New Yorker: Memos show Obama scaled back his ambitions
JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images
Updated at 2:15 p.m. ET
The New Yorker article, published Monday, described in detail a president who had big legislative aspirations but is also concerned with protecting his image.
"The White House staff memos show Obama scaling back his proposals in the face of the business lobby, designing a health-care bill to attract support from doctors, rejecting schemes from his aides that could be caricatured by the right, and in dozens of other ways making the unpleasant choices of governing in a system defined by its constraints," reporter Ryan Lizza wrote in the piece.
White House Spokesperson Jay Carney had little to say in response. "Let history judge the results," he said.
Lizza notes the choices Mr. Obama faced: working to enact his campaign promises despite adversarial Republicans or working to garner consensus in Washington, also a campaign promise.
The documents show the types of questions Mr. Obama was asked to contemplate before communicating his economic policies to Congress and the American people, including "how to trade off the desire for reform versus the desire for quick passage and implementation?"
"He had hoped to use a model of consensus politics in which factions in the middle form an alliance against the two extremes. But he found few players in the center of the field: most Republicans and Democrats were on their own ten-yard lines," Lizza wrote.
A lengthy memo to Mr. Obama from his economic adviser, Larry Summers, in December 2008 -- before Mr. Obama was sworn into office -- provides options and analysis of Mr. Obama's initiatives in the context of the country's economic situation.
The memo shows that the administration failed to gauge the severity of the recession. Unemployment rates were predicted to rise above 9 percent without any government intervention.
Mr. Obama's advisers presented him with four options for an economic recovery package. The cheapest version, costing $550 billion, was expected to reduce unemployment to 7.8 percent by 2011 and the most expensive plan clocked in at $890 billion and was predicted to decrease unemployment to 7.3 percent.
Mr. Obama moved forward with a $787 billion stimulus and unemployment reached 10 percent.
"Obama was never offered the option of a stimulus package commensurate with the size of the hole in the economy--known by economists as the 'output gap'--which was estimated at two trillion dollars during 2009 and 2010," Lizza wrote.
At the beginning of his term, Mr. Obama's advisers were cautious. He was told by his aides that the amount of government spending he was inheriting from the Bush administration was extreme, and that impacted how he was able to deal with a deepening economic crisis.
Mr. Obama was faced with the economic realities that forced him to downsize his agenda.
"If your campaign promises were enacted then, based on accurate scoring, the deficit would rise by another $100 billion annually. The consequence would be the largest run-up in the debt since World War II," one of the memos said.
"Obama's moderation didn't sway Republicans, nor did his attention to interest groups or his cuts to beloved liberal programs," Lizza wrote.
"He is frustrated with the irrational side of Washington, but he also leans on the wisdom of his political advisers when they make a strong case that a good policy is bad politics. The private Obama is close to what many people suspect: a president trying to pass his agenda while remaining popular enough to win reelection," Lizza wrote.
Mr. Obama campaigned in 2008 on "hope" and "change;" he promised to change Washington and move beyond bipartisan politics to unify a fractured nation's capital and an equally divided country.
These internal memos provide insight into what Mr. Obama has publicly acknowledged: his frustration with Washington and politics. During a tour of the Midwest to talk about the economy, he told a crowd in Peosta, Iowa, "I know you're frustrated, and I'm frustrated,too. We've got to focus on growing this economy, putting people back to work, and making sure that the American Dream is there not just for this generation but for the next generation."
Additional reporting by Mark Knoller
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Even taking into consideration the economy and the other factors, these numbers are abyssmal and does NOT look at how much things have either gotten worse or stayed the same in the various other areas over the last several years.
While Bush was a mediocre or poor President in some areas, he was good in a few areas... unfortunately, I have yet to see any areas where this president can even be considerd mediocre and if his plan was to go even farther than he has, I am glad he didn't
(NOTE: all of the numbers cited above have come from various government websites and are easily verifiable through a little work!.)
The word "Obama" has now become a verb in the English language. To be "Obama'd" means "To believe in someone's multitude of undeliverable promises. Syn: sucker, gullible. "
I guess Bush wasn't just saying things to get elected...must have just been lying
Given all this, and given the terrible mess President Obama inherited from the disastrous Bush Administration, I believe that he's has done a commendable job.Apply the Reagan litmus test "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" to this administration & the answer is a resounding yes.And, imagine what might have been done had the political opposition not fought like tigers to prevent President Obama from having any success.President Obama has earned our support & will certainly get mine on election day this November.
Afterall, those who lost their jobs during a historic recession/depression thanks to the Bush economy, get pennies compared to the huge amounts of government handouts to the top 1 percent, like Romney and Gingrich get, and those self serving corporations. They even get handouts by the gov. for shipping our jobs overseas.
Lazy worthless billionaires and corporation expecting to live off our dime forever rather then be productive and contribute to this country in a time of crisis
The word "Obama" has now become a verb in the English language. To be "Obama'd" means "To believe in someone's multitude of undeliverable promises. Syn: sucker, gullible. "
What's really telling is the total lack of recall on this post for American or world history. The nation was still retiring debt from the first and second world wars when the tab hit from the Vietnam conflict. Another pointless military occupation by administrations that were beholden to the defense industry, the same politically influential industry that President Eisehower warned the nation about at the close of his term. The bottom line is that the US government has wasted the nation's capital trying to use the military to dictate international diplomacy, and just look were that's lead us?
We're never going to get out of debt funding military occupations as a cornerstone of national defense policy. Wars are expensive, and taxpayers have to pay for them. The education and the healthcare of the US population should've guided US domestic policy the past 60 years, just as it did with our neighbors to the north, the Canadians. The proof is in the outcomes.
The US has pursued a strategy of military supremacy rather than of domestic nation improvment. Now just look at the results. Trillions spend on anything and everything we can declare war on, including drugs - all wasted. What do we have to show for it now? High unemployment, due to an increasingly poorly educated populous, which has done more to erode the economic foundation of the working class than all of the misguided tax policies from either political party combined. The resulting decline in domestic manufacturing tells that story in great detail.
It's all a crying shame, and it doesn't matter who inhabits the Whitehouse or the Congress, we're just in for more of the same. Fund domestic policies instead of the military and you'll see rising working class incomes, which will increase the tax base and pay off the deficit within 10 years time. Or keep funding the military, and the only thing our children will be qualified to do after they get out of the service is flip hamburgers and ask you if you want extra ketchup and salt at the drive thru. Kind of like now.
American's have got to change our nations priorities if we want to change the direction our nation is heading in, because the polls are correct in gauging public opinion that we are heading in the wrong direction. Or we can continue on this self destructive course of funding the military without end until our nation crumbles from within like the Roman empire. Google it.
Those civilizations that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Many civilizations have traveled this same path before and they all met the same fate, financial ruin and oblivion.
Again....heal people or kill people? Which one would you want your nation known for?
He can not only scale back his socialist ideas for America this year but forget about next year all together since he will be back in Chicago, Hawaii or Kenya were he really belongs.
He can be another Idi Amin.
Can't handle the truth, eh?