99 nights at the Obama opera

By Anthony Painter / @anthonypainter

Barack Obama’s election campaign was a lesson in how to accumulate political capital. The first 100 days of his presidency have been a lesson in how to use it. It would appear that political capital is a perishable good to be consumed within a short period of time after purchase. That’s not to say that more can’t be bought but don’t expect the tomatoes in your fridge to last for very long. This spirit of urgency – the fierce urgency of now – has defined the new president’s early period in office.

The economy has naturally been at the heart of his governing strategy. He outlined his approach with lawyerly clarity in a speech at Georgetown University just a couple of weeks ago where he invoked the parable at the end of the Sermon on the Mount:

“…the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house…it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.”

That is his vision: an America that is built on rock not sand. It is not sustainable to have an economy where 40 per cent of all corporate profits come from a financial sector based on, “inflated home prices, maxed out credit cards, overleveraged banks and overvalued assets.” As the UK starts to address the thorny issues of where next post-recession, perhaps a similar clarity is needed?

As Representative Henry Steagall once said during the Great Depression, “We cannot stand by when a house is on fire to engage in lengthy debates over the methods to be employed in extinguishing the fire. In such a situation we instinctively seize upon and utilize whatever method is most available and offers assurance of speediest success.” That has been the approach of the Obama administration: housing recovery, stimulus plan, re-regulation of Wall Street, G20 agreement, toxic asset plan, Detroit rescue, budget for long term investment in education, reduced healthcare costs, and green investment. The president even managed to propose an increase in tax for high earners without the political world collapsing. It seems that not only has the administration thrown everything they could at the fire but they’ve simultaneously started rebuilding the house as well. Will it work? That’s a known unknown.

Despite resetting the US international relations on a path of leadership through partnership, it is in the foreign policy field that we see other obvious known unknowns. Will Iraq troop drawdown be successful? Will a new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan be effective? The ghosts of the Johnson administration and Vietnam whisper from the past. What about Iran, Israel and Palestine? In all of this, the unsatisfactory nature of the 100 day measure is obvious: any of them could be a ticking time bomb waiting to explode.

Then there are the unknown, unknowns. At the 100 day mark, could we have foreseen that George W Bush would become a war president? For all his early success, and clear leadership style based on compromise, determination, pragmatism, and openness, do we really know how President Obama will react in a major unforeseen crisis? We can guess from seeing the calm way that he responded to financial crisis in the aftermath of the Lehman Brothers collapse on September 15th last year. But we don’t know for sure. Will there be a neo-conservative resurgence should there, god forbid, be another terrorist attack on US interests or even on US soil? They are readying themselves by muddying the waters on torture.

We can speculate endlessly. All we can say for sure is that around 63% of Americans approve of their president. 48% now think the United States is on the right track compared with 17% last October. They seem convinced and his 100 day performance has been convincing. It gets even harder from here as that political capital reserve inevitably will dwindle, notwithstanding the defection of the Pennsylvanian Senator Arlen Specter to the Democrats putting them within sight of a filibuster-proof 60 Senate seats. Watch out for coming battles on healthcare and a cap-and-trade emissions system.

Ultimately, without some better sense about where those known unknowns and unknown unknowns are, it is difficult to come to a firm conclusion on the 100 days of any presidency. Other than to the ideologically conservative, the early stages of Barack Obama presidency have been impressive. It is a lesson in the art of utilising political capital. But in reality, we are only part way through the overture. It will be some time before the curtain falls and we can decide whether we have seen a disappointing show with early promise or a classic for ages. All we can say is that the overture bodes well for the remainder of the opera.

Anthony Painter is author of Barack Obama: The Movement for Change.

His blog can be read at anthonypainter.co.uk.

This post was simultaneously posted at Progress Online.