Obamaism

by George Packer
April 13, 2009
The New Yorker

Another week, another earthquake. Having already signed a nearly eight-hundred-billion-dollar stimulus bill, restored the rule of law to America’s treatment of detainees in its custody, developed plans to shore up the banking and housing sectors, demanded new regulation of private equity and hedge funds, proposed sweeping reforms in health care, energy, and education, and deepened the country’s involvement in Afghanistan and Pakistan, President Obama, in his tenth week in office, effectively put the government in charge of a large part of the automobile industry. And that was just Monday. By midweek, at the G-20 meeting in London, he had also committed the United States in principle to a new global regulatory framework for financial markets and, by some accounts, had resurrected the art of Presidential diplomacy. Then, on Thursday night, he won passage of a $3.5-trillion budget, whose tax and spending provisions mark the end of a long-term trend toward greater inequality.

Well short of Obama’s first hundred days, the dominant characteristic of his Presidency is clear: activist government, on every front. It’s harder to make out the contours of the philosophy at the core of this dazzling blur of action. Given the early and ample track record, there’s surprisingly little agreement over the nature of Obamaism. Obama’s signature projects defy grouping under a single heading, and, as a result, he has been criticized for inconsistency. To take one example, he forced the chief executive of General Motors, Rick Wagoner, into early retirement, and yet he has not called for the removal of any of the failed leaders of America’s financial institutions, like Bank of America’s Kenneth Lewis. He promised a federal guarantee of warranties for owners of G.M. and Chrysler cars, but he won’t put the government in temporary control of the banks, which are at the heart of the economic crisis. He is willing to spend $275 billion for homeowners’ relief, but he won’t let the government enter into the business of making direct loans. He has made health-care reform the ultimate test of his first year, but seems prepared to compromise on significant aspects of the legislation.

To liberals such as Robert Kuttner, of the American Prospect, and Paul Krugman, of the Times, these self-imposed limitations are unnecessary concessions to a free-market ideology that has been thoroughly discredited. In this reading, Obama lacks the courage of his activist impulses, and his hesitations will play right into the hands of his enemies. The usual reply to such criticism is that Obama is basically a pragmatist, who will do what he thinks can work. But pragmatism is a description of a temperament, not an explanation of a world view.

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