Barack Hoover Obama?

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"Many of the administration's pet stimulus programs have joined Jerry Ford's 'Whip Inflation Now' buttons on the junkpile of history: green jobs, cash for clunkers, debt relief for homeowners, and now, by the President's own admission, 'shovel–ready' infrastructure projects."

Walter Russell Mead
The American Interest

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No matter what you think of Barack Obama or the Republicans who are vying to replace him, you should read Walter Russell Mead's piece in The American Interest.

Mead's article caught my attention because, ever since it became apparent in 2008 that, first, Obama would be the Democrats' presidential nominee and, second, he would be elected, there has been no shortage of those who were eager to label him the second coming of another American president — during and after the campaign, he was going to be "another Lincoln" as he tried to heal the nation's racial wounds or "another FDR," as he resolved an economic crisis.

For awhile, it was said that he would be "another JFK," picking up the progressive torch that Kennedy dropped in Dallas in 1963. And, in the aftermath of the setbacks Obama's party suffered in last year's midterms, there have even been comparisons to a Republican icon, Ronald Reagan, who was re–elected in a landslide two years after a midterm drubbing.

Obama continues to inspire comparisons — only those comparisons have turned in a more ominous direction — which brings me back to Mead's article.

Now, The American Interest is a largely nonpartisan publication that focuses on foreign policy issues and international economics — so you might want to keep that in mind whenever you read any opinion pieces that appear on its pages.

But give Mead's message some thought.

Obama, he writes, misinterpreted the results of the 2008 election, and that set in motion a potentially catastrophic series of events for his presidency.

"Midway through 2010, President Obama looked less like Lincoln redux and more like a Clinton manqué," opines Mead. "By the end of that year, the penultimate dissing of the President began; friends and foes began to ask whether President Obama might not be, gasp, the new Jimmy Carter."

(Now, personally, I liked Carter. I thought he was a decent guy, and I thought his policies had the country on sound footing. Like today's Obama defenders, I told people that all Carter's policies needed was time.

(But I was young, and I soon learned that voters have little patience when the economy turns mean.

(And it's a lot meaner now than it ever was under Carter.)

Carter's image has been rehabilitated considerably since he left the White House three decades ago, but he remains a political anathema. The mention of his name conjures up images of failure, of malaise (even though Carter never used that word) — even among those who have always considered themselves his supporters.

That the Obama Administration could end up being remembered by history as an early 21st century version of the Carter presidency is a "best–case scenario" for the Instapundit blog, Mead points out — and, in the minds of most Americans who remember Carter and the beating he took from Reagan when he sought re–election, that can be damning enough.

But Mead worries that a more dire specter hovers over the president and it ought to send a chill down the spine of every Democrat — "the ghost of Herbert Hoover."

If there is a name that is linked in American history with economic disaster, it is the name of Herbert Hoover.

No president wants to be remembered as his generation's Herbert Hoover.

Mead starts by pointing out all the surface similarities — and there are plenty of those — between two men who were elected 80 years apart.

• Both Hoover and Obama were products of broken homes;


• both were widely traveled;


• both had wives who were "unusually well educated and assertive;"


• both were "unconventional candidate[s] who came into office on a tidal wave of support;"


• both had modest political resumes and "went deep into enemy territory" for support when they were elected, winning states that hadn't voted for their parties in many years;


• Hoover was seen as the "great progressive of his day," Mead writes;


• and Hoover's ticket — with a Native American running mate — was the "most diverse" in the nation's history until 2008.


• In fact, no matter how he may be perceived today, Hoover came to the presidency with a sense of idealism that would rival Obama's.
  
  Hoover "was a strong supporter of disarmament ... began the withdrawal of U.S. forces his predecessors had committed ... sought to avoid confrontational U.S. statements and to downplay possible grounds for conflict" and his "strong humanitarian instincts ... made him reluctant to use force but also left him concerned about the well being of people in other countries."

Well, that mostly addresses foreign policy. How about economics? That, writes Mead, is what "should worry" the White House and its supporters.

"[D]espite his long record of progressive politics, his personal appeal and his sympathy for the downtrodden," writes Mead, "President Hoover is best remembered for failing to master the Great Depression."

It isn't hopeless for Obama, Mead says. "The Great Recession is not as crushing as the Great Depression," he writes, "but President Obama's problems in the face of economic turmoil are beginning to look Hooveresque."

However ...

"Like Hoover, President Obama faces the possibility of a devastating second downturn due to economic problems in Europe — and like President Hoover, President Obama can't do much to prevent it. Like Hoover, President Obama is harried by a domestic populist revolt against his leadership and the policies he supports and like Hoover, President Obama's once unassailable popularity is being slowly ground down by economic bad news."

But time is getting short for Obama.

"Lincoln, Clinton, Carter, Hoover: that is a trajectory no President should want," Mead writes, "nor will the country benefit from 18 more months of Presidential subsidence."

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Things We Think We Think

(Note: Peter King of Sports Illustrated, one of my favorite sports writers, writes a column on pro football and routinely includes a list titled "10 Things I Think I Think.")

Last month, I wrote about the anniversaries of some noteworthy elections:

• Ronald Reagan's triumph in the 1980 presidential election,


• Ann Richards' victory in the 1990 Texas gubernatorial race,


• California's vicious Senate race in 1950,


• the seemingly endless 2000 presidential campaign and


• John F. Kennedy's narrow victory in the 1960 presidential election.

