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Barack Obamas Legacy Is More Secure Than You, or the GOP, Think
Barack Obama’s Legacy Is More Secure Than You, or the GOP, Think
By Jonathan Chait
@jonathanchait
January 10, 2017
8:00 a.m.
....
Recently, a growing number of Republican, or Republican-friendly, voices have turned against the repeal-and-delay strategy. Even the president-elect has warned Republicans to “be careful,” lest they be blamed for the chaos that repealing the law would create. But they have no attractive option at hand. Obamacare can be defunded with 50 Republican Senate votes, but replacing it requires rewriting the insurance regulations in the law, which needs 60 Senate votes, or at least eight Democrats. Republicans could try to negotiate with Democrats on changes to the law that would make it more Republican-friendly — taxing rich people less, skimping on subsidies to the poor and sick, lowering premiums for the rich and healthy — that they could call an Obamacare “replacement.” If the changes were small enough, and they left most of the law’s achievements in place, Democrats might accept them in return for a truce in the health-care wars. But there’s no course of action for Republicans that avoids taking on high levels of political risk. They have made impossible promises on Obamacare and are quickly finding themselves stuck in a political quagmire.
Many other elements of Obama’s legacy will prove difficult or impossible to reverse permanently. The Trump administration will almost certainly refuse to enforce as intended the Dodd-Frank act, which dramatically curtailed risk in the financial system. But this is the standard approach by a Republican presidency toward regulations it dislikes but lacks the votes to overturn. Republican administrations inevitably refuse to enforce labor law, environmental regulations, workplace protections, and so on. Dodd-Frank will fall into the same category. And when a Democrat (or perhaps a moderate Republican in a chastened future party) returns to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the legacy of these reforms will be renewed without having to wait or hope for congressional approval. The actions Obama took to save the economy — fiscal stimulus, a bank restructuring, and an auto bailout — cannot be undone. And the almost completely unnoticed reforms to education unleashed by the “Race to the Top” grants tucked into the stimulus continue to drive innovation and better results in public schools.
Obama’s reactionary opponents wish to nullify his legacy not because it changed little but because it changed so much. Any large-scale reordering of power and resources in American life will inevitably face resistance, sometimes for decades. After Lincoln managed to ban slavery, southern states launched a violent terrorist counterattack, disenfranchising their African-American citizens, subjecting them to constant physical terror, and forcing them into exploitative labor arrangements almost tantamount to slavery. Conservatives never gave up their hatred for Franklin Roosevelt’s reforms, and the war against New Deal programs has never ended. (As recently as 2005, Republicans were trying to privatize Social Security.) Republicans continue to attack jewels of Lyndon Johnson’s legacy, like Medicaid and the Voting Rights Act. Sweeping reforms create powerful enemies who do not disappear. As Obama warned in a 2014 speech at the LBJ Presidential Library, “History travels not only forwards; history can travel backwards, history can travel sideways.”
Trump may very well destroy the underpinnings of a system of government put in place more than two and a quarter centuries ago, and if he does, it will be not only Obama’s legacy that is repealed but the legacies of every president from Washington onward. But the future is not predetermined. It depends upon our actions and choices. Protecting, fulfilling, and, in some cases, restoring Obama’s legacy will require mustering the political will to rally around it. If Obama’s supporters defend the pillars of his legacy, rather than fatalistically accept their destruction, they stand a good chance of warding off the most frontal attacks. And where they fail, and Obama’s achievements are repealed, then they can set out to repeal the repeal when the opportunity presents itself.
....
Excerpted from Audacity: How Barack Obama Defied His Critics and Created a Legacy That Will Prevail, by Jonathan Chait. To be published January 17 by Custom House, an imprint of William Morrow. Copyright 2017 by Jonathan Chait.
*This article appears in the January 9, 2016, issue of New York Magazine.
By Jonathan Chait
@jonathanchait
January 10, 2017
8:00 a.m.
....
Recently, a growing number of Republican, or Republican-friendly, voices have turned against the repeal-and-delay strategy. Even the president-elect has warned Republicans to “be careful,” lest they be blamed for the chaos that repealing the law would create. But they have no attractive option at hand. Obamacare can be defunded with 50 Republican Senate votes, but replacing it requires rewriting the insurance regulations in the law, which needs 60 Senate votes, or at least eight Democrats. Republicans could try to negotiate with Democrats on changes to the law that would make it more Republican-friendly — taxing rich people less, skimping on subsidies to the poor and sick, lowering premiums for the rich and healthy — that they could call an Obamacare “replacement.” If the changes were small enough, and they left most of the law’s achievements in place, Democrats might accept them in return for a truce in the health-care wars. But there’s no course of action for Republicans that avoids taking on high levels of political risk. They have made impossible promises on Obamacare and are quickly finding themselves stuck in a political quagmire.
Many other elements of Obama’s legacy will prove difficult or impossible to reverse permanently. The Trump administration will almost certainly refuse to enforce as intended the Dodd-Frank act, which dramatically curtailed risk in the financial system. But this is the standard approach by a Republican presidency toward regulations it dislikes but lacks the votes to overturn. Republican administrations inevitably refuse to enforce labor law, environmental regulations, workplace protections, and so on. Dodd-Frank will fall into the same category. And when a Democrat (or perhaps a moderate Republican in a chastened future party) returns to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the legacy of these reforms will be renewed without having to wait or hope for congressional approval. The actions Obama took to save the economy — fiscal stimulus, a bank restructuring, and an auto bailout — cannot be undone. And the almost completely unnoticed reforms to education unleashed by the “Race to the Top” grants tucked into the stimulus continue to drive innovation and better results in public schools.
Obama’s reactionary opponents wish to nullify his legacy not because it changed little but because it changed so much. Any large-scale reordering of power and resources in American life will inevitably face resistance, sometimes for decades. After Lincoln managed to ban slavery, southern states launched a violent terrorist counterattack, disenfranchising their African-American citizens, subjecting them to constant physical terror, and forcing them into exploitative labor arrangements almost tantamount to slavery. Conservatives never gave up their hatred for Franklin Roosevelt’s reforms, and the war against New Deal programs has never ended. (As recently as 2005, Republicans were trying to privatize Social Security.) Republicans continue to attack jewels of Lyndon Johnson’s legacy, like Medicaid and the Voting Rights Act. Sweeping reforms create powerful enemies who do not disappear. As Obama warned in a 2014 speech at the LBJ Presidential Library, “History travels not only forwards; history can travel backwards, history can travel sideways.”
Trump may very well destroy the underpinnings of a system of government put in place more than two and a quarter centuries ago, and if he does, it will be not only Obama’s legacy that is repealed but the legacies of every president from Washington onward. But the future is not predetermined. It depends upon our actions and choices. Protecting, fulfilling, and, in some cases, restoring Obama’s legacy will require mustering the political will to rally around it. If Obama’s supporters defend the pillars of his legacy, rather than fatalistically accept their destruction, they stand a good chance of warding off the most frontal attacks. And where they fail, and Obama’s achievements are repealed, then they can set out to repeal the repeal when the opportunity presents itself.
....
Excerpted from Audacity: How Barack Obama Defied His Critics and Created a Legacy That Will Prevail, by Jonathan Chait. To be published January 17 by Custom House, an imprint of William Morrow. Copyright 2017 by Jonathan Chait.
*This article appears in the January 9, 2016, issue of New York Magazine.
2 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
Thanks, for this good read.
