The case for reelection

IN THE WINTER OF 2009, the president was grasping for a phrase to sum up his agenda, a slogan that would capture his ambitions. He settled on the “New Foundation.” You didn’t need to be Ted Sorensen to understand that the phrase was straining too hard; and as the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin told the president over dinner, it was a bit too evocative of a woman’s girdle. And yet, a new foundation is precisely what he has built.

Health care reform, if it is properly nurtured, largely completes the social safety net. Financial reform, if the lobbyists don’t shred it, will curb maniacal risk-taking in the markets. The stimulus provided the seed money to launch Race to the Top—perhaps the most significant wave of experimentation in the history of public education—and to remake the energy grid. It created industries from scratch: biofuel refineries and plants that manufacture batteries for electric cars.

Obamaism itself is perhaps this administration’s most important innovation. The president has used New Democratic means to achieve Old Democratic ends. In pursuit of old liberal dreams, he has relied heavily on the insights of markets: spurring competition, reforming bureaucracies, and leveraging small investments to achieve big goals. Two of his signal programs—health care’s individual mandate and cap and trade—were tellingly conceived by conservatives.

This approach helps explain, in part, why he has received insufficient political credit. It’s the stuff of technocracy, largely invisible to the public. But this invisibility is also President Obama’s fault. The president may have built a new foundation, but he hasn’t sufficiently made the case for it. Nor, crucially, has he crafted a sustained argument that might help erode the American aversion to government. (His convention speech barely mentioned health care reform, the essence of his legacy.) His oratorical and explanatory shortcomings have been maddening to watch, given the strengths he displayed in the 2008 campaign.

Of course, Obama’s pitch is hardly easy. His stimulus staved off depression—and prevented untold human suffering—but it wasn’t large enough to fully curb rising unemployment or spur a robust recovery. His administration’s response to the collapse of the housing market, in many ways the nub of the whole crisis, was particularly weak. By populating his administration with disciples of Robert Rubin and former denizens of the investment banks, he cloistered himself off from aggressive proposals—the kind that might have propped up homeowners with the same vigor that the government supported the banks.