The Stillborn Legacy of Barack Obama
By Charles Krauthammer
Washington Post
October 6,
2016
Only amid the most
bizarre, most tawdry, most addictive election campaign in memory could the real
story of 2016 be so effectively obliterated, namely, that with just four months
left in the Obama presidency, its two central pillars are collapsing before our
eyes: domestically, its radical reform of American health care, a.k.a. Obamacare;
and abroad, its radical reorientation of American foreign policy —
disengagement marked by diplomacy and multilateralism.
Obamacare.
On
Monday, Bill
Clinton called it “the craziest thing in the world.” And he
was only talking about one crazy aspect of it — the impact on the consumer.
Clinton pointed out that small business and hardworking employees (“out there
busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week”) are “getting whacked
. . . their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half.”
This,
as the program’s entire economic foundation is crumbling. More than half its
nonprofit “co-ops” have gone bankrupt. Major health insurers like Aetna and
UnitedHealthcare, having lost millions of dollars, are
withdrawing from the exchanges. In one-third of the U.S.,
exchanges will have only one insurance provider. Premiums and deductibles are
exploding. Even the New York Times blares “Ailing Obama Health Care Act May
Have to Change to Survive.”
Young
people, refusing to pay disproportionately to subsidize older and sicker
patients, are not signing up. As the risk pool becomes increasingly unbalanced,
the death spiral accelerates. And the only way to save the system is with massive
infusions of tax money.
What to do? The Democrats
will eventually push to junk Obamacare for a full-fledged, government-run,
single-payer system. Republicans will seek to junk it for a more market-based
pre-Obamacare-like alternative. Either way, the singular domestic achievement of
this presidency dies.
The Obama Doctrine.
At
the same time, Obama’s radically reoriented foreign policy is in ruins. His
vision was to move away from a world where stability and “the success of
liberty” (JFK, inaugural
address) were anchored by American power and move toward a world
ruled by universal norms, mutual obligation, international law and multilateral
institutions. No more cowboy adventures, no more unilateralism, no more
Guantanamo. We would ascend to the higher moral plane of diplomacy. Clean hands,
clear conscience, “smart power.”
This blessed vision has
just died a terrible death in Aleppo. Its unraveling was predicted and
predictable, though it took fully two terms to unfold. This policy of pristine
— and preening — disengagement from the grubby imperatives of realpolitik
yielded Crimea, the South China Sea, the rise of the Islamic State, the return
of Iran. And now the horror and the shame of Aleppo.
After
endless concessions to Russian demands meant to protect and preserve the
genocidal regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, last month we finally capitulated
to a deal in which we essentially joined Russia in that
objective. But such is Vladimir Putin’s contempt for our president that he
wouldn’t stop there.
He
blatantly violated his own cease-fire with an air campaign of such spectacular
savagery —targeting
hospitals, water-pumping stations and a humanitarian
aid convoy — that even Barack Obama and John Kerry could no
longer deny that Putin is seeking not compromise but conquest. And is prepared
to kill everyone in rebel-held Aleppo to achieve it. Obama, left with no options
— and astonishingly, having prepared none — looks on.
At the outset of the war,
we could have bombed Assad’s airfields and destroyed his aircraft, eliminating
the regime’s major strategic advantage — control of the air.
Five
years later, we can’t. Russia is there. Putin has
just installed S-300 antiaircraft missiles near Tartus. Yet,
none of the rebels have any air assets. This is a warning and deterrent to the
only power that could do something — the United States.
Obama
did nothing before. He will surely do nothing now. For Americans, the shame is
palpable. Russia’s annexation of Crimea may be an abstraction, but that stunned,
injured little boy in Aleppo is not.
“What is Aleppo?”
famously asked Gary Johnson. Answer: the burial ground of the Obama fantasy of
benign disengagement.
What’s left of the
Obama legacy? Even Democrats are running away from Obamacare. And who will
defend his foreign policy of lofty speech and cynical abdication?
In 2014, Obama said,
“Make no mistake: [My] policies are on the ballot.” Democrats were crushed
in that midterm election.
This
time around, Obama
says, “My legacy’s on the ballot.” If the 2016 campaign
hadn’t turned into a referendum on character — a battle fully personalized
and ad hominem — the collapse of the Obama legacy would indeed be right now on
the ballot. And his party would be 20 points behind.