President Obama Now Looks and Acts like FDR

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

The comparison of then Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama to Franklin Delano Roosevelt at the height of the presidential campaign was hyped, overblown and made mostly to sell magazines, puff up TV pundit sound bites, and by a few carried away with themselves Democratic party campaign boosters. Though undoubtedly flattered by it, candidate Obama did not encourage the comparison to FDR.
This writer as countless others the first months after inauguration did more than just hope that President Obama would inch toward looking and acting like FDR. We relentlessly pushed, prodded, and hectored him to lurch in that direction. There were many days of bitter frustration and disappointment, punctuated by loud grumbling of betrayal.

Obama as FDR knew that he was in a political life and death, take no prisoners war with his political enemies-- the GOP, ultra conservative Democrats, Wall Street, the big bankers and big manufacturers. But unlike FDR for months he soft peddled, coddled, and placated his opponents even as they made absolutely no effort to mask their loath of his policies and presidency, and made it abundantly clear they will stop at nothing to hound him from office. FDR, by contrast, hit back hard at his enemies as obstructionists and economic royalists. He never wavered from his commitment that the workers and farmers, the “common man” came first.
Now President Obama has done the same. His in the trenches fight back started when he admitted what everyone knew and that’s that making nice with the GOP and making futile appeals to them for bi-partisanship sounds good in White House interviews and Congressional speeches but in the ruthless party eat party world of real politick it’s a surefire prescription for an ineffectual, moribund, and hapless presidency, not to mention ridicule as a president sans spine.

In quick succession he’s rammed through a drastically retooled consumer friendly health care reform law that looks nothing like the pharmaceutical and private health insurer goody laden bill of six months ago and with the added FDR touch of beating back the furious lobbying by banks and private lenders to keep their profit first fingers in student lending, and making the government the lender of first resort for student loans. He added millions to back it up, with a special nod toward expanding aid to strapped historically black colleges.
A tweak of the financial reform package that takes a strong first step toward reining in the orgy of Wall Street freeboot speculation, trading, swaps, and scams of investors, borrowers and the government that nearly wrecked the economy. Though the much needed independent consumer agency with full power to oversee and regulate lending practices in the financial reform bill didn’t happen. The new agency will not be under the direct grip of the Fed which would kill any regulation that was perceived as Wall Street and Big Bank unfriendly. Obama has also endorsed enactment of a modified version of the Glass-Steagall act. That’s the tough FDR era bank regulation act.

The watered down and grossly underfunded Senate jobs bill won’t do much to dent the near double digit unemployment. But Obama has strongly signaled that he’ll plough stimulus dollars directly into government run job training programs, job banks, and public works projects. The other FDR touch is to virtually order the banks to lend more to distressed homeowners cut borrowing rates, and terms, and promise more aggressive government intervention to aid strapped endangered homeowners. These are the programs that will do much to help the working class, and the minority poor. It makes the screech that he push a black agenda seem even more silly, ridiculous and self-serving.
Obama ignored the squeals of the GOP obstructionists with appointments to judgeships. And a slew of recess appointments of top flight sensitive, moderate, first class scholars and professionals to diplomatic, commerce, and labor regulatory board posts.
He drew the ire of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by holding firm on his demand to halt renewed Israeli settler expansion in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
On a personal and humane note, Obama magnificent gesture of donating every penny of his 1.4 million dollar Nobel Peace Prize award to solid charities and community help organizations and causes. The Big Bank and Wall Street greed merchants could learn a lesson from this example: fat chance of that.

FDR did not substitute rock star photo op, stagey, high profile media posturing for tough leadership. When the GOP and the press wrote the epitaph for him midway through his second term in 1938 he continued to swing away. FDR took to the airwaves and hit the road to blast the economic royalists and the obstructionist judges and those in congress to his reform program.
In the final stages of the healthcare reform fight and its immediate aftermath, Obama snatched a page directly from FDR and mobilized millions of Americans to fight for real reform. As long as he continues to do that he’ll continue to look and act like FDR.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His nationally heard talk show is on KTYM-AM 1460 AM Los Angeles, Fridays 9:30 AM and KPFK Pacifica Radio 90.7 Los Angeles, Saturdays Noon PST.

