Obama’s Learning Curve

But more than brainpower, there’s another quality that Obama badly needs at the moment, 23 months into his presidency: the ability to learn and change course when that’s called for. It’s not a matter of betraying principle. What’s involved is assessing facts on the ground and making adjustments when things change or don’t go the way you expected. 

To be successful, a president must be adept at this. President Reagan traded his desire for cuts in domestic spending for congressional support for a military buildup that was crucial to winning the Cold War. The key to prevailing in Iraq was President Bush’s decision to reject a drawdown of forces and order a “surge” of troops. President Clinton moderated his policies, leading to welfare reform and a balanced budget.

So how is Obama doing? The answer is better than you might think, but poorly in the one area most likely to jeopardize his reelection in 2012. The surprise is his adjustment on foreign policy and national security. Obama’s most glaring failure is his lack of flexibility on economic policy and spending.

Starting on the negative side, the president appears to believe his policies aren’t responsible for slow economic growth and minimal job creation since the recession ended in June 2009. Rather, the darn economy is to blame. This is a case of blaming the dogs for refusing to eat the dog food. That the dog food is the problem is beyond Obama’s comprehension.

True, he reached agreement with Republicans to prevent income tax rates from rising next month, including for high earners. But he had no choice. To keep from violating his pledge not to raise taxes for the middle class, and averting political suicide, he had to forgo raising them for the upper class. He did so grudgingly. Republicans just wouldn’t “budge” on this, he said.

Obama believes in the FDR model, despite all the evidence that its reliance on government regulations and spending failed to lift America out of the Depression. One piece of evidence: Unemployment was nearly as high in the late 1930s as it was in the early 1930s.

At least President Roosevelt had an excuse. He was trying what hadn’t been tried before. Now it’s been tried and failed, leaving Obama with no excuse. Yet he insisted, in explaining his deal with Republicans, that the extension of jobless benefits will have “the biggest impact” in spurring the economy. If that’s true, twice the unemployment would lead to twice the boost to the economy.

The impression Obama gives is that of someone oblivious to history. He vows to raise the top rate for well-to-do taxpayers in two years, though Presidents Reagan, Kennedy, and Coolidge produced prosperity in part by cutting that rate. Nor does Obama understand that temporary tax cuts, like the partial holiday on Social Security taxes, rarely work.

One more negative. The president hasn’t learned that faulting others for his own troubles is unattractive and anything but persuasive. A president who whines looks like he’s not up to the job. At his press conference in early December, Obama said this: “The economy is not growing fast enough to drive down the unemployment rate given the 8 million jobs that were lost before I came into office and just as I was coming into office.” A mystifying statement, for sure, and a lame excuse as well.

Now for the more positive side. For years, Obama noisily opposed everything in the tool kit for fighting Islamic terrorists. This includes the use of Predator drones, the Patriot Act, wiretaps, military tribunals, renditions, and imprisonment of terrorists at Guantánamo. He opposed the Iraq war and Bush’s troop surge.

Without apologizing or publicly noting his reversal, Obama is currently using all the tools that Bush did. He’s dramatically increased the number of Predator strikes on al Qaeda and Taliban leaders and ordered his own surge of American troops in Afghanistan.

Why? Because even a left-wing president like Obama quickly discovers that protecting the country is not only a requirement of office but one that necessitates measures he might otherwise deplore. He hasn’t always acted willingly. Congress forced him to keep Gitmo open. And he’s still deficient in refusing to treat terrorists captured here as prisoners of war.

But he’s done better in fighting terrorism than we had reason to expect. He also could have backed out of Afghanistan or gutted the war effort, but didn’t. And after months of pursuing the illusion that China would clamp down on North Korea and help in other ways, Obama has figured out that China’s interests and America’s aren’t the same.

Obama’s learning curve is steep. The biggest impediments are ideology and his lack of experience in the world of profit and loss. He held a “working meeting” last week with 20 business leaders, mostly supporters or rent-seeking CEOs on the prowl in Washington. The day before, a headline in the New York Times read: “Its Recovery Sputtering, Japan Will Cut Corporate Income Tax Rate.” In contrast, the result of the president’s meeting with CEOs was a new task force on something or other.

Obama also honored the NBA champion Los Angeles Lakers last week at a Washington recreation center, remarking that Coach Phil Jackson had won five championship rings with the Lakers, “one behind the six he won with the Chicago Bulls,” Obama’s favorite team. “Not for long,” Lakers star Kobe Bryant shot back. The same could be said for how long Obama’s economic policies should last.

Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard.