Associated Press
In presidential history, we've seen the New Deal, the Square Deal, and the Fair Deal, but as President Obama's second term begins in earnest, Paul Krugman looks back at his first term and calls it the Big Deal.
I think it's fair to say Krugman has been critical of the president on more than a few occasions since Obama took office four years ago, but today, drawing particular attention to health care financial regulatory reform, the columnist believes the president's record is laudatory.
In fact, I'd suggest using this phrase to describe the Obama administration as a whole. F.D.R. had his New Deal; well, Mr. Obama has his Big Deal. He hasn't delivered everything his supporters wanted, and at times the survival of his achievements seemed very much in doubt. But if progressives look at where we are as the second term begins, they'll find grounds for a lot of (qualified) satisfaction. [...]
All in all, then, the Big Deal has been, well, a pretty big deal.
That certainly seems fair. Indeed, while Krugman focused primarily on health care and Wall Street, a long look at Obama's first term shows a four-year period as ambitious and successful as any president in at least a generation. In addition to the accomplishments Krugman noted, Obama also rescued the economy from collapse, rescued the American auto industry, ended the war in Iraq, decimated al Qaeda and killed bin Laden, reformed the student loan system, ended "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," vastly improved fuel efficiency standards, helped topple the Gaddafi regime, negotiated the New START treaty, improved food safety protections, cracked down on credit card company abuses, expanded stem-cell research, and signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.
Can we expect a similar breadth of success in a second term? Well, no, probably not.
Second terms historically offer fewer opportunities for these kinds of sweeping and historic accomplishments, and given Republican control of the House, it seems likely Obama will spend much of the next four years preserving his gains, not advancing them.
But that doesn't mean the president won't have an agenda to present, and ideas that will warrant serious consideration. We heard about some of Obama's goals in his second inaugural, but he also highlighted his second-term agenda in an OFA video released a few weeks ago.
What should we expect to see from the next phase of the Big Deal? Ending the war in Afghanistan, immigration reform, reducing gun violence, combating climate change, and additional reforms to the education system.
I suspect election reforms will be part of the agenda, as well.
That said, at the end of one term and the beginning of another, it's worthwhile to pause and appreciate what's already happened. As Krugman concluded, "[T]he story is far from over. Still, maybe progressives -- an ever-worried group -- might want to take a brief break from anxiety and savor their real, if limited, victories."
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Was it just coincidence that Turner Classic Movies showed Something of Value this morning? It's about the Maumau uprising against the British in Kenya. The connection to Obama and Newt's statements about Obama's "anti-colonist" views inherited from his father seems too obvious to be by chance. On the other hand, many Republicans are even now looking for a connection to Benghazi, so maybe I am working overtime.
Nah, its just "old white guys" trying to find old black movies to play today in honor of Martin Luther King.
A lot of things about this election were unprecidented. I still hold out hope that the GOP will begin to work with Democrats now that they're been handily defeated. If that were to happen (I know the odds look pretty long, right now) A lot of big legislative things could be accoplished very quickly. Granted, I'm riding the high I got from listening to that Inaugural address. Perhaps I'm overly optimistic.
Dream on dude, gridlock is good.
Good for what?
Good for putting sand in the gears of Big Leftism.
Yeah so republicans can torpedo the economy some more. Leave it to shooter to stand on the good ship the USS teatanic and cheer-lead the incoming GOP torpedoes that will make shooter whine even more.
Or better known as...............darn that Obama he used words I don't understand.
In other words an innauguration speech.
Didn't Biden say it first? This is a big f*ckin deal!
We somewhat better informed folks agree that President Obama did accomplish what most others could only dream of...I think BHO will set up the next DEMOCRATIC president with the tools and infrastructure they will need to carry on...Biden? Hills? both fantastic choices...this is a good thing...
So Obama gets no credit for lower taxes, Race to the Top, executive orders banning torture, creating 4 million jobs, appointing barrier-breaking Supreme court judges, and lowering the deficit? Or how about the things he didn't do, like getting the US embroiled in Syria or Georgia (remember that one?), boots on the ground in Libya, Katrina-like response to Sandy or the constant gaffe-machine? Keep in mind that these accomplishments were made with the back-drop of the world recession, Euro meltdown, arab spring and sky-rocketing oil prices, all of which the US President has less control over than anyone would like to think. Thanks for the back-handed compliment Krugman.
the constant gaffe-machine - oh yeah, I really miss that. NOT!
