Victor Davis Hanson
Former President Barack Obama recently
continued his series of public broadsides against his successor, President
Donald Trump.
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President BARACK OBAMA headlined rally in Chicago for Illinois Democratic candidates (Newscom TagID: zumaamericastwentytwo341775.jpg) [Photo via Newscom] |
Obama’s charges are
paradoxical.
On one hand, Obama seems to
believe that he, rather than Trump, should be credited with the current
economic boom and the emergence of the United States as the world’s largest
energy producer. But Obama also has charged that Trump’s policies are
pernicious and failing.
Apparently, Obama believes
that all of Trump’s successes are due to Obama, and all of Trump’s setbacks are
his own.
Obama certainly forgets the
old rule: Presidents, fairly or not, get both credit and blame for everything
that happens on their watch, from Day One to the last hour of their tenures—even
when wars abroad, technological breakthroughs, natural disasters, and market
collapses have nothing to do with their governance.
Trump ran on the promise of a
“Make America Great Again” economic renaissance. He pledged massive
deregulation, fair rather than free trade, and tax reform and reduction.
Trump jawboned against
outsourcing and offshoring, and praised rather than lectured private
enterprise. He sought to reindustrialize the Midwest and promised to open new
federal land to fossil fuel production, complete proposed pipelines, and lift
burdensome restrictions on fracking and horizontal drilling.
In contrast, Obama had argued
that the U.S. could never drill itself out of oil shortages. He advocated
making the use of coal so expensive that it would disappear as an American
energy resource. Renewable energy sources such as wind and solar were Obama’s
vision of an America energy future.
As late as last year, Larry
Summers, director of the National Economic Council for two years during the
Obama administration, ridiculed Trump’s boasts that he could achieve annualized
gross domestic product growth of 3 percent as the stuff of “tooth fairies and
ludicrous supply-side economics.”
Summers had also predicted
that the U.S. economy would be in recession by now. Instead, it is likely to
match or exceed Trump’s promise of 3 percent growth over a 12-month period.
After Trump’s victory,
economist and Obama supporter Paul Krugman predicted that the stock market
would crash and might “never” recover. “We are very probably looking at a
global recession, with no end in sight,” Krugman wrote in November 2016.
In fact, the Dow Jones
Industrial Average has climbed about 7,000 points since Trump was elected.
Unemployment has hit near-record lows, wage gains are up, and the economy is
growing.
Still, after 22 months, no one
knows what the final verdict will be on the Trump administration. So it seems
wise to wait until Trump’s four-year term is over before weighing in on his
legacy, or lack of one.
By the same token, the
frenetic Obama should take a deep breath, stop arguing the past, and allow
history to adjudicate his own eight-year economic and foreign policy record.
Given that Obama was a strong
progressive while Trump surprisingly has proven to be a hard-right
conservative, their presidencies offer a sort of laboratory of contrasting
worldviews.
History will decide whether a
more managed or more deregulated economy works best. We will learn whether a
focus on traditional energy sources is preferable to an emphasis on subsidized
green energy.
In recent times, Republican
ex-presidents—Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush—left the
limelight upon the end of their tenures. They kept silent about their
successors, and they allowed history to be the judge of their relative
successes or failures. Reagan and the younger Bush often were ensconced on
their ranches in out-of-the-way places.
Obama would do well to buy a
ranch, too.
In contrast, progressive
ex-presidents such as Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Obama saw the presidency
as a sort of never-ending story. Politics were a 24/7, 360-degree,
all-encompassing experience. All envisioned their retirements as opportunities
to re-litigate their administrations and to politick the present in hopes that
future kindred presidencies would be progressive and would continue their own
agendas.
Carter frequently warned that
the Reagan defense buildup and tough stance toward the Soviet Union were
dangerous and would lead to an existential confrontation.
Clinton became a fierce critic
of the Iraq War as his wife Hillary prepared to enter the 2008 presidential
race as an anti-Bush candidate.
Obama still seeks to convince
the country that Trump is “unfit” to be president.
After the recent passing of
George H.W. Bush, there are now four living ex-presidents: Carter, Clinton,
George W. Bush, and Obama. There are five living former vice presidents: Walter
Mondale, Dan Quayle, Al Gore, Dick Cheney, and Joe Biden.
If all ex-presidents and
ex-vice presidents were to weigh in nonstop on the current president and
present-day politics, the result would be as chaotic as it would be boring.
Reprinted from The Daily Signal
Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the
Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and author of the book “The Second
World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won.” You can reach
him by e-mailing authorvdh@gmail.com.
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