Obama: Preliminary Report Card 

A Preliminary Report Card on Obama

President Obama is defended by supporters who point to the entrenched power of status quo and conservative/centrist forces in Senate and House. These forces are also preponderant in the vast reaches of Washington bureaucracy—and in great babble of wealthy lobbyists clamoring for their special interests. How can he be expected to make very much headway in achieving his stated goals, given such obstacles. These forces, together with the blatant and corporate-financed right wing jackals who howl for his destruction every day put his personal life in constant danger and make it extremely difficult to accomplish any of his purposes. A case in point is his effort to at least get health insurance to those who most need it via his “public option”.  But even that patently inadequate band aid may well be denied him.

His supporters have a point. However, their point applies much more to domestic policy than to foreign policy. In foreign policy, it is no secret any more that the executive power of the President overshadows, out-paces, and out-guns the legislative power of the Congress. Nor can the Supreme Court exert any real influence over the actions of the President in the conduct of foreign affairs. The Supreme Court, in fact, has acknowledged in a case decided as long ago as 1932 (Curtis-Wright), that the power of the president in foreign affairs, is “inherent” – ingrained in the office. It is a non-delegated power, different from every other power, since every other power rests ultimately on the principle that ultimate power belongs to the several states and to the people (Tenth Amendment). The Court was merely catching up with a trend that had begun already during the presidency of Abraham Lincoln, a trend that through the subsequent decades has assured the occupant of the White House a fairly free hand in the conduct of our nation’s relations with other nations. This trend towards “the Imperial Presidency” (title of a current book) is a trend that was intensified even further in the eight terrible and tyrannical years of the second Bush’s occupancy of the office.

SO . . . if Obama has that much greater freedom of action in foreign affairs than he has in domestic affairs, shouldn’t he be pursuing policies and taking actions that lead to fulfillment of his stated goals of real peace in the world founded on collaborative peace seeking and justice seeking and ecology-seeking policies?

But has he done so?  His record so far is pretty dismal. He continues the reliance on U.S. military power as his ace in the hole, not only, but as his first line of policy. The great test is his policy towards Afghanistan. So far this is nothing but a rehash of the Bush policy towards Iraq. And so this also means maintaining, even expanding, the huge number of U.S. military bases around the world.

The further ironic and sad thing about all this is that this continued commitment to a militarist foreign policy is horribly expensive and by so much it bleeds money and resources away from the domestic policies he needs to make his domestic goals really possible.  So he is backing his behind into a corner on both fronts, domestic and foreign.

John Rensenbrink

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