By Fred Barnes - The Weekly Stanard
Lead? President Obama would prefer not to.
Weve had strong presidents and weak presidents skillful presidents and incompetent presidents mediocre presidents and just plain poor presidents. Barack Obama stands alone as the first president who simply declines to lead.
On almost every major issue since he took office in January 2009 Obama has dumped responsibility on someone else merely paid lip service or let the issue quietly fade away. Just this year the issues that have gotten the no-leadership treatment from Obama include: the deficit the debt Medicare Social Security Medi-caid energy corporate taxes medical liability immigration and Libya.
The president set his pattern of negligible leadership early on in his administration. Rather than draft his own proposals on economic stimulus health care cap and trade and Wall Street reformhis top prioritieshe delegated the job to Democrats in Congress.
Even Jimmy Carter one of our weakest presidents didnt do this. And strong presidents like Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan never considered deferring to Congress in that way. They followed the traditional practice of drafting specific legislationtwo major tax bills and a military buildup in Reagans case civil rights and Medicare in LBJsand pressing Congress to ratify their recommendations.
Why is Obama so leadership averse? For one thing it gives him flexibility since hes not tied irrevocably to what congressional Democrats come up with. And it limits his accountability. Hes free to attack Republican proposals without attaching himself to an alternative that Republicans could attack.
Obama is comfortable talking about a range of issues. But more often than not he adopts a vague or equivocal position (or no position at all) and fails to lean on Congress to take action. Obama has frequently advocated a cut in the corporate tax rate this year for example then done nothing to achieve it.
The one specific proposal by Obama this year was a federal budget for 2012 submitted to Congress in February. But after it was widely criticized for failing to tackle the critical spending and debt problem Obama jettisoned it. He replaced it in effect with a nebulous plan lacking in specifics such as a spending baseline or 10-year time frame. At the same time he denounced the scrupulously specific Republican budget passed by the House for changing the basic social compact in America."
The normal procedure in the Senate once the House has approved a budget is to pass one of its own followed by a Senate-House conference to iron out the differences. However Majority Leader Harry Reid has refused (for the second straight year) to pass a budget prompting Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to note that we had two competing versions" of a budget in the Senate both offered by Republicans. Democrats voted down both.
On Medicare the programs trustees have projected that the program will run out of money in 2024. The Congressional Budget Office puts the date at 2020. Responding to this the House budget would replace traditional Medicare with premium support" for seniors to purchase health insurance.
Neither Obama nor Senate Democrats have proposed an alternative for saving Medicare though Democratic senator Chuck Schumer of New York said it must stay in its current form with no cuts to seniors benefits." This is the path to bankruptcy.
In the current bipartisan negotiations on raising the debt limit by $2 trillion its unlikely the White House and Democrats will agree to any serious Medicare reforms. On the contrary theyre eager to exploit the Republican plan as a campaign issue in the 2012 election. The closed-door negotiations by the way are appropriate for a nonleader allowing Obamas minions to argue for specific policies without ever advocating them publicly.
At fundraising events Obama insists hes ready to take on Medicare and Social Security. Yes weve got to make changes so that Medicare and Social Security are there for future generations" he said at a Democratic National Committee event in Miami last week. Yet the White House has privately told Republicans not to bring up Social Security in the current talks.
A bolder and quite public tack was taken by President George W. Bush in 2005. He spent the year talking up the broad outlines of a plan to insure the long-term solvency of Social Security without success.
In late 1997 President Bill Clinton agreed in private to a compromise with House speaker Newt Gingrich on modifying Social Security. At the last minute Clinton backed away when the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke.
But the terms of the compromiseslowing the growth of benefits for the well-off and slightly raising the ceiling on income subject to the payroll taxare still relevant. They were basically embraced by Obamas debt commission in December but not by Obama. Hes proposed no solution to Social Securitys looming breakdown once again declining to lead.
A talking point in Obamas fundraising speeches is the need for a smart immigration policy in this country." Thats true but he hasnt proposed one. In Miami the president criticized the practice of attracting foreign students and forcing them to leave the United States after they get Ph.D.s in engineering and math and science." Has he sought to change the rules to allow them to stay here? Take a guess.
An Obama aide told Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker that in foreign affairs the president favors leading from behind." That means he scarcely leads at all. On domestic policy its the same only worse.
Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard.
