Democrats/Progressives Need to Relax. Good Things Can Happen in Spite of the President.

As President-elect Donald Trump fills out his cabinet, and progressives/liberals exhibit signs of mass hysteria, it might be a good idea to sit back and reflect on the extent of the president’s power to actually affect things – and how many things happen that the president has nothing to do with.

Consider a report in last Monday’s Wall Street Journal.  According to the article, in November, the U.S. exported more natural gas than it imported.  It has been almost 60 years since the U.S. exported more natural gas than it imported on an annual basis, but that is where we are headed – and soon.  Further, the Energy Department predicts that, by 2020, the United States will be the third largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, behind Australia and Qatar.  And President Obama has had almost nothing to do with any of this.

When Barack Obama came into office in January of 2009, a natural gas boom was not something he was aiming to promote.  He wanted to cut emissions with green energy; instead, we are doing it with natural gas.  While President Obama was giving loans and subsidies to green energy, shale gas producers were figuring out how to get natural gas out of rock formations nobody could get it from before.  The President’s plans cost a lot of government money.  Shale gas producers did it on their own.  And what they did only cut emissions, as natural gas replaced coal in the production of electricity, but also cut energy prices, which helped poorer people trying to pay their heating bills in the winter.¹  President Obama occasionally tried to take credit for the increased energy production, though the reality is that his administration was more interested in restricting fracking than promoting it.  And yet, without government subsidies and in spite of attempts to hold it back, shale gas took off.  Because the American government couldn’t stop American ingenuity and the free market system.²

There are other benefits, too.  Lower natural gas prices means Russia gets less money for its natural gas, which reduces the amount of money Vladimir Putin has available for mischief.  Also, as we increase our exports of liquefied natural gas, that gas, or other gas it replaces, will reduce the power Russia has over gas supplies for countries in central and western Europe.  In the 2012 presidential campaign, President Obama ridiculed Mitt Romney for saying Russia was our biggest threat.³  But even if President Obama had realized in 2012 that Russia was a major risk, he would not have seen natural gas and fracking as a powerful resource against Russia.  Fortunately, it didn’t matter.

Just as good things happened in the last eight years that had little or nothing to do with the plans and programs of President Obama, there will be good things happening over the next four years that have nothing to do with Donald Trump.  But then that is the advantage of a country where the government doesn’t run everything.
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¹ Lower natural gas prices also encouraged companies that use a lot of natural gas to move their factories back to the United States.  Progressives probably won’t acknowledge the benefits of getting these jobs back.  They’ll say it would be better to get green-friendly jobs.  Which once again shows that they have little idea how the economy works.
² Government can stop things sometimes.  Fortunately, it didn’t in this case.
³ Former Governor Romney actually said Russia was our "No. 1 geopolitical foe."  President Obama mischaracterized what Governor Romney said, but my point here is the same.