So, why did Barack Obama try to pass health care reform, cap-and-trade environmental legislation, and an education bill, when the economy was in the tank, and it seemed to many people that, to paraphrase the only American car company not owned by the federal government, the economy was job one?
Let me suggest three reasons. First, I don’t think Barack Obama had enough experience to realize just how hard it is to get big programs passed in Washington. He had been a state senator in Illinois for eight years, but in Illinois at that time, things got done if the leaders of the legislature and the governor could get together and agree. In Springfield, if the leaders agreed, the legislators (or at least enough of them), voted as they were told and bills passed. Not so in Washington.
Also, while President Obama was, in theory, a US senator for four years, the last half doesn’t count because he was never there; he was out running for President. And it’s hard to learn much in just two years.
Second, President Obama has, as I indicated here, a very high opinion of himself. I think he really thought that he could get all of these programs passed. Other presidents might not have been able to do it, but they weren’t him. He could do it.
But I think the third reason may be the most important. Think about where we were as a country in early 2007, when Barack Obama announced he was going to run for President. Democrats were complaining, but the party that does not hold the White House always complains. The fact is that things were going pretty good. (They actually weren’t. All kinds of bad things were developing underneath the surface, but they weren’t obvious yet.) It looked like the new president in 2009 would have the time and the money and the nation’s attention to get big things done. And that is what Barack Obama saw when he decided to run for President. The chance to do big things. Health care. Global warming (now "climate change" because it has gotten so cold outside). Education. These were the things Barack Obama wanted to do, especially, apparently, health care.
But by the time he got to the presidency, the situation had changed, to say the least. The economy was a mess. We had barely averted a collapse of the financial system, and we were in a recession. Afghanistan, the war that was not a choice, was going south. (The only thing looking good was Iraq, and success there was too embarrassing for Barack Obama to talk about.)
Dealing with these problems was not why Barack Obama ran for President. These things were not what he wanted to do. He wanted to do health care and education and climate change. And so he tried to do them all. Because in his vanity, he knew he could do them all. He just didn’t have enough experience in Washington to realize that other people couldn’t.
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