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--> Good article. And thanks for the
cute card. Love, Marilyn
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-transformational-president/2016/04/07/d722a7a4-fce9-11e5-80e4-c381214de1a3_story.html?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_opinionsObama
pursued transformation as Republicans chose self-destructionIn an interview
during the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama said that Ronald Reagan changed the
trajectory of the United States in a way that Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton did
not. Clearly, Obama aspired to be a transformational president, like Reagan. At
this point, it’s fair to say that he has succeeded. Look at what’s happened
during his tenure to the country, his party and, most tellingly, his
opposition.The first line in Obama’s biography will have to do with who he is,
the first African American president. But what he has done is also significant.
In the wake of the financial collapse in 2008, Obama worked with the outgoing
George W. Bush administration, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and members
of both parties in Congress to respond forcefully on all fronts — fiscal,
monetary, regulatory. The result is that the United States came out of the Great
Recession in better shape than any other major economy.Fareed Zakaria writes a
foreign affairs column for The Post. He is also the host of CNN’s Fareed Zakaria
GPS and a contributing editor for The Atlantic. View Archive Obama’s signal
accomplishment is health care, where he was able to enact a law that has
resulted in 90 percent of Americans having health insurance. Although the law
has its problems, it achieves a goal first articulated by Theodore Roosevelt 100
years ago.Then, there is the transformation of U.S. energy policy. The
administration has made investments and given incentives to place the United
States at the forefront of the emerging energy revolution. Just one example:
Over Obama’s terms , solar costs have plummeted by 70 percent and solar
generation is up 3,000 percent. Finally, Obama has pursued a new foreign policy,
informed by the lessons of the past two decades, that limits U.S. involvement in
establishing political order in the Middle East, focusing instead on
counterterrorism. This has freed the administration to pursue new approaches
with countries such as Iran and Cuba and to direct attention and resources to
the Asia-Pacific region, which in just a few years will be home to four of the
world’s five largest economies.Just as Reagan solidified the ideological
position of the Republican Party — around free markets, free trade, an expansive
foreign policy and an optimistic outlook — Obama has helped push the Democratic
Party to be more willing to use government to achieve public purposes. And his
party has responded.In that 2008 campaign interview, Obama pointed out that
Reagan had not changed the country single-handedly; he took advantage of a shift
in the national mood. The same could be said about the United States today.
Years of stagnant wages, rising inequality and the financial crisis have created
a new political atmosphere, one that Obama has helped shape.The biggest impact
of his presidency, however, can be seen in his opposition, the Republican Party,
which is in the midst of an ideological breakdown. Surveying this scene,
conservative columnist Daniel Henninger writes in the Wall Street Journal that
Obama “is now close to destroying his political enemies — the Republican Party,
the American conservative movement, and the public-policy legacy of Ronald
Reagan.” Obama’s success in this regard, if it can be called that, is a passive
one. He has let his opponents self-destruct and never overplayed his hand.From
the first month of Obama’s presidency, the GOP decided that he was a socialist
radical who had to be opposed, no matter what. Obama did not take the bait,
governing from the center-left. Consider his first administration, staffed by
ultra-centrists Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers on economic policy; a
former general, James Jones, as national security adviser; Hillary Clinton as
secretary of state; and a stalwart Republican, Robert Gates, as his defense
secretary.The Daily Trail newsletterA daily briefing of what's happening on the
campaign trail.It wasn’t just gestures. During budget negotiations, Obama made a
concession on the reform of Social Security larger than any Democrat ever has,
agreeing to reduce the automatic yearly increase of benefits, enraging the
Democratic base. The Republicans turned him down, something they will surely
regret, since it will likely never be offered again by Democrats (nor by
Republicans, if Donald Trump wins).Perhaps unable to paint him as a socialist,
perhaps for other reasons, many Republicans’ rhetoric about Obama quickly became
personal — with insinuations about his origins, race, religion, faith and
loyalty to the country. Again, Obama never lashed out — demonstrating discipline
even as his opposition grew wilder.As Obama kept his cool, the Republican Party
descended deeper into the politics of identity, flirting with racial, religious
and ethnic grievances — and moving away from its core tenets of limited
government, free markets and free trade. The result has been an ideological
implosion, and it’s unclear what will emerge from the debris.Obama has
repeatedly maintained that one of his principles in foreign policy is, “Don’t do
stupid [stuff].” It looks like it works in domestic politics as well.Read more
from Fareed Zakaria’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates
on Facebook. Checked by AVG -
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