He has nothing
to fear.
Whatever
happens over the next two years, you can bet that 22ndcentury school
children will know more about President Barack Obama than kids learn today
about, say, Calvin Coolidge. He made history just by being the first non-white
man to occupy the White House.
What
else will tomorrow’s kids learn about Obama?
Sure,
the Affordable Care Act has delivered health coverage to millions of Americans
who needed it, shrinking the uninsured rate to less than 13
percent. Yet that law didn’t heal enough of what ails the nation’s
health care system. Compared with Social Security, one of
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s greatest achievements, it’s no big deal.
The
ACA’s shortcomings are symptomatic of the first six years of Obama’s
presidency. He doled out one concession after another to ungrateful Republican
lawmakers.
Then
the drubbing Democrats took in November’s midterm elections knocked some sense
into him. Or he realized that he had nothing to lose. Or maybe he traveled in a
time machine.
“The
test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who
have much,” Roosevelt
declared during his second inaugural address. “It is whether we
provide enough for those who have too little.”
Sound
familiar? Obama echoed that sentiment in his State of the
Union address when he asked:
“Will we accept an economy where only a few of us do spectacularly well, or will we commit ourselves to an economy that generates rising incomes and chances for everyone who makes the effort?”
As
FDR declared in 1937: “Government is competent when all who compose it work as
trustees for the whole people.”
Obama’s
says this more conversationally: “This country does best when everyone gets
their fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same
set of rules.”
With
his bundle of proposed tax tweaks slated to raise an estimated $320 billion in
revenue and bring relief to millions of exhausted American
families, Obama’s “middle class economics” is forcing GOP lawmakers into an
awkward corner.
Take
Mitt Romney. He derided the public’s growing concern about inequality as “envy”
and “class warfare” during his losing 2012
presidential campaign.
Now
that he’s mulling another White House bid, Romney sounds different.
“Under
President Obama, the rich have gotten richer, income inequality has gotten
worse, and there are more people in poverty in American than ever before,” the
once and future candidate declared at a recent Republican
gathering in San Diego.
It
will take more than mouthing the word “inequality” to rebrand Mr. 47 percent.
Meanwhile,
ponder FDR’s words: “In our personal ambitions we are individualists. But in
our seeking for economic and political progress as a nation, we all go up, or
else we all go down, as one people.”
And
another thing Obama just said:
“Will we allow ourselves to be sorted into factions and turned against one another — or will we recapture the sense of common purpose that has always propelled America forward?”
As
a progressive, I’m still disappointed. I can’t stomach Obama’s addiction to
drones, domestic snooping, and crummy trade deals. I wish he’d spoken more
directly about enacting stronger gun laws and locking up fewer Americans —
and uttered the word “racism.”
As
an environmentalist, I appreciate his tough climate talk. But I wish he’d fall
out of love with fracking and start opposing the construction of new nuclear
reactors.
Yet
most modern progressives revere Roosevelt despite the creation of nuclear bombs
and the internment of Japanese Americans on his watch.
And
instead of being remembered for being the first president in a wheelchair, FDR
is that guy who left the Depression in the dust.
That’s
why it’s good to see that after years of riling his base instead of rallying
it, Obama is rising above Washington’s gridlock.
He
has nothing to fear except…well, you know.
Columnist
Emily Schwartz Greco is the managing editor of OtherWords, a non-profit national editorial
service run by the Institute for Policy Studies. OtherWords.org.
