Between What Is Right and What Is Possible

Sixteen months after Barack Obama assumed the presidency, the record of his achievements in domestic policy is clear and sufficient, even though, as often happens in politics, many of the tasks that have occupied the president’s attention have been dictated by circumstance and were in no way a part of his initial working platform.

On the other hand, the Obama presidency’s track record on its foreign policy agenda shows, in fact, little action, much rhetoric, and zero victories. One could say the same of his unfortunate handling of the immigration issue. It is an issue that, while considered a purely national issue within the United States, clearly by its very nature has an international component — perhaps we could call it an “intermestic” issue.

But let’s start by reviewing the domestic agenda and achievements of the first 16 months of presidential work. Today, the central concern of President Obama is the successful resolution of the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, which is not only the worst environmental tragedy in the history of the nation, but also threatens to become his “Katrina” if not resolved soon.

Just a few days earlier, what occupied the center of his attention was the adoption in Congress of new regulations for the financial industry, which is well under way. The political management of the approval in Congress of health care reform, probably the project that will mark the biggest milestone of his presidency, took much of his time and political capital. The same could be said of his efforts to gain acceptance of his stimulus program to revive the economy and the billion dollar bailout of speculating banks and poorly managed companies.

Where the president has been shown to be reluctant is in his treatment of the immigration issue, as denounced by Luis Gutiérrez, the Congressman who today has become the principal defender of the cause of immigrants. What Gutiérrez cannot forgive in his friend the president is his failure to repay his debt to the Hispanic community and to keep his promise to reform the battered national immigration system.

Even worse, the complaint put forth by Gutiérrez and the Hispanic community is magnified by the fact that Obama appears to be following the same path as his predecessor, George W. Bush, who spent the eight years of his presidency saying that immigration reform was necessary and yet only sent more agents and the National Guard to the southern border and permitted the erection of walls of stone and mud and the construction of virtual walls that have served no purpose.

As Gutiérrez said in a recent interview published in The New York Times, what Obama is doing is nothing more than cheap politics. “There is 25 years of hard evidence that the president is wrong.”

And this, unfortunately, is not the only similarity between Obama and Bush. In questions of foreign policy, Obama promised to end military involvement in Iraq, yet North American troops are still there. He promised to close Guantánamo, yet the prison is still there. He promised to denounce violations of human rights, yet he only does this in countries with little importance on the global stage and never when the offender is a powerful state with important commercial or strategic ties to the United States.

Yes, the attitude and tone of American foreign policy have changed, and for this we should be thankful. There are no more binary warnings to nations that they are either with the United States or against it. There is also no longer the arrogant right to intervene and dominate other countries in the name of dubious moral values.

The sad thing, in the case of Obama, is that with his compelling rhetoric he made many of us believe that a balance between what is right and what is possible was feasible.