Gains Under Barack Obama

Barack Obama has a competent record that he can run on. Here are some examples.

1. Economics.

Europe doubled down on austerity as a way out of the on-going recession. Great Britain, under conservative Prime Minister Cameron, made itself a living laboratory for fiscal austerity. Great Britain u-turned into recession, and several European economies are now on the brink.

Contrast America. America, under Obama, spent money to prime the economy. Our economy improved. This meant people continued to work that would have lost their jobs. Many, many people.

We didn’t crash, which had been our trajectory and would have been our fate if we had followed Europe. The economy is slowing down, now. This coincides with the tapering off of the stimulus spending. But that’s the fault of Republicans in Congress, not Obama.

2. Health.

Babies born with serious illnesses were once un-insurable. Before the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare" to its detractors) parents of unhealthy babies had to watch their babies die; or (more likely) they had to take on a debt that drove them into bankruptcy. This deprived them of the small prosperity that they might have built for themselves in their young lives.

And who doesn’t know someone who has a pre-existing medical condition, if they don’t have one themselves? The Affordable Care Act makes insurance companies sell medical insurance to persons with pre-existing condition. This is the triumph of the Affordable Care Act.

And it is the reason for the insurance mandate that makes everyone have health insurance. Without the mandate, if anyone could get insurance, even with a pre-existing condition, people would wait until they got sick to buy insurance, knowing that they could not be turned down. Then insurance would be so expensive that it wouldn’t be insurance. The mandate keeps people from gaming the system to everybody's detriment.

So the insurance mandate is necessary, but it is unpopular. Without it, sick people would be un-insurable. Treatable illnesses would kill or bankrupt them. The Affordable Care Act compassionately ends that hard choice between insolvency and death.

3. Terrorism.

Osama bin Laden loathed America. He continued to scheme to murder Americans until the time of his death. Under the previous president, interest in finding him had fallen off. But under Obama, America actively sought the bloody-minded enabler of the terrifying crushing of three-thousand innocent American lives. Bin Laden doesn’t scheme any more.

The decision to send special forces into Abbottabad was hard. In America, among citizens of a certain age, the memories of the catastrophic Iranian hostage-rescue and Black Hawk Down are still green. And it was not clear that the occupant of the compound in Abbottabad was even bin Laden.

Defense Secretary Gates, a hold-over from the Bush administration, opposed the special-forces mission to take bin Laden. But Obama overruled his own defense secretary, and he ended the sinister schemes of an evil man.

America continues to incinerate our enemies with drone strikes, and at a much greater pace than under the former administration.

4. War.

Wars are costly, and when we go to war our brave young men and women, bless them, suffer and die. In Iraq, we lost almost 5,000 of our young people and a trillion dollars. In contrast, Obama removed a brutal dictator in Libya, Muammar Qaddafi, with zero loss of American lives, and at a cost of one-billion dollars. This was infinitely fewer deaths, and one one-thousandth of the cost, compared to Iraq.

5. Diplomacy.

Nations engage in diplomacy so that they don’t have to go to war. In contrast to the go-it-alone, screw-the-world attitude of the previous administration, the Obama administration has re-engaged with the world. America has engaged the world with a considerable skill last seen in the George Herbert Walker Bush administration. Our standing in the world rises.

6. Energy.

Under Obama, domestic crude-oil and natural-gas production have increased, and oil imports have decreased. There has been substantial government encouragement of alternate, sustainable energy. This is important, because the kingdom of King Oil is shrinking and will one day end.

7. Education.

Obama’s program Race to the Top encourages and funds improvement in education. Contrast this with the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind. No Child Left Behind had an inspiring name, but it put burdens on local school districts and never helped them with those burdens.

8. Fiscal responsibility.

Compare two programs: one from the Bush administration, one from the Obama administration. The Bush administration pushed the Medicare Prescription Drug and Modernization Act. It pays for prescriptions for seniors under Medicaid. But it provides no funding for this benefit. It blows a huge hole in future budgets.

But the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act is paid for. In fact, the act, if fully implemented, will draw down federal red ink. According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, it would save over one-hundred billion dollars between 2010 and 2019. Between 2020 and 2029, it would save over one-trillion dollars.

9. American auto-industry rescue.

And at comparatively little cost to taxpayers, Obama rescued the American automobile industry. This saved a huge number of jobs, both in the companies that directly were assisted, and in companies that supplied those companies. America would be gasping if Obama had not shown leadership in this.

Obama’s present opponent for the presidency opposed the government rescue. He wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times against it. But it worked. And America is better off for that.

10. Conclusion.

We often overlook the good that Barack Obama and his administration have done. My Democratic friends, it is easy to be disappointed with getting over the last three years a perceived half-a-loaf. Sure. But things could be far, far worse. And, in fact, Obama has done well.

Let’s work to give a competent president four more years.

Four more years is not assured. The race is close now, and this is before the Citizens-United-funded swift boating has begun in earnest. What we will soon see will make the original swift-boating seem like a toy ship in a sudsy bathtub.

We have a lot to lose. I’m giving. I hope you do, too.