Obama Is Delivering on His Promise To Be the Antidote to George Bush

It’s easy to forget that five years ago America was feeling very pleased with itself after having elected its first black president, a president who was going to undo the legacy left by his predecessor.

Obama has taken such a pounding in the last few months, it seems as though nothing remains of the American who was going to give his country a universal health care system and break with the unilateralist policies of the neocons. Nothing came of his promise to close Guantánamo Bay, his conciliatory gestures toward the Muslim world were rejected and America brought itself further into disrepute when the bugging scandal broke. And in the meantime, it’s still hard to log into Obamacare.

The Red Line

The nadir was reached on the international stage after Bashar al-Assad’s regime crossed Obama’s red line by using chemical weapons. At the eleventh hour, the American president grasped at an offer made by the Russians, which allowed him to get out of taking military action to punish Syria — action he had been halfway to announcing.

Since then, Vladimir Putin has seemed like a master strategist who gave the White House a lesson in realpolitik. Obama, by contrast, has ended up looking like a wimp. The only question now is whether the deal with Iran is going to change this. Accusations of appeasement are already being made.

Just as in Syria, where Assad has promised to give up his chemical weapons, the Iranian deal depends on the International Atomic Energy Agency, Russia and America’s worst enemies. The man who could walk on water has surrendered the initiative. The main players in the Middle East now are the successors to Hans Blix and a new Kremlin-backed axis of evil.

It is the unmasking of a president who was thought to have a magical charisma. Obama seemed to be cool, but as a result of this he has lacked chemistry with other world leaders. While Bill Clinton gave everyone a hug, Obama is distant. Where George Bush always had Tony Blair, Obama only has himself. He could not even boast about getting Osama bin Laden, since the war against terrorism is supposed to be conducted in secret. In his own country, he is accused of a lack of interest in details, preferring instead to give lofty speeches. He is said to regard the world of business with contempt and not to be a natural when it comes to the nitty-gritty of everyday politics. All of this is largely true. Moreover, he has overestimated himself. Obama allowed himself to be put on a pedestal and believed that, guided by his vision of hope and change, America would be able to lead the world simply by example. Sadly, this has not happened.

Half-Baked Military Plans

Something about this attempt to cut him down to size does not add up, though. Those who can see beyond the president’s image perceive a world which is actually turning Obama’s way and realize that he is beginning to get a handle on things again. Perhaps his foreign policy needed to go wrong first before any of this could happen. At the beginning of August, it seemed that his attempt to recover relations with Moscow had failed, but within a month that relationship improved again. That did mean, however, that Putin had to save Obama from a half-baked plan to intervene militarily in Syria. However, was it really so disastrous to scrap plans for a military adventure which the American public had no enthusiasm for, in which he didn’t really believe himself and which could have destroyed his presidency?

America would have achieved nothing with a half-hearted intervention; those critics who always seem to know best were left with nothing to say. It may well be that Obama’s U-turning damaged his credibility, but it freed him from a prison of his own design.

Since this happened Obama has gained political space from himself, and the deal with Iran is one consequence of this. It is now in the hands of the diplomats, which was always Obama’s intention. The Russians also have to contribute something now and cannot just play the role of wreckers in the Middle East. Above all, if it works, nobody will care how he got there.

The fact that Obama has been cut down to size cannot be separated from the reduced prestige which America itself now possesses, having overreached itself under Bush. That is why America chose a left-wing president in 2008; it’s also why Obama pulled his troops out of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His focus has shifted to his own backyard — not so much onto jobs for middle-class whites, but affordable health care, which is mainly in the interests of blacks.

Staying the Course

Obamacare maybe in a mess, but the president is staying the course. In so doing it is not only the legacy of his predecessor that he is dismantling, but also that of Ronald Reagan, under whose presidency America had a strong anti-government ideology, greatly strengthened its armed forces and gave free rein to Wall Street.

It is very possible that we will soon look back on Obama’s presidency as having been transformative and regard Obama as the man who — leading from behind — brought America back to itself. America might cease to be the world’s policeman, but Obama will have more than matched his 2008 promise to be the antidote to George Bush.

Dirk-Jan van Baar is a historian.