Time for Obama to Really Act Like FDR

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

President Obama never encouraged the media concocted, ad man’s fantasy land, comparison of him to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He didn’t discourage the comparison either. He was flattered by it. But with the Massachusetts vote debacle smacking him in the face, his only hope for rebound is to really act like FDR.

FDR knew he was in a political life and death, take no prisoners war with his political enemies-- the GOP, ultra conservative Democrats, Wall Street, the big bankers and big manufacturers. He repeatedly lambasted them as obstructionists and economic royalists. Obama is in the same war. They make absolutely no effort to mask their loath of his policies and presidency, and have made it clear they will stop at nothing to bounce him from office. This was before Scott Brown’s win. They’ll be even more bellicose, intransigent and war like against him and his agenda now.
FDR didn’t just hit back, and hit back hard, against the economic royalists. He did not make weak appeals and empty threats to banks and Wall Street to be responsible, do the right thing, and ramp up lending to businesses, farm and homeowners, and pump money into job creation efforts. He imposed tough regulations on them. One of the toughest was the Glass Steagall Act. The congressional gut of Glass-Steagall unleashed the orgy of Wall Street freeboot speculation, trading, swaps, and scams of investors, borrowers and the government that nearly wrecked the economy.

FDR’s bank and Wall Street rein in sent the blunt message that he meant business on financial reform and that this was a key to job creation, saving homes, and getting businesses up and going. FDR spent, and spent, and spent some more on jobs, housing, and social service, public works in the right way. FDR did not resort to smoke and mirror photo-op, PR, showpiece White House jobs summits, conferences, and imploring business councils to expand and create jobs. He put the money directly in the hands of the needy through the litany of alphabet recovery programs.

Obama has belatedly acknowledged that Glass-Steagall must be reinstated. That’s only a start. Obama should do what FDR did and plough stimulus dollars directly into government run job training programs, job banks, and public works projects.
FDR’s economic brain trust were tough, reform minded academics and public officials, not Wall Street, and corporate shills. Obama should put the same team around him. That means asking for the immediate resignation of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. His bumbles, manipulation and outright lies as New York Federal Reserve Chairman and as treasury secretary to cover up the malfeasance of AIG, Goldman, Sachs and other Wall Street wheeler dealers have done more to taint Obama as a hopeless captive of Wall Street. Giving Geithner the boot would reinforce a tough message that Wall Street and the banks must toe the administration line on reform.
FDR would quickly pull the plug if something didn’t work or worked badly to advance his agenda. The health care reform bill is that something. Obama should yank it off the Senate table. His mistake was not to battle for health care reform, but to battle for it at the wrong time and on the wrong terms. It was a fight that was preordained to be long, contentious, embittered, and ultimately shamelessly compromised; a fight that let a GOP, flat on its back, off the canvas. He should revisit the issue later and this time write the bill himself with a fully functioning public option, firm cost containment measures, and tough monitoring provisions. Then quietly and patiently sell congressional leaders and the public on it.

FDR made sure that when he went to war it was truly the right war in the right place at the right time. He had America’s allies and the American people firmly behind him. Afghanistan and certainly Iraq are not the right wars, and only for a brief moment did they have the full cooperation of America’s allies, and the American public firmly behind them. Obama should set and stick to a firm date for withdrawal, call a regional conference of allies to inform them of the exit plan, and then demand that they make regional security, containment, and peace as much their responsibility as the US’s. He should then announce that the billions saved from disengagement will go directly into a massive program of jobs, education, housing expansion and infrastructure rebuilding—in America.

FDR did not substitute rock star photo op, stagey, high profile media posturing for tough leadership. When the GOP and the press wrote the epitaph for him midway through his second term in 1938 and a decade later wrote the same epitaph for Truman both came out swinging. FDR took to the airwaves and blasted the economic royalists. Truman tooled through the nation with his famed whistle stop train campaign and hammered the do nothing GOP congress.

FDR and Truman fired up their base, inspired millions of Americans, continued to push reform, and kept the presidency. Obama could do the same. But only if he really acts like FDR.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His forthcoming book, How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press) will be released in January 2010.