No SNL is hoping the GOP will bring back Sarah Palin after all there is nothing funnier then GOP stupidity.
Money does not make people any smarter they just find even dumber people to buy the BS they shovel. Funny how you just can't seem to get the every post you make you prove me right.
Speaking of big deals, can we get some coverage on this?! http://bluevirginia.us/diary/8554/breaking-while-dems-distracted-by-inauguration-virginia-senate-gop-stages-a-coup#.UP238evm6og.twitter
Excellent! Let's hope this is a trend.
Still haven't heard you explain why you hate Democracy, Pooter.
Not buying it, Shooter. Even you can't be that blind. I call your bluff.
Hopefully he will stay the hell out of any more imperial adventures and tell the Pentagon to stop justifying their over-generous budget with crazy ideas like going into Mali. Hopefully he will keep the war-mongers at bay as they try to justify the continuance of the Imperial Wehrmacht by picking a war with China. And hopefully he will end the blot on morality that is Guantanamo Bay. Also his damn drone wars.
We don't need The Good Emperor Obummer, we need President Obama, and we need to hold his feet to the fire on this stuff so his natural Rockefeller Republican defaults don't kick in on these issues. It would also be nice if he grabbed some of the scummy putzes on Wall Street by the collar of their shiny sharkskin suits and kicked their asses. Hard.
Wonderful day for the President and the country, but for God's sake! - CHEWING GUM ?!? Really! Every shot of him in the reviewing stand- there he is gnawing away. I love the guy, but honestly, this looked so classless. Didn't anybody learn anything from Kate Middleton's mother chawing away at Prince William's passing out parade at Sandhurst? And don't tell me that it was Nicorette. It still looked awful!
He's trying to give up cigarettes. If you haven't been there, you can't possibly know.
He's just building up his jaw muscles he's got allot of ass chewing coming up!
I chew gum when I am under extreme stress. It keeps me from grinding/gritting my teeth and eating away at the enamel. That's why my dentist, who I guess is among the 9 out 10 in the commercials, recommends Dentyne. No, I'm not kidding.
And even if he is a stress smoker? I just cannot get my dander up for that. It's a crutch. Most of us have one or twelve.
Joe Biden might call it something else!
I used to be a democrat, but there was a hard left turn and I couldn't follow down that path.I thought democrats should regulate capitalism in order to keep it honest not destroy it or replace it with a hybrid socialism.The Communist Party USA has lots of terms of endearment for today's progressive party.That's not what I had in mind when I vote democrat.Its not the party of the working man anymore.Its a device Tailor made to divide America into sub groups and hyphenated Americans.
I sure don't agree with the GOP about a number of things and it pains me to vote for some of them to this day.But what you have here is the greater of the two evils by far.Any third party is ganged up on by both parties or is way far right or way far left.The republicans have moderated and moved to the center far more over the past 30 years.The Democrats haven't moderated, they've radicalized and morphed into something that ain't your grandpa's party.
The republicans have NOT moved to the center. They have moved away from the center. I used to vote for moderate republicans, but there haven't been any of those for quite a while. Between the tea-party and the Ayn Randers, the repubs are behaving really strangely anymore, as in no empathy for anyone. At least the old republican party used to throw the working person a bone with some meat on it now and then. President Obama is where most moderate republicans used to be. In fact the democrats are no longer left. I know during and after the Vietnam war the dems veered to the left, but now they are a corporate party, just like the non-tea party Republicans used to be. The only reason the far left still vote democratic is that when they started moving away and voting for the Green Party, W. Bush won and ruined the country, and that was worse than any moderate democrat or Republican.
He also lies alot. It is all he has left after he threw his support behind Mitt.
Lobbyist have made Washington a mess, but the Tea Party (FAKE PARTY) candidates and politicians if you can call them that! Are now just lobbyist holding office I guess BIG BUSINESS just cut out the middle man. And true many dems aren't much better but you have to kiss some corporate ass just to raise enough money for a war chest. Capitalism is King for now but we had better fight and win or say hello to more corporate slavery!
Billhillie, I think you got some bad mushrooms or something. Are you actually saying, out loud, that these current wackos are more moderate than the guys who formed the EPA, signed the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, supported amnesty for illegals AND an insurance mandate?
Are you actually saying that?
Oh, and billhillie45, and there are probably only 5 members of the communist party left in the world, and they are in probably nursing homes or hospice care. You need to get with the 21st century. Corporations rule, and they divide and conquer national governments for entertainment.
