Obama, Two Years Later

Two years after millions enthusiastically pulled the lever for Barack H. Obama, voters will return to the polls today to cast ballots reflecting their opinions on the first half of the president’s term.

While Harvard professors agree that Obama has since combatted an unprecedented combination of political and economic challenges, they offer varying degrees of approval of the president—and accordingly hedge their predictions of the results of today’s elections.

Professors are nearly unanimous in predicting that Democrats will lose the House when tomorrow’s votes are counted. But they maintain that the extent to which Republicans win now-Democratic congressional seats will strongly indicate how voters feel about Obama’s success in rebuilding the economy, reforming health care, bridging political divisions, and addressing race relations.

TACKLING THE RECESSION

In the face of the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression, professors say that the Obama administration’s efforts to rehabilitate the economy have been largely successful, despite facing the partisanship that has plagued Congress.

“The Obama administration’s policy accomplishments...have been very significant in the economic domain, including the stimulus package, financial regulatory reform, and health care policy,” writes Harvard Kennedy School Professor Robert N. Stavins in an e-mail.

Government and Sociology Professor Theda R. Skocpol also commends the Obama administration’s successful efforts to pass economic reform, especially “in a highly polarized political system.”

Other professors, however, offer a slightly less glowing assessment of how the administration handled the financial crisis, but recognize that tension between Republicans and Democrats in Congress limited the president’s actions.

Jeffrey A. Frankel, a professor at the Kennedy School, says that the economy needed twice as much stimulus—though he adds that a stimulus package that size would have been impossible to pass in the recent discordant political environment.

Harvey C. Mansfield ’53, a professor in the government department, says that the cost of the stimulus bill and the administration’s spending will contribute to the “massive bumping” of Democrats out of office that he predicts will occur in today’s elections.

JUMPING OFF A CLIFF

Though health care reform sparked heated debate and partisan fighting that lasted for months, professors agree that the Affordable Care Act signed into law on March 23 was ultimately a success.

“It’s a historic step forward in American social policy,” says Skocpol, who recently published a book on health care reform.

Obama’s efforts to make health care more accessible, to decrease the number of uninsured, and to improve the quality of care were impressive, says Robert Greenwald, director of the Law School’s health law and policy clinic.

But in the eyes of other professors, the process of ushering health care reform through Congress encountered many roadblocks and political bickering that tainted Obama’s record in his first two years.

According to Kennedy School Lecturer Elaine C. Kamarck, making health care the top priority on the agenda was risky from the start.

“I think that [the Obama administration] didn’t understand that bringing together the left and the right meant agreeing on an agenda,” Kamarck says. “The agenda they ran with was in fact not at all an agenda that the Republicans were interested in, and that was health care.”

Mansfield put it more bluntly, saying, “Democrats jumped off a cliff” with health care reform because it was unpopular with the American people at the time.

The health care act also faced resistance because of the general population’s lack of understanding about the bill, says Nathaniel G. Butler ’68, who has worked in health care—including the state Medicaid program—for 30 years.

Most of the population has been deceived by Republican distortions of the reform bill, Butler says.

“Government takeover of health care? This is not a government takeover of health care. But people have been led to believe that,” Butler says.

A NATION DIVIDED

Obama campaigned on the promise of bipartisanship, and he was elected with a vision of a unified America.

Yet in Obama’s first two years, Congress has become even more mired in party politics.

Karmarck says that the president’s partisan choice of placing health care reform on top of the agenda has only led to political division and contributed to the birth of the recent Tea Party movement, one of the most potent forces in this year’s election.

“Those [Tea Partiers] were people worried with spending,” Karmarck says.

The movement—which targets large federal spending bills like the stimulus and health care—has attracted hundreds of thousands, by some estimates, and might be potentially fueled by wider disdain.

“At heart, the Tea Party movement is an expression of the desire of a certain slice of American society that wants to take back for themselves the America that they believed once existed—to take it back from the coalition of ‘liberal elites’ and people of different ethnic and racial groups,” Kennedy School Professor Alexander Keyssar ’69 says.

In his victory speech after the November 2008 election, Obama tempered the Democratic Party’s “great victory,” by promising to accept the congressional and presidential gains “with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress.”

But health care reform—a feat that many professors acknowledged was a wide-ranging revolution that had proven unachievable in previous presidencies—passed Congress without a single Republican vote.

“They’ve just said no to everything,” adds Frankel, referring to Republican members of Congress. He notes that the disagreement between the political parties extends beyond health care.

Frank questions whether the president was so naive that he believed Republicans would cooperate with Democrats or whether Obama thought that Republicans would cave under public pressure to consider Democratic policies. “Because, right now, people are blaming the Democrats as much as the Republicans.”

Frankel maintains that Obama has made “clear efforts to work bipartisanly...but you need to have a dance partner to dance.”

THE BLACK WHITE HOUSE

The belief that Obama’s critics might be motivated by certain prejudices has inspired some discussion on the effects of having the first black president in the White House.

“On race, I think Obama is more constrained than any white president would be,” writes Law School Professor Michael J. Klarman, a renowned scholar on issues of race and the law.

Given that a number of Americans regard Obama as “the other,” Klarman says that the president seems to be restricted in addressing “some of the racial difficulties facing the  United States today,” as he might be labeled “the president for black people.”

“I think that’s a terrible shame, but I think it’s the political reality,” Klarman says.

As an Illinois state senator in 2004, Obama captivated America with his speech in favor of a nation that is unified—racially and politically.

“There’s not a liberal America and a conservative America; there’s the United States of America. There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America,” he said at the time.

Since that speech, Obama has attempted to stay away from mediating racially charged disputes, only intervening when directly prompted by critics or the media.

Yet professors agree on the significance of having a black president in the White House.

“I think he has changed the landscape, although it’s too early to begin to see,” Keyssar says.

Obama’s imprint on history will not only rely on his being the first president of color, professors say.

“This a guy who took control of the jetliner when it was in freefall,” Frankel says. “In the first six months, he brought the nose up, and now he’s brought it rising up again.”

“You have to go back to at least to Roosevelt or maybe even Lincoln to find a president who’s taken command with a country in such a set of circumstances and performed so spectacularly,” Frankel adds.

—Staff writer Gautam S. Kumar can be reached at gkumar@college.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Tara W. Merrigan can be reached at tmerrigan@college.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Zoe A. Y. Weinberg can be reached at zoe.weinberg@college.harvard.edu.