100 Day Silliness

Earl Ofari Hutchinson



Then Democratic Presidential contender Barack Obama did a prescient thing last October. He told an interviewer on a Colorado radio station that he thought the first 1000 days not the first 100 days would make the crucial difference for his presidency. Candidate Obama directly parodied the line from JFK’s inauguration address in 1961. Kennedy proclaimed the first 1000 days as the better time frame to measure how effective or bumbling an administration is. Obama and JFK were wise to cite the much longer time frame. They sought to damp down the wild public expectations that they can work quick magic and miracles in no time flat.

Obama is well aware that the 100 days burden weighs heavier on him than any other president in modern times. He’s young, liberal, untested, and black. There are still deep doubts, suspicions and loud grumbles from some about his competency and political savvy. The Mt. Everest stack of op-eds, news articles, pictorials, websites, chatrooms, national viewer polls and surveys, and CNN and MSNBC specials will dissect, peck apart his words and initiatives for the first 100 days, and nag everyone else to do the same. That put even more pressure on to show he’s a tough, resolute, effective leader.

Obama in his quip to the Colorado radio interviewer knew the silliness of fixating on the drop in the bucket 100 day time span to brand a president and his presidency as a stunning success or a miserable flop. A quick look at the presidency of his two immediate predecessors is enough to prove that. Clinton bombed badly in pushing Congress for a $16 billion stimulus package; he bungled the don’t ask, don’t tell policy regarding gays in the military, and got the first flack on his health care reform plan. Yet, the Clinton presidency is regarded as one of the most successful, popular and enduring in modern times.

Then there’s the Bush presidency. He got off to a fast start. At the 100 day mark in April 2001, his approval ratings matched Obama’s. He was widely applauded for his trillion dollar tax cutting program, his "Faith-Based" and disabled Americans Initiatives, and for talking up education, health care reform and slashing the national debt. But aside from the momentary adulation he got after the 9/11 terror attack his presidency is rated as one of the worst in modern times.

The 1000 day mark that Obama, Kennedy and other presidents have cited as the more realistic time frame is not an arbitrary number. That marks the near end of a president’s first White House term. The honeymoon is over, and the president has fought major battles over his policies, initiatives, executive orders, court appointments and programs with Congress, the courts, interest groups and the media. Battles that by then have been won or lost, or fought to a draw, and there’s enough time to gauge their impact and the president’s effectiveness.

The other big problem with the whimsical 100 day fixation is that it can force a president, in this case Obama, to feel that he must move sprint out the gate to fulfill campaign promises, pass legislation, and burnish up his media and public credentials as a top leader. This carries risks; risks of acting too hastily and making missteps that invite intense criticism.

Obama’s dash to padlock Guantanamo, announce big sweeping plans for health care, financial and banking regulation reform, his much ado about nothing handshake with Hugo Chavez, his outstretch to Iran, and Cuba, and hint at dumping nuclear weapons from the world’s arsenals has drawn heat fire from the right that he’s a reckless tax and spend, debt burdening, free market wrecker, and enemy conciliator. His mixed signals on prosecuting CIA torture cases and retaining virtually intact the faith based initiative, and ladling out billions to the banks have drawn heat from the left that he’s a backslider and Beltway politician.

Obama, though, is no different than other every other president modern era. He is pulled and tugged at by corporate and defense industry lobbyists, the oil and nuclear power industry, government regulators, environmental watchdog groups, conservative family values groups, moderate and conservative GOP senators and house members, foreign diplomats and leaders. They all have their priorities and agendas and all vie for White House support for their pet legislation, or to kill or cripple legislation that threatens their interests. They’ll applaud him when they get their way and bash him when they don’t.

Obama did another smart thing in his first presidential interview with 60 Minutes in November. He told the interviewer that he took a close look at FDR’s first 100 days and he was struck not by the avalanche of legislation and programs that FDR rammed through Congress his first 100 days but his willingness to do things that were different and that made lasting change. This will take far more than 100 days for that to happen and for it to be remembered.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, “The Hutchinson Report” can be heard on weekly on Fridays 9:30 to 10:00 AM in Los Angeles on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and nationally on ktym.com and blogtalkradio.com