I didn't observe the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's victory in the 1860 presidential election (for the record, Lincoln was elected on Nov. 6, 1860) — in large part because I've already written much about Lincoln in this blog. I figured it was probably about time to give him a rest.

But I must admit that I have been regretting that decision recently as I have been following entries at The American Interest blog under the heading "The Long Recall."

Every day, the site posts descriptions of what was happening in the United States on that day 150 years earlier. The site also provides links to reprints of editorials and news accounts from the newspapers of the day. You can find rumors, financial news, world news, all the things that were shaping America and the world in the mid–19th century.

All these tidbits provide us with a glimpse into another world, another time. It is, alternately, captivating and heart–breaking to read what the people of that time were saying.

They spoke of things like secession and war, but it is clear — to me, at least — that they had no idea what was ahead.

Nearly everything they wrote or said would fall under the heading of "Speculation." It was, for the most part, educated speculation — but it was still speculation.

The scope of the war that lay in front of them — the pain and suffering it would bring, the lives and property that would be destroyed — was beyond their comprehension.

They were on the precipice of a major event, but they could not know what was to come. They knew what they thought, but what they thought was not yet a reality.

Isn't it the same with us and our time in history? For that matter, isn't it the same for every generation in every nation?

Last night, I was watching a program on Nazi Germany on The History Channel, and a scholar observed that those Germans who voted for the Nazis in the early 1930s had no idea they were voting for the Holocaust.

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That is true. It is also true, I think, that the people who lived in 1860 were not so different from us — or the people in Germany in the 1930s. From reading these entries, it is clear they knew that things beyond their control were shaping a future they could not yet see. They were living in their time in history, and they did not see what is so painfully clear to us a century and a half later — that a war that would change everything was about to begin.

It is a reminder to me of conversations I have had with people who did not like the fact that I pointed out that Lincoln was not always the open advocate of abolition that the history books say.

He came to the presidency determined to keep the nation together, and he directed the war effort with that as his supreme objective. It was only later — and with pragmatic political considerations driving him — that he became associated with the abolitionist effort.

In his conversations, he used the language of his time — including the word "nigger," which was commonly used in the 19th century and can be found in non–racist contexts in the works of 19th–century types like Charles Dickens and Mark Twain.

To my knowledge, he never pondered how his words might be viewed by the inhabitants of the 21st century.

Are we any different?

I can remember, with stunning clarity, everything I did on Sept. 10, 2001 — but I probably remember it so clearly because so much changed within 24 hours.

One of the things I remember about September 10 is how blissfully ignorant I was of what was about to happen. If I had had any idea what was going to happen, my actions probably would have been different, I tell myself.

And perhaps they would have been.

But I was no different than all but 19 people in the United States on that day. I had no clue what was going to happen.

And I get the feeling, from reading the entries in "The Long Recall," that those Americans who were still living when the Civil War ended in 1865 could probably look back to those days in 1860 and only marvel.

If they had only known, they might say. But if they had, what would they have done? What could they have done?

And can't we all look back on days like that in our lives — days before someone close to us died, days before we lost a job or failed a test — and wonder if, by changing something we did, even some little thing, we might have changed the course of events — like the proverbial butterfly flapping its wings and creating a ripple effect?

But that would require a kind of knowledge that is not given to mortal men, an insight into future events — even near–future events — for which we could make appropriate preparations.

In 2010, we do not know what lies ahead. We never do. Economic experts can tell us what they think will happen. They can tell us that they think the recession ended in the summer of 2009, but as 2010 draws to a close, unemployment is on the rise again.

Perhaps a catastrophic stock market crash is looming in the months ahead.

Or perhaps there will be a natural disaster — an earthquake in California, maybe, or a huge hurricane in the Gulf next summer — that will bring death and destruction on a massive scale. More people undoubtedly will die from cancer and heart attacks in the years ahead. Some will know it is coming and will make their preparations. Others will be caught by surprise.

Whatever it may be, in hindsight, people will say the signs were there for all to see. The tricky part is always recognizing those signs for what they are and taking preventive measures.

When people vote — as they did when they elected Lincoln, when they elected FDR, when they elected Barack Obama — they vote only with the knowledge of what is and what they want the future to be like.

They receive no guarantees. Only time will tell if their expectations have been met. Sometimes they are. Sometimes they are not.

In the aftermath of the 2010 midterms, there is talk of a left–wing challenge to Obama for the Democratic nomination in 2012. Such talk is not new.

It is, however, relatively new for Democrats, who, before the midterms, confidently asserted that Obama would face no challenges for the party's nomination — and, consequently, would be re–elected ...

Because, in modern times, only incumbent presidents who had to turn back a party challenge have been turned down by the voters.

Now, it doesn't seem to be a sure thing that Obama will coast to renomination — or re–election — in 2012.

"[I]f anything," writes Nile Gardiner in the The Telegraph, "the outlook is getting even worse for the Obama presidency, and the notion of an Obama bounce is simply a pipe dream at the moment."

Granted, Gardiner is writing from London. But he's got his fingers on the pulse of the American electorate when he writes, "Fears over the economy are undoubtedly the biggest factor in the lack of confidence Americans have in their president."

Obama knows — or he should know — what the voters expect from him under the current circumstances. It is now his responsibility to deliver. With Republicans in control of the House and a much narrower advantage for Democrats in the Senate, that will be a much tougher task for Obama in 2011 than it could have been in 2009.

But it is the hand he has been dealt.

Well, that's what I think, anyway.

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