From Vox: Barack Obama is officially one of the most consequential presidents in American history

For our look at executive branch.

- Click here for the article.

Love him or hate him, Barack Obama is one of the most consequential presidents in American history — and that he will be a particularly towering figure in the history of American progressivism.

He signed into law a comprehensive national health insurance bill, a goal that had eluded progressive presidents for a century. He got surprisingly tough reforms to Wall Street passed as well, not to mention a stimulus package that both blunted the recession and transformed education and energy policy.

He's put in place the toughest climate rules in American history and signed a major international climate accord. He opened the US to Cuba for the first time in more than half a century, and reached a peaceful settlement to the nuclear standoff with Iran.
You can celebrate or bemoan these accomplishments. Liberals hail them as moves toward a social democratic welfare state and a foreign policy more skeptical of military intervention; conservatives critique Obama's efforts to expand regulation and the government's reach, and accuse him of abdicating America's role as world hegemon.

But no one can deny that the changes Obama has wrought are enormous in scale.

- Click here for a Wikipedia page with a terrific graphic summarizing presidential rankings.

From the Wall Street Journal: The Late, Great American WASP: The old U.S. ruling class had plenty of problems. But are we really better off with a country run by the self-involved, over-schooled products of modern meritocracy?

Is the current meritocracy and improvement over the old ruling class - the WASPocracy?

The author has his doubts.

Much can be—and has been—written about the shortcomings of the WASPocracy. As a class, it was exclusionary and hence tolerant of social prejudice, if not often downright snobbish. Tradition-minded, it tended to be dead to innovation and social change. Imagination wasn't high on its list of admired qualities.

Yet the WASP elite had dignity and an impressive sense of social responsibility. In a 1990 book called "The Way of the Wasp," Richard Brookhiser held that the chief WASP qualities were "success depending on industry; use giving industry its task; civic-mindedness placing obligations on success, and antisensuality setting limits to the enjoyment of it; conscience watching over everything."

Under WASP hegemony, corruption, scandal and incompetence in high places weren't, as now, regular features of public life. Under WASP rule, stability, solidity, gravity and a certain weight and aura of seriousness suffused public life. As a ruling class, today's new meritocracy has failed to provide the positive qualities that older generations of WASPs provided.

Meritocracy is leadership thought to be based on men and women who have earned their way not through the privileges of birth but by merit. La carrière ouverte aux talents:Careers open to the talented, is what Napoleon Bonaparte promised, and it is what any meritocratic system is supposed to provide.

The U.S. now fancies itself under a meritocratic system, through which the highest jobs are open to the most talented people, no matter their lineage or social background. And so it might seem, when one considers that our 42nd president, Bill Clinton, came from a broken home in a backwater in Arkansas, while our 44th,Barack Obama, was himself also from a broken home and biracial into the bargain. Sen. Ted Cruz, the man who leads the tea party, is the son of a Cuban émigré.

Meritocracy in America starts (and often ends) in what are thought to be the best colleges and universities. On the meritocratic climb, one's mettle is first tested by getting into these institutions—no easy task in the contemporary overcrowded scramble for admission. Then, of course, one must do well within them. In England, it was once said that Waterloo and the empire were built on the playing fields of Eton. The current American imperium appears to have been built at the offices of the Educational Testing Service, which administers the SATs.

. . . What our new meritocrats have failed to evince—and what the older WASP generation prided itself on—is character and the ability to put the well-being of the nation before their own. Character embodied in honorable action is at the heart of the novels and stories of Louis Auchincloss, America's last unembarrassedly WASP writer. Doing the right thing, especially in the face of temptations to do otherwise, was the WASP test par excellence. Most of our meritocrats, by contrast, seem to be in business for themselves.

Trust, honor, character: The elements that have departed U.S. public life with the departure from prominence of WASP culture have not been taken up by the meritocrats. Many meritocrats who enter politics, when retired by the electorate from public life, proceed to careers in lobbying or other special-interest advocacy. University presidents no longer speak to the great issues in education but instead devote themselves to fundraising and public relations, and look to move on to the next, more prestigious university presidency.

Barack Obama: The Democrats’ Richard Nixon?

Barack Obama: The Democrats’ Richard Nixon?

Bruce Bartlett has quickly become one of my favorite commentators and the story linked to above is a reason why. He quickly and neatly summarizes the ideological nature of almost every president since FDR and explains why Obama is best seen as being to conservatism, what Nixon was to liberalism.

2302s ought to read this in order to get familiar with the nature of recent presidents, 2301s ought to read it in order to understand not only the ideological shifts that the nation has gone through in the past seven or eight decades, but the elections that facilitate this shift.

Fallows and Gore want Obama to be more Persuasive on Libya and Climate Change

James Fallows here.

Al Gore here.

Why Obama Might Win in 2012

A couple Republican consultants spell out 12 reasons (they'll provide some later arguing why he might not) but one sticks out for us, especially in 2301.

Forty percent of Americans now see the president as a moderate. That’s up 10 percentage points from a year ago. More importantly, 44 percent of independents now call Obama a moderate, up from 28 percent a year ago. If congressional Republicans are viewed as strident and over-reaching, Obama will be well positioned as a moderating force—with or without any Clintonian triangulation.
This fits with a general point we will make when we discuss elections. The candidate or party that captures the center - the moderates - tends to win.

