Obama Holds Up Very Well Compared to His Predecessors

A merciless campaign remains. Expectations were high after Obama’s victory in 2008, but the complex political system has frequently blocked his reforms. However, if you look at what he has actually achieved, he holds up very well compared to earlier presidents. Considering current approval ratings, the American economy and the ideologies of the challengers, I estimate that Obama has at least a 50-50 chance of being re-elected.

I recently met an American professor of history at a well-known Midwestern university. She’s a left-wing Democrat and worked enthusiastically to get Barack Obama elected president in 2008. In a melancholy voice, she described the euphoria of election night, when people of different backgrounds embraced each other as it became apparent that America had been given its first black president.

Today, all of that is history, and the pink clouds have long since given way to deep frustration. Virtually nothing has turned out the way she had hoped. Hardly any of the reforms made during Obama’s nearly three years in the White House have lived up to her expectations — not even the health care reform of 2010. My observation that the reform has given close to a million Americans up to the age of 26 insurance through their parents was rejected out-of-hand. Her own daughter is older than that and unemployed, and so not eligible for insurance.

I have seen a similar kind of disappointment, if not quite so profound, in many American liberals the past few years. What they don’t want to realize is that their expectations were far too great, and that it is outrageously difficult even for a president with a congressional majority behind him to push through changes, particularly in controversial areas of society. The complex political system, based on a division of power and opposing government agencies, quite often puts a stop to that.

A better measurement of Obama’s achievements is obtained by comparing his electoral pledges with what has actually been done. The website PolitiFact.com, run by journalists at the St. Petersburg Times,* keeps a running evaluation of the activities of leading politicians, including the more than 500 promises Obama made during his campaign. The score so far is that he’s kept 155 of the promises, compromised on 48 and broken 53. Another 67 promises have been stalled in Congress, while 183 are in the works. Among the promises kept are, apart from health care reform, the economic stimulus package, stricter regulation of the financial market, a gradual withdrawal of troops in Iraq and the abolition of the discriminating “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. Noticeable among the broken promises are the closing of the Guantánamo base and the repeal of George Bush’s tax cuts for high-income people.

It is dangerous to compare this list with those of his predecessors, since there are no corresponding careful evaluations available. My general impression, however, is that Obama holds up very well in comparison to earlier presidents. One has to go back to Lyndon Johnson in the middle of the 1960s to find a similar record of reform. This doesn’t impress Obama’s critics on the left, however. They had hoped for much more, and have no patience for Obama’s tendency to seek consensus across party lines. What they want is a president who will clearly articulate progressive values and go to war against hardened old guard enemies. They now speak of Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts senatorial candidate who has profiled herself as an “Obama Democrat,” with passion.

This attitude is based on a typically American trait that is equally noticeable among fervent supporters on both sides: the belief that if only their favorite candidate were given power, that person would quickly put everything right and eradicate the stinking Augean stables, a bit like Jimmy Stewart’s character in the movie classic “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” The dream of a clean political world lives on in both ideological camps, even though it’s been shattered time and time again.

What chances does Obama have of winning the presidential election next year? As Nate Silver notes in a trenchant analysis (in The New York Times on Nov. 3), there are three main factors to take into account the year before the election: the popularity of the president, the state of the economy and the ideological home of the opponent.

The approval rating of an incumbent president at the end of his third year has historically proven a fairly good indicator of his chances for re-election. Since 1944, a number of presidents with approval ratings below 49 percent one year before the election have lost. Obama’s rating during the last six months has varied between 43 percent and 47 percent. On the other hand, there are a couple of examples of presidents who, despite high ratings the year before the election, have still had to see their party lose power — for example, Dwight Eisenhower in 1959, the senior George Bush in 1991 and Bill Clinton in 1999. This shows that a one-sided fixation on ratings can lead to false conclusions.

Another important factor is the economy. Persistently high unemployment numbers, weak growth and an increasing budget deficit hang like millstones around Obama’s neck, and the probability of any improvement in the economy during the coming year is small. No incumbent president in modern times has ever been re-elected with an unemployment rate around 9 percent, with one exception: Franklin Roosevelt, who, despite an unemployment rate close to 17 percent, was re-elected in 1936. At that time, however, unemployment was decreasing and the economy was recovering, and voters felt there were good times ahead. Today, many voters are pessimistic about the future, and turning that trend around will be Obama’s greatest challenge.

The third factor is the opponent’s political ideology, and here the rule of thumb is that the further to the right that person stands, the greater chances Obama has of winning. And conversely, if the Republicans choose a moderate candidate, like Mitt Romney or John Huntsman, they stand a considerably better chance of winning than if they go for Rick Perry or Herman Cain. In recent polls, Obama is more or less neck-and-neck with Romney, while he is between 8 and 14 percentage points ahead of Cain, Perry and Michele Bachmann.

If you take current approval ratings, the economy and the ideology of the opponent into account, Obama has at least a 50-50 chance of being re-elected. But one year and a merciless election campaign still remain, and if there is a new serious crisis in foreign relations or another economic crash, all bets will be off.

Obama may find some consolation in the knowledge that many voters carry a remaining benevolence toward him — a realization that it takes time to turn a big ship around, particularly when it’s loaded down with the inherited cargo of a faltering economy and two prolonged wars. He can also put his hope in the fact that it has historically proven difficult for challengers to depose an incumbent president. Of the eight most recent presidents who have run for re-election six have won, while only two have lost (Jimmy Carter and the senior Bush). We will find out on election night, Nov. 6, 2012, whether this is enough to secure a second term for Obama.

*Editor’s Note: PolitiFact is actually a project of the Tampa Bay Times.