Since Election Day, President Obama has acted the good sport in public, promising that he’ll ensure “the smoothest transition possible” by paying forward to President-elect Trump the gentlemanly and decent treatment he himself received from President Bush.
But in truth, Obama has been doing all he can to make life difficult for his successor, shoveling new policies and regulations into place as fast as he can, even though his “third term” was roundly rejected on Nov. 8 in the defeat of Hillary Clinton.
Obama’s decision to change the longstanding “wet foot, dry foot” immigration policy is the latest example. For two decades, under two Democratic presidents and one Republican, Cubans fleeing the island tyranny could secure refuge and a path to residency if they could cross the 90 miles of sea from their home to American soil. On Thursday, with only eight days left in office, Obama unilaterally and unexpectedly ended this bipartisan dispensation.
It’s the latest step in his efforts to normalize Cuban-American relations, a process that for him means granting concessions whilst receiving none in return. Obama is trying to cement his appalling foreign policy legacy and box in Trump.
On a roll, Obama did the same sort of thing on Friday, when his out-of-control Environmental Protection Agency rammed through new auto emission standards a year ahead of schedule. To meet obligations of the Paris Climate Agreement, the car industry will be forced to build lighter, more fuel-efficient vehicles.
Complying with those standards will put market share at risk, manufacturers complain. They’re already calling on the incoming administration to reverse the rule. Trump should do so but will inevitably be branded as “anti-environment” or a “climate denier,” just as Bush was attacked as a would-be poisoner of children when he overturned unwarranted new standards for arsenic imposed at the eleventh hour by President Clinton.
Obama doesn’t care about the policy or a drama-free handoff. If emission standards were a priority, he’d not have procrastinated about them until now. Accelerating the regulations is about politics, not about saving the planet.
He’s finalized many other rules to hamstring Trump during his first 100 days. His indefinite ban on oil drilling the Arctic Ocean is another example. It requires congressional action to overturn and forces Trump to spend political capital. Every regulation overturned makes it more likely that another will slip beyond Republicans’ reach.
While Obama’s rhetoric flatters the rhetorician as thoughtful and bipartisan, his actions speak louder than his words. He’s trying, with characteristic immodesty, to put himself above the people’s wishes. It will be time to burnish his legacy when the nation has ceased to lament it. That should, but probably won’t, give Obama pause as he enters civilian life.