Obama's Approval Ratings Still Low ....

but everyone else's are lower.
I suppose that's good news for the president.

Are Liberals Rational in their Criticism of Obama?

Ross Douthat contributes to the ongoing question about whether we expect too much from presidents in general, and whether liberals specifically are getting a bit too exasperated with Obama.

Jaworski Learned From Obama Campaign

The Galveston County Daily News details Joe Jaworski's convincing victory in the Galveston Mayors race and notes that the campaign was run by a woman who learned campaigning from Obama's 2008 race. Heavy emphasis was placed on block walking and communication.

Obama Comments on the State of Politics

And uses an example we discuss in class:

So before we get too depressed about the current state of our politics, let’s remember our history. The great debates of the past all stirred great passions. They all made somebody angry, and at least once led to a terrible war. What is amazing is that despite all the conflict, despite all its flaws and its frustrations, our experiment in democracy has worked better than any form of government on Earth.

On the last day of the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin was famously asked, “Well, Doctor, what have we got -– a republic or a monarchy?” And Franklin gave an answer that’s been quoted for ages: He said, “A republic, if you can keep it.” If you can keep it.

Well, for more than 200 years, we have kept it. Through revolution and civil war, our democracy has survived. Through depression and world war, it has prevailed. Through periods of great social and economic unrest, from civil rights to women’s rights, it has allowed us slowly, sometimes painfully, to move towards a more perfect union.

Obama Criticizes Liberal Judicial Activism

From the NYT:

“It used to be that the notion of an activist judge was somebody who ignored the will of Congress, ignored democratic processes, and tried to impose judicial solutions on problems instead of letting the process work itself through politically,” Mr. Obama said.

“And in the ’60s and ’70s, the feeling was — is that liberals were guilty of that kind of approach. What you’re now seeing, I think, is a conservative jurisprudence that oftentimes makes the same error.”

He added, “The concept of judicial restraint cuts both ways.”

Obama as a Rorschach Test

Frank Rich tries to figure why so many people have so many conflicting attitudes about Obama. Attitudes about him, he argues, say less about him than they do about us. He's a Rorschach test where we see what we want to see whether it is good or bad.

Others have hit upon this before:

- Obama As Ideological Rorschach : NPR
- The Oil Drilling Rorschach Test - Swampland - TIME.com
- A plain blog about politics: Rorschach

Roberts v. Obama

A war of words is heating up between the White House and the Supreme Court. The court tends to rank at the top of respected American governing institutions. I wonder if Robert's decision to criticize Obama's comments about the Citizens United decision in the state of the union address was wise. Might there be institutional consequences?

- Supreme debate: Obama vs. Roberts
- White House and Roberts get snippy again
- John Roberts' nonpartisan attack on presidential partisanship. - Dahlia ...
- Scotus Blog commentary.

Professor Obama

From the NYT. Makes me want to dream big.

I try to be officially neutral on this blog...

...but I like having a president who drinks beer at a basketball game.

You?

Is Obama a Socialist

Alan Blinder says no.

Who Protects You From the Police?

We've been discussing paper assignments in my 2301 and 2302 classes and some students have expressed interests in pursuing questions regarding aggressive police behavior. While we like the idea that the police around to save us from bad guys, we're stuck if the bad guys turn out to be the police themselves.

Here's a disturbing Washington Post story about suspicions that some DC police would cause problems at the inauguration:

In the days leading up to President Obama's inauguration, U.S. law enforcement agencies huddled regularly in an effort to minimize any possible security risk to an event that promised record crowds for the country's first black president. But one agenda item led authorities to a target close to home: the ranks of the U.S. Capitol Police.

An FBI investigation that included taped surveillance had placed two off-duty veteran Capitol Police officers in the company of individuals whose racial views and capacity for violence were under scrutiny. Although the recorded discussion did not center on Obama, federal law enforcement officials wanted to ensure that the officers were not on duty covering the Capitol, where the president took the oath of office, according to two sources involved in the matter.

The Birthers

For you conspiracy theorists out there, but you probably already knew about this.

The genesis and distribution of this story seems to be a direct consequence of the rapid fire communication facilitated by the internet. Questions to ponder:

- Is this the Internet run amok?
- Is speech too free? Must it be monitored? Does it justify regulation, or would that be worse than the disease?
- Is the mainstream media negligent in not focusing on this story?
- Does the internet allow for the passionate to lash out in a healthy manner?
- Is this just a natural consequence of living in a free society?

The Obama Code

An interesting read from George Lakoff.

Obama, Roberts and the Harvard Law Review

Here's a neat connection: Barack Obama and Chief Justice John Roberts - the man who swore him in today - both served on the Harvard Law Review, as president and managing editor respectively. An impressive list of people are also alumni.

Here's the question: is the success of past members of the review because they are capable and smart (I assume that's the case) or because of the connections that come with the position?

Obama Conspiracy Theorists

A great post for those of us who love conspiracy theories.