Should the process and laws of business not be enforced or exist?
Not even close you're equating regulation with socialism. The existence of regulation itself and government as abstract concepts can be viewed and are a sort connection to socialism. This has always been the case so it's not radical or extreme, that is how things have always worked in any nation of laws without any controversy. People like socialism more than they themselves probably think.
Moreover the country is hardly moving a socialist direction.
And the white nationalist, neo-nazi, and KKK have a level of admiration for the tea party and the GOP. You can not have guilt by association. Furthermore today's communists have a lot of bad things to say about democrats as well.
Are cuts to education, destruction of social security, union rights, medicare, fair tax rates bad for the Average Joe? Apparently so according to you which is striking since the right seems to be more concerned about corporations and the small greedy minority of those in the highest tax brackets from paying a dime more in taxes whether that means screwing everyone else or not.
I suppose you weren't paying attention to the fiscal cliff talks where the GOP refused to pass a simple resolution on taxes for the middle class. The House GOP didn't even mostly support the stop gap measure that was agreed to. Does that the working man? If they are so concerned why didn't they just agree to pass the resolution? It was what they said they wanted so was stopping them? Why did they resist so much because it certainly didn't give any security to the majority of nation.
Division? That's something I've found to be utterly laughable since you folks started to try and use that right before the election after all the fulibusters and tasteless comments about the President. If the Republicans are the party of anti-division how is it that they are the least diverse party? Wake up chucklehead the right has maligned Obama, muslims, the poor, gays, single women, minorities, etc. Frankly at this point it's easier to say which groups the Republican party has insulted than those that it has.
Hyphenated Americans? You just made my point for me. I don't know if you know this or not but most folk tend to find that to be really offensive. What does even mean other than Americans can not be open and celebrate what makes them "hyphenated"? That I would again say is a disgusting phrase. What you don't seem to get is that celebrating our differences is what brings up closer together. If you haven't realized that then you haven't been around much.
Wow.....I'm just frankly trying to catch my breath from that......wow....
You're kidding right? Please, please, please with a cherry on top say you're joking. You've got to be effing with us there, you gotta be hanking our chain with that one. No one could possibly be that tone deaf. Most disturbingly I think you really mean that. I'm speechless. Sad, very sad, very disappointing. I must try and believe you aren't that stupid in reality.
Republicans have gone to the center? What was Romney doing for the entire campaign until a month before the election? What were people asking then? I don't recall them wondering when he would move farther to the right since according to you the GOP are currently a centrist party.
Hmm I think the fact that the approval for the congressional Republicans is at it's lowest point ever, far below the democrats who themselves obviously aren't doing amazingly well either but but the GOP is doing real bad. The brand is becoming so poisonous. The result of the last election where the President crushed his opponent in almost every single one of the swing states, 100+ electoral victory margin, roughly 4% popular vote win which although it sounds very small is more important than people realize especially for a second term, the victory of everything single democratic incumbent senator and even picking of seats when everyone(right and left) said there was no way they could have done that because of the sheer number of seats they had to defend.
The GOP is the minority on every social issue. Most Americans favor legalizing pot, allowing gay marriage, raising top marginal tax rates, universal background checks on gun sales, banninng high capacity magazines, ending foreign wars and the list goes on.
How are they moderate?
Reagan or as the right calls him, God, raised taxes a dozen times. If he ran today he would never win in a GOP primary.
I suggest you wake the F up and get back to reality.
Bravo, cynical.
I keep wanting to put an 'Obama 2016' bumper sticker on my car. Think how that would disturb some people ;-) but then I think I like my car, and don't need it trashed :-(
Indeed in the last election I didn't see ANY!
for 2012, I put an Obama magnet on the car, then I could take it off for parking in tea-party areas. I commute to work through Boulder county, Colorado, and there were a few Obama bumper stickers there., but I think with leased cars, people don't want to stick things to their cars. Hence the magnets work great.
I still see Mitt stickers on cars, and think they must really be hard headed.
republicans like stickers it covers up the rust holes in the cars they drive so they don't have to deal with the reality that they are not richer then the guy next door. Magnets don't stick well on rust. The more GOP stickers the more they believe they are exceptional.
Those bumper stickers are tickets to "special" black tie, white hood events...
"Big Deal"? Kind of goes a bit too far. Maybe the "Good Deal"?
We are broke! We are broke! When will the nation face up to this fact?
When the GOP doesn't introduce bills to cut taxes and increase military spending, till then there is no spending crisis there is just the usual GOP whine and whines are not facts.
