A year on: What if George W. Bush had still been President?

By Anthony Painter / @anthonypainter

Back in the summer of 2008, when I was speaking to people in communities of the South side of Chicago about the former community organiser who worked in that area who was now running for President, I would ask: “Just say he becomes president, what would you define as a successful Obama presidency?” With remarkable consistency I would receive the same answer: that he governs wisely.

So all the talk about heightened expectations, about a Presidency that would never fulfil the promise of the campaign trail, that he was bound to disappoint, all seemed to miss the point. People aren’t stupid; they know it’s tough. All they ask for is certain standards of conduct, integrity, vision and wisdom. How quickly we forget. Today marks the year anniversary not just of Barack Obama becoming the forty-fourth president of the United States. It marks the day when George W. Bush ceased to be the nation’s forty-third president.

The one thing that could be said about President Bush is that at least he demonstrated with absolutely clarity the limits of American power and leadership. Imagine if he had still been in office at the time of the failed Christmas bomb attack? Strategic bombing of the Yemen wilderness? Posturing hyperbole setting up new waves of anti-American sentiment? Linking Iran somehow in a way that was designed to aggravate tension? Who knows, but it’s pretty certain that we would not have the type of honest appraisal of CIA shortcomings and measured response that President Obama gave the nation – and that’s why Americans like him, even if they are more skeptical about his policies.

George W. Bush was never a likely candidate for a Nobel Peace Prize. But could you have seen him giving a reflective speech on notions of human fallibility and just war such as the one given by Barack Obama in Oslo as he begrudgingly accepted his prize? Would any attempt have been made to close Guantanamo Bay? And healthcare reform? The issue would simply have been left untended. Reaching out to Iran and the wider Islamic world? Well, when they were reaching out to him, President Bush bundled them into an ‘axis of evil’ and President Ahmadinejad was his reward. Considering the future of the Afghanistan conflict? He would have acted first and thought later; whereas the opposite was the case with President Obama – whatever the final outcome.

But when he gave his inauguration speech a year ago today, Barack Obama knew that simply not being George W. Bush was not enough. As he set about addressing the residue of the horrendous, incompetent and corrupt Presidency that preceded him, he knew that America could not continue in that way. He has re-established the integrity of the office of President. He has re-balanced the American constitution. He has re-defined American influence in a world where leadership – when it exists – is increasingly a shared endeavour.

Along the way, he has led the United States in both stimulating and investing in its own economic future and cooperating to secure world economic recovery; ended torture, and worked to resolve the toxic sore that is Guantanamo Bay; re-established constructive US-Russian relations; resolved to ensure that the banks pay for the unmet costs of the financial recovery; and he is within touching distance of succeeding in the small matter of extending healthcare coverage to tens of millions of uninsured Americans – even after last night's disaster in Massachusetts. Should he sign a substantive healthcare reform bill, it is difficult to recall a more impressive list of first year presidential achievements in recent US history. Perhaps only Franklin Delano Roosevelt surpasses him, while only Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson match Obama in the last century.

So why is there this nagging sense of unease that seems to surround the Obama presidency? That can be put down to two factors. Firstly, he is contending with a monolithic opposition that is determined to do just that: oppose. From the Republicans in Congress, to the shock jock and rent-a-mouth right wing media, to the vocal and aggressive protest of those who have been allowed to indulge themselves in the notion that the US is a conservative country and nothing else is legitimate, this Presidency has faced a rabidly ideologically rejectionist opposition just as was experienced by the Clinton administration.

The wise choice was to embark on healthcare reform, cap and trade environmentalism, and economic stimulus and investment while he had the chance. Following the defeat of the Democrats in Massachusetts, (yes, Massachusetts) in Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, the outcome of next year’s mid-term elections are anybody’s guess.

But secondly, President Obama has only occasionally been able to capture the national mood in the way he became so adept at doing in the campaign itself. It is doubtful that many Americans related to the cerebral rationalism of his Nobel prize-winning speech, or the flare of opportunity that was lit by his speech at Cairo University, or his articulation of new promise for Africa in Accra. Briefly, he managed to seize the mood in his speech on healthcare to a joint session of Congress. This was the exception. His most brilliantly crafted speeches have been abroad and address issues that are not of direct interest to Americans or respond to their immediate concerns.

If there is one imperative in Obama's second year of office, it is that he must re-impose his voice on the American domestic scene. He must grab the argument, forge ahead, not simply be a voice of reassurance when the nation is buffeted by events. Americans are hurting. Job losses are taking their toll as the financial squall hits land and batters the real economy. Foreclosure continues; businesses suffer. The economy may be growing but that is scant consolation for the millions of Americans who still suffer from economic after-shocks. There is enormous confusion about what healthcare reform means – as last night’s result in Massachusetts demonstrates.

They are looking to Obama and he needs to respond. He can’t be Dr Spock for his entire Presidency. The moment to shift gear and re-engage with the American people is the State of the Union address in a week’s time. He needs to be more vocal in his domestic leadership. His voice is needed if he is to re-capture the political agenda from the oppositionist Right.

All told, it's been a good first year. He is governing wisely. He is delivering change. It now needs to become change that Americans fully believe in.