of European descent into statism, low-growth, and inevitable decline. I see little different in the US these days any more. I think that American voter-lemmings have passed the point of no return, and its time to look elsewhere for hope. Hope that dynamic and productive people can believe in. The pendulum is still swinging in the statist direction in the US and it is unlikely that American values will survive. The escape velocity is now greater than any majority can muster. Perhaps, as an analogy to astronomy, very big stars do not get to at least explode, and regenerate, at the end of their lives. They implode directly into black holes.