THE GAP BETWEEN WHAT HE PROMISED AND WHAT THEY HEARD:

Lessons from the twilight days of the liberal consensus: An inspiring candidate has become a failing president. But a comparison with Lyndon B Johnson shows that the reasons for this outcome are more than personal. (Godfrey Hodgson, 16 March 2010, MercatorNet)

There are many ways to register the gap between promise and reality. Here are just three.

First, Obama pledged to restore the United States’s reputation in the international arena by making it plain that the country opposed torture and supported fair trials, due process and the rule of law. The signal of this commitment was a promise to close the Guantánamo prison-camp within a year. But the camp remains open, the administration’s declared intention to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (the alleged architect of the 9/11 atrocities) according to US laws is uncertain, and concern with morale in the CIA seems to trump human rights.

Second, Obama the campaigner voiced doubts over the war in Afghanistan. In practice his new strategy there increases the US’s military involvement and extends its range to Pakistan, albeit as part of a plan that envisages eventual withdrawal. In other areas of foreign policy, the president has been unable to effect a rapprochement with Iran and been treated with disdain by China at the Copenhagen climate-change summit.

Third, Obama’s ambitious domestic projects included cutting America’s dependence on imported energy and intensifying efforts to limit greenhouse-gas emissions. His carbon-trading plan will not reduce total emissions and is unable even to offer guaranteed business opportunities.

The picture is more mixed over two major domestic policy priorities, but even here no outstanding success can be claimed. First, Obama did succeed in pushing through Congress a vast stimulus package that has restored the profitability of the financial-services sector, but does not insist that it perform its social function by lending to individuals and small businesses. Unemployment remains high and corrosive. Second, his healthcare-reform plans have become a shadow of his original proposals and even this is reliant for progress on a parliamentary device (“reconciliation”). Washington is now waiting to see whether that will work.

However much money the Obama campaign spent in swing states like NH, its only promise on health care was that the candidate, unlike John McCain, would protect your insurance from taxation.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 17, 2010 5:56 AM