"A Transformational President"

Sydney M. Williams

Thought of the Day

“A Transformational President?”

December 29, 2010

President Obama has described himself as desiring to be a “transformational” President. As early as 2006, he said: “My attitude about something like the presidency is that you don’t want to just be president. You want to change the country. You want to make a unique contribution. You want to be a great president.” I imagine those sentiments, while not always expressed, must be felt by anyone assuming the presidency. The questions, as Mr. Obama enters the second half of his first term, are will he fulfill his wish and, if so, what direction will that transformation lead?

The two most transformational presidents, in recent times – at least recent to me – were Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, one leaning left and the other right. Roosevelt gave the country hope, when fear was overwhelming. While his economic policies achieved dubious and debatable results, democracy was maintained at a time when much of the world trended toward Fascism, and he prepared the country for a war that seemingly was inevitable. Reagan brought optimism to a country suffering the malaise of the Carter years, with its high inflation and low expectations; he cut taxes and promoted economic growth that carried the country for two decades amidst unprecedented prosperity. But all presidents are transformational, at least in some respects. With Bush 2, the country was transformed in terms of how it viewed Islamic terrorism, and President Clinton certainly changed the way we define sex.

Roosevelt and Reagan both came to office at a time of economic crisis and so has President Obama. Thus the opportunity is there. The question is: will he seize it? Professor William Gruver of Bucknell University, in an essay published two weeks ago in Patriot News, quotes historian James MacGregor Burns as saying that a prerequisite to becoming a transformational leader is that he must gain the trust of his followers, that he is acting in their best interest and is satisfying their vision and their needs. He “must first guarantee people the basics: life, sustenance and security.” Professor Gruver suggests that Mr. Obama stumbled when his pursuit of health care reform and climate legislation preempted the greater concern of the American people – economic security. Those decisions, placing ideology above common sense, suggest, in my opinion, a telling lapse in judgment.

Writing in USA Today, in April 2009, Chuck Raasch quoted Rice University professor and presidential historian Douglas Brinkley that Obama’s election marked the conclusion of the Reagan era: “The age of Reagan went from 1980 to 2008. We are in the age of Obama today.” The accuracy of that description will rest on the accomplishments and direction of the next two years. Again, the president has the opportunity. The economy remains paramount in people’s minds. But they are also deeply worried about expanding deficits and the curse that too much debt can impose on society. Not unnaturally, fiscally prudent people, those who never overreached, are being asked to subsidize those who acted irresponsible. That is always the case in the aftermath of any storm, fiscal or otherwise. But, at the same time, that knowledge frustrates and angers.

Typically, presidents campaign from the extremes and govern from the center. Mr. Obama did the reverse. He campaigned as a centrist and then tilted hard left. But he has an opportunity to move to the center. Problems confronting the nation persist. Despite a record stimulus bill, unemployment remains just under ten percent. The fiscal state of most states remains dire. Commodity inflation will make itself felt in consumer’s pocketbooks. Federal spending, as a percent of GDP, is at the highest level since World War II. Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are on life support and Congress keeps kicking the proverbial can down the road.

As the 2011 federal budget will be submitted to Congress on February 1, five days after the State of the Union speech on January 27, the president will likely spend time previewing and promoting its contents. Assuming the president avoids the partisanship of last year when he dissed the Supreme Court, he has the opportunity to pull both sides of the aisle toward the center. He did so with the lame duck session in Congress in terms of extending the Bush tax cuts and START. The deficit committee has provided the president cover in terms of moving toward a broader, flatter less cumbersome tax code – a suggestion he made earlier this month in an interview on NPR.

However, the problem as Andrew Biggs, Kevin Hassett and Matt Jensen of the American Enterprise Institute make clear in an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal, the key to bringing down the deficit is to cut spending. Just as it took the ardent anti Communist President Nixon, to open the door to restoring relations with Communist China, it may take a product and promoter of big government, President Obama, to restore fiscal sanity by tackling the entitlement issues that are sinking our country. I hope so, but I do not have high expectations.