Jobs, Deficit, Energy Conservation, Equality, Consumer Protection—Obama Earns His Swagger

Last fall, South Dakota Democratic Party vice-chair Joe Lowe said Democrats need to fight Republican gloom-and-doom mythmaking with facts about President Barack Obama’s successes. The President followed that path in his final State of the Union address Tuesday.

Such swagger was a deviation from standard Obama operating procedure. Contrary to the cranky conservative meme about the arrogance of that man in the White House, and apparently in contrast to the last Democratic President, the Obama Administration appears to have been too busy getting the job done to get the word out:

One veteran of both White Houses summed up the difference by telling me Clinton’s put out more fact sheets touting its work, while Obama’s has been too busy doing work.

“People were always saying: ‘Why aren’t we talking about this cool accomplishment? Under Clinton we would’ve bragged about it for weeks!’” recalls Jon Favreau, Obama’s first-term speechwriter. “The answer was usually: ‘Because there are a million other things going on’” [Michael Grunwald, “The Nation He Built,” Politico, 2016.01.06].

What all has President Obama achieved in the last seven years? Here are just two paragraphs’ worth from Grunwald’s six-page article:

…The economy was bleeding 800,000 jobs a month when Obama took office; it has now enjoyed a record 69 straight months of private-sector job growth, though economists disagree about how much credit Obama deserves for the recovery, and in any case wage growth has been tepid. The deficit has shrunk by nearly $1 trillion, and Medicare’s long-term solvency has been extended by 13 years. The resuscitated auto industry produced 11 million vehicles in 2014. Federal contractors can no longer discriminate against gays, women can now serve in combat and the rich are paying higher taxes. A new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is policing unscrupulous mortgage brokers, payday lenders and other rip-off artists, and the financial system has much less risky leverage.

Before Obama, Americans were using more energy every year; now we use less energy overall, and more of that energy is clean. Oil imports are down 60 percent from 2008 levels, more than a third of America’s coal plants are shutting down and sales of LED bulbs have increased 50-fold. Health care inflation and the uninsured rate have fallen to their lowest levels in half a century, and doctors now use iPads instead of clipboards. Student borrowers can now ratchet down their monthly payments to 10 percent of their discretionary income and get their loans forgiven after 20 years, rules that are gradually and almost silently easing the student debt crisis. Nine of 13 federal appeals courts now have a majority of Democratic-appointed judges; in 2009, it was one of 13 [Grunwald, 2016.01.06].

President Obama also got to drive a 1963 Corvette around the White House driveway with Jerry Seinfeld. That’s a modest reward for being one of the smartest, busiest, and most effective Presidents of our time.

p.s.: Grunwald notes that, as of November 2015, President Obama had signed 228 executive orders. President Geogre W. Bush signed 292; President Bill Clinton signed 308.