There has been much speculation about the prospects for the Obama presidency. So, we thought we might as well join the throng, and add our two cents worth. Just what kind of president will Obama turn out to be?
One reason his every move has been watched since election night is due in no small measure to this question. We believe we have started to see what will be some of the major characteristics of his presidency--at least for the next year or so.
Laying aside the stump rhetoric of the genre of the black revivalist preacher, there are some key things to consider. Firstly, there is the vexed issue of the thin Obama resume. Obama has not really practised law. He went to an academic law school (Harvard) and had very little actual legal experience. And most of his actual professional labours after graduation had to do with politically orientated legal representation (such a "community organising").
One of the besetting professional limitations of lawyers is endless argumentation and debate. The more academic the legal experience, the more "on the one hand, on the other" applies. Such lawyers tend to be very cautious and always sensitive to counter arguments and divergent opinions. Getting all the opinions and permutations of view on the table and inviting everyone to weigh and consider them is stock-in-trade.
Secondly, lawyers are prone to risk management where the key focus is to reduce legal liability or financial risk. Therefore, they tend to be professionally cautious and tentative.
Thirdly, we need to remember Obama's numerous "present" votes in the Illinois legislature. A "present" vote is an effective abstention: it reflects that one was present in the chamber for the vote, but did not want to vote either way. During the campaign, this was raised and glossed in both a negative and positive light. The negative view was that Obama was ignorant and did not know what he thought on important issues. The positive gloss was that he was thoughtful and cautious, not ideological or partisan. We suspect that the "present" vote was more a case of the "court of Obama" reserving its judgment--a classic judicial move, giving time for more reflection.
Fourthly, a consistent theme emerging out of the more seasoned political commentators is that Obama is indeed careful and cautious. His circumspect position-couching over the recent Gaza bombardment is a classic example of his purported care and caution. The soaring stump rhetoric, evoking American manifest destiny and globalist messianism has gone.
Finally, we would pick up on a piece glossed by Adam in The Inquiring Mind. Adam was commenting on an article in the Financial Times by Clive Crook, where the wisdom of appointing people with widely divergent views to his administration was questioned. We reproduce the post, complete with Adam's thought provoking questions, below:
Shortly before the festive break Clive Crook blogged at the FT on Barack Obama’s Trade & Labour appointees. He made the point, not for the first time, as to:-
the wisdom of combining people with fundamental disagreements in executive (as opposed to advisory) roles. Widely divergent opinions are good in a seminar but not so good in a management setting, where the challenge is not to develop and polish an opinion but to get something done. Much as I admire the man and respect his appetite for countervailing opinion, I’m beginning to wonder if Obama understands this distinction. Dysfunctional quarrelling is the obvious risk. A subtler problem is that if you appoint people who disagree with each other to run adjoining or overlapping spheres of policy, you, the boss, cannot delegate.
Precisely.
This led into a final point from Crook in that post.
Obama will always have to be there to adjudicate–and his time and energy are going to be very scarce resources.
This led Adam to ponder does Obama realise this fact?
Is his administration going to be bedevilled by internecine conflict?
Will Obama be able to avoid being dragged into every turf war between the various competing cabinet and agency barons?
Does Obama actually comprehend what he is doing?
Now, if you take all the above into consideration, it appears perfectly understandable that Obama would appoint people with widely divergent views to his Administration. That is precisely what you would expect from someone wedded to an academic, theoretical experience of the law.
The canvassing of all views to let them ferment and barrel age for a long period is regarded as a key way to distil out the timeless essential spirit from the temporary and occasional. Not resolving issues is perfectly acceptable in academic legal circles. The arguments are rarely resolved: they are just revisited. The endless revisiting hones the mind--but--and here is the point--it does not lead to clear and decisive actions. Even when a court makes a clear decision, there is always endless appeals and filing of additional argumentation and briefs.
All of this is to say that lawyers generally make very poor executives. And Obama is now the Chief Executive.
Therefore, we believe that the Obama presidency, at least in its early phase, is likely to become quickly mired in endless debate, argumentation, consideration, and deliberation. It will be characterised by paralysis through analysis. Obama risks being driven to act decisively only when facing an emergency--and then the follow through is likely to be desultory. But the endless debates will be diverting indeed to the media. The administration will be loved by the intellectual elite. They will feel they have a government of which they can be proud.
Given the balance of powers within the US constitutional structure, it is incumbent upon the Executive that is has a mantle of clear and decisive positioning, so that Congress--the far more splintered and divided branch of government--can have a reasonable chance of being prodded into bicameral consensus on budgets and legislation--even if the nature of the consensus is to be united against the Executive.
If we are correct, expect to see within a short space of time the Democrats begin to grumble that Obama is not showing enough leadership. Expect that America will talk up a big game, but will drift directionless, both on the world and domestic stage. It will seem to an outsider as a headless chicken--at least through the first two or three years of the Obama presidency. The Obama presidency will risk being characterised as an unsure, doubting, tentative, bumbling, Carteresque presidency.
Turkey, or the Ottoman Empire, was once characterised by Tsar Nicholas I as the sick man of Europe. Will the US come to be seen as the sick man of the globe? But as the Proverb says, the heart becomes sick when hope is deferred, and Obama was elected on an outpoured tide of fervent hope.
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