A Merry Christmas, But a Bad Year

President Barack Obama has begun a two-week Christmas holiday in Hawaii, and he could certainly do with a break. The expectations were high when he was inaugurated for his second term in January, after a clear election victory. However, this year has mainly been a disappointment.

Opinion polls indicate that Obama is down to his worst confidence results so far. Only around 42 percent of Americans think he is doing a good job, while 54 percent think the opposite. This is worse than George W. Bush after five years in power, and the predecessor went down in history as an extreme failure as a president. At times like these, it is little comfort to Obama that the reputation of Congress is hardly measurable.

Some glimmers of hope are beginning to emerge. The economy grew over 4 percent during the third quarter, a seemingly respectable level, after years of a stumbling recovery after the financial crisis. The central bank, the Federal Reserve, assesses the situation as decent enough to reduce the extreme monetary policy stimulation, but unemployment is only decreasing slowly.

It is not certain that the Americans will reward Obama for the economy strengthening, partly because the president’s influence in this area is restricted, and partly because other problems are stealing the show.

The polarization in Washington has not ceased to be a threat. In October, Republicans managed to shut down parts of public services for 16 days, and the U.S. came dangerously close to bankruptcy because they refused to raise the debt ceiling. Domestic and international economies would have been dealt a blow if Republicans had not capitulated at the last minute, but their lack of understanding was frightening.

The budget settlement in December means a temporary ceasefire in the trenches. Both houses of Congress managed, with large majorities, to secure the federal finances for the next two years. However, the settlement did not mention the long-term challenges for the U.S. concerning taxes and social benefits programs.

And strange as it may sound, it seems as if Republicans have not learned to stop playing around with the debt ceiling. It will have to be raised again in the February-March period, and the party has sent out signals that it is time for a new round of blackmail. However, the raising of the debt ceiling is non-negotiable, which is something that Obama has made clear.

Congress took the hardest blow in opinion polls, but the disapproval also hit Obama. The launch of his extensive health insurance reform became a massive failure, for which he cannot avoid blame. No one in the administration seems to have understood how important it was that the online health exchange actually work. The website is slowly starting to work, but barely a third of the people expected to get insurance have done so.

Furthermore, the president’s promise that all those who wanted to keep their existing insurance could do so turned out to be incorrect. Overall, the political publicity for “Obamacare” from the White House has not survived confrontation with reality.

The turmoil has meant that certain details have been turned around. On the other hand, the system has become even more complex. The reform is dependent on healthy younger people joining and paying in, otherwise it will collapse, but the confusion has created a deep suspicion that may take a long time to disappear. If Republicans lay low in the budget dispute, the main reason will be to draw maximum gain from the health care chaos.

The list of Obama’s mishaps started filling up as early as last spring, with a number of scandals, such as the revelation that tax authorities were frenetically chasing right-wing organizations. During fall, the U.S. has been subject to substantial international criticism because of the mass surveillance of the National Security Agency.

Nothing became of more rigorous weapons regulations. The immigration reform that a bipartisan majority passed in the Senate is stuck in the House of Representatives. Congress has passed fewer than 60 bills during the past year, the lowest number throughout history. Internationally, Obama cannot show any real successes for the past year either.

At the last press conference before Hawaii, the president sounded rather glum, and there were no hints of strategies to stimulate the agenda. The midterm elections for Congress this fall could soon block all political roads. Obama has had fanatical opponents to fight, but he has never shown enough interest in forcing an end to the deadlock. The time for giving rise to a ranking legacy is shrinking day by day.