With Publius it’s always about the numbers and the numbers say that Barack Obama was the greatest President since FDR. Trump will have the devil of a time trying to outdo him.
Start with the Dow. At 7,606 the day Obama was inaugurated, it is close to 20,000 now. That’s growth of over 2.6 times. Which is how much the Dow rose, from April 1954 to the day Obama took office, over half a century later.
The US economy is growing faster than any other advanced nation except the UK and Australia.
The Eurozone is limping along and may never recover from the body blows it received during the Great Recession, the Euro Crisis and now Brexit and the Italian referendum. (See Publius' Can the EU Survive?)
Japan has been debt-driven since the Nikkei collapsed in December 1989. Its debt-to-GDP is a staggering 2.2 times that of the US. The Nikkei now trades at the same level it was in December 1986, 50% below its 1989 peak. If the Nikkei had tracked the Dow since then, it would be at 57,400. This is easily the greatest wealth wipeout in history.
China’s payables data reveal what the Party is trying to hide, that the Center of Everything (what the ideograms for China mean) never recovered from the ’08-’09 Crash and remains deep in recession. The Center’s Party-centric structure has proven inadequate to the task of re-firing growth. Expect years, even decades of economic and political turmoil there. (See Publius' Xi Jinping Drives China Down.)
The Conference Board says that US consumer confidence is at its highest since the summer of 2001, with a steady march upward during the Obama years from the misery of the Great Recession.
US unemployment is down from a Recession peak of 10% to 4.6%.
The Federal budget deficit as a percent of GDP is down from 10% to 3.2%.
Housing starts are at their highest levels since 2007.
Welfare spending as a percent of GDP is down from a Great Recession peak of 7% to below 6%.
Obama rescued from oblivion the huge auto and financial sectors, core to our economy, and returned them to private hands, a staggering feat all by itself and a huge boost to growth and market confidence.
On top of this, Obama managed to get the Affordable Care Act passed.
All with a hostile, frozen Congress locked up in our biggest constitutional crisis since the Civil War. (See Publius' Our Constitutional Crisis.)
And, let us add as David Brooks has, without half decent scandal to mar his administration.
Then there is Obama’s foreign policy genius. He started by recognizing the obvious: the numbers say that we are self-sufficient in oil and gas and have no further interest in the Middle East. For us, the trans-Asia silk roads that have dominated much of history are, well, history.
Roosevelt’s 1944 deal with the Saudis is dead letter. Sorry folks, Obama said, but it’s just the oil math. This drove both the Saudis and Israelis nuts. But, the numbers are the numbers. Today the Nine Dash Line is foreign policy problem 1, 2, 3 and 4. The rest is irrelevant. Obama gets this.
Obama then looked at Russia, saw that it’s GDP is tiny—it ranks 13th in the world by purchasing power parity, 27% smaller than Italy. And that its GDP per capita is even tinier—it ranks 53rd in the world, 33% smaller than Italy. This means that Russia has almost no weight whatever in global affairs. (See Publius' Managing Russia's Implosion.)
From these uncomplicated observations, Obama put in place his policy of American Realism:
The Middle East is the business of the Euros. They need its oil; they must manage how they get it.
Russia has passed from the world stage; we must manage its implosion carefully. As he fades, Putin will do anything to make himself look big.
China is our one concern; its decision to seize control of our supply lines in South East Asia, which we secured at great cost during the Second and Vietnam Wars, is our most vital interest. Every home in America depends on the outcome.
The result has been some of the most cynical and ruthless decisions in US history.
Take the Ukraine and Syria. As Putin degenerated into the next Peter III, Obama played him like a Stradivarius. Obama saw Putin put his feet in two cauldrons of boiling oil, the Ukraine and Syria, giving us every reason to keep them there.
In a paraphrase of what Sherman said of Hood as Sherman prepared to turn from Atlanta to the sea, "If Hood will go to Nashville, I will give him the rations to get him there," Obama said, "If the L'il Guy will put his feet into the boiling Syrian and Ukrainian cauldrons, I will help him take off his shoes."
Vladimir did everything he could to do Obama's bidding. In Syria, he bombed hospitals and food convoys, killed children and did whatever it took to destroy Russia's position for generations. As in the Ukraine, he generated hatreds where there were none and set Russia up as the enemy of all.
Fifteen years ago, it was almost impossible to imagine that the once great Russian superpower would wind up so small and ineffective. As the badly constructed Treaty of Versailles finally dissolves in the Middle East after a century of turmoil, who is left holding the bill? The one guy with no muscle: Vladimir Putin.
Obama’s American Realism came at no cost to us but at an appalling cost to the Syrians (and increasingly to the Iraqis, Turks and Yemenis). Hundreds of thousands dead and millions displaced. Misery on a stupefying scale and more to come as the Russians use their always edifying methods to “fix” what is left, whatever that is. (See Publius' Putin The Small Stumbles in Syria.)
In putting his American Realism policy in place, Obama struggled with four things, none of which have been easy or entirely successful.
One, getting the foreign policy and military establishments to accept what the numbers tell them.
Two, extricating the U.S. from the Middle East with minimal disruption to our economy and core interests regardless of the cost to the people there.
Three, passing management of the Middle East onto the Euros, Turks, Iranians and Israelis whose concern geographically, militarily and economically it is. (see Publius' We Need Iran.)
Four, focusing all Americans, FDR-style, on the greatest existential crisis in our history, the Nine Dash Line. And preparing them for the inevitable and costly conflicts there. (See Publius' The Nine Dash Line and You.)
In trying to outperform Obama the Great, Dumb Don (see Publius' Dumb Don) confronts some hard realities:
With the Center of Everything deep in economic, social and political crisis, the EU tottering and the Dow at historic highs, a global recession is at hand. It could be sharp, deep and enduring.
To counter this, and ensure that he capitalizes on the Obama legacy, Don must ratify the Trans Pacific Pact without delay.
Don must push companies to use the very latest information technology to minimize their cash wait states globally and optimize their supply chains accordingly. Don’s message has to be: All American companies must look like Walmart and Apple, or die. (See Publius' Dumb Don and Walmart.)
Because it has failed at everything else, faute de mieux, Russia’s primary mission is to destabilize the US and EU by whatever means possible. Dumb Don must immediately abandon his role as Putin’s Poodle. See Publius' The Hacksident of the United States.)
To ensure that American business can compete, Don must warrant Publius’ Four Guarantees Smart Policy. Chief among them is that our labor force is the healthiest and best educated in the world. This means expanding Obamacare quickly and efficiently. (See Publius' American Business Needs Four Guarantees.)
To counter global recession and ensure growth, Don must mobilize our 11-18 million undocumented at speed. This requires putting Publius’ Smart Policy on immigration in place immediately on taking office. (See Publius' Making Money From the Undocumented.)
It is not news that, point-by-point, Dumb Don has promised the opposite. He has little chance, therefore, of outdoing Obama the Great. We will pay a 'huge Trump Tax.
January 11, 2017
To get a full measure of how well Obama did, go straight to Martin Wolf of the Financial Times. Wolf, one of the finest financial journalists who ever lived, is as always careful and precise.
July 31, 2017
How crazy is this? Today at 8:28 am, no less than Dumb Don himself bragged on Twitter about how he keeps his administration alive: he rides the Obama Boom. For once Don is right. The Obama Boom is the ONLY thing keeping Don’s fast-failing, three-party Trumpista Coalition alive.