We have to borrow! We have to borrow if we want a government to exist as the American people, including the Republicans want!
Debt and Deficit are not the issue jobs are. Debt and Deficit are not the issue jobs are.
Lets see if yelling things twice has any effect......
The truth is that the economy is the important issue, you will not forgive away all the debt for the forseeable future whether we like that or not. We have put ourselves into that position, we have no choice or ability to change that right now. If there is no economic growth then forget about paying off anything. The way to stimulate growth is to consume, if the people won't it's in the best interest of business, particularly small ones, to have government set the example and see if they can get some of money out there to follow. We gotta work up more consumer confidence.
This is not me saying this everyone from Paul Krugman to Simpson/Bowles are saying that.
The debt and deficit have little intrinsic effect on the short term economy.
In the observation of Martin Luther King Day, please, let's scrap the revisionist history. In 1968, Rev. King led the Poor People's March on Washington -- not the Middle Class Only March. We are allowed to acknowledge poverty and our poor. The president's speech today was a NOT vow to stand with the middle class alone. It was about us, you and me and everyone else. When he did note economic class, however, it wasn't (unlike the Dem Party leadership/media) in terms of the middle class alone. That said, I would like to include a few quotes from the president's speech today:
"Together, we resolved that a great nation must care for the vulnerable, and protect its people from life's worst hazards and misfortune."
"For we, the people, understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it."
"We, the people, still believe that every citizen deserves a basic measure of security and dignity. We recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, any one of us, at any time, may face a job loss, or a sudden illness, or a home swept away in a terrible storm."
"And we must be a source of hope to the poor, the sick, the marginalized, the victims of prejudice - not out of mere charity, but because peace in our time requires the constant advance of those principles that our common creed describes: tolerance and opportunity; human dignity and justice."
On MLK: Please remember, Rev. King did not lead the March of the Middle Class Alone on Washington DC. He led the Poor People's March.
So Krugman now finds "grounds for a lot of (qualified) satisfaction" for President Obama's Big Deal accomplishments.
That wasn't his assessment when writing for the The New York Review of Books on Dec. 16, 2010. Then he and his wife, Robin Wells, said, "The historic opportunity of 2008 has been squandered."
Krugman/Wells went on to say, "Democrats need to make it clear that if Obama isn’t going to be the leader of the Democratic agenda—and all indications are that he can’t or won’t . . . They have to be ready to delink their political fate from Obama . . . How far should delinking from Obama go? There is no obvious contender to mount a primary challenge . . . But the possibility is clearly there . . ."
But Krugman/Wells not only raised the notion of primarying Obama, they said this about his prospects for reelection: "A tough, skillful political team might be able to win even in the face of . . . economic weakness. But the Obama team has demonstrated neither toughness nor skill." And, "Having trusted and been disappointed by Obama once before, [voters] are very unlikely to give him another chance."
Krugman undoubtedly is a brilliant economist and without peer in explaining economics to non-economists. But, as he has demonstrated repeatedly, when it comes to political analysis and strategy he's no more of an expert than the rest of us. It is gratifying, however, to see some of his Obama animus, which has so distorted his analysis these past four-plus years, wither away.
Rachel, too, has some 'splain' to do. Remember in December 2010 when she was raggin' on Obama? Saying (stuff) like, "game over" for "his support from his base"?
Also is December 2010 Rachel said, "Without President Obama recognizing the problem that is the United States Senate . . ." Did she really think Obama wasn't aware of the Republicans' filibuster strategy? Or was she the one not recognizing the Senate problem? That month she asserted that Obama has "giant Democratic majorities in the House and the Senate." Her implication was plain: Obama could get anything he truly wanted to get through Congress. The truth was that the Democratic majority in the Senate was not enough to actually give Democrats "control" of the Senate because Democrats didn't have 60 votes to overcome Republican filibusters. And on some issues -- notably whether to extend the Bush-era tax cuts for wealthier taxpayers -- some Democrats were going to dissent from Democratic positions.
After Obama was reelected, Rachel changed her tune. His, she proclaimed, was "a historic presidency."
It's interesting to observe pundits like Krugman and Rachel who were once afflicted with Obama Derangement Syndrome come to their senses, if only temporarily.
Yall did a whole buncha typing and didn't sway me none.Communist haven't gone away or died and over regulation is a way installing a stealth socialism.The names may have changed but the intent is the same, destroying the traditions that make our country great.