Imperious Obama is the sorest of losers

The president-elect and the outgoing president are stylistically opposite, but they both see presidency as a blunt tool used in the most imperious manner

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Bloomberg
Bloomberg
Bloomberg

United States President Barack Obama’s New Year resolution is probably to go on being fantastic. He is a brilliant man, but also egotistical, reluctant to compromise, even selfish. Asked if he could have beaten Republican Donald Trump in the 2016 election, he replied in the affirmative. So what was Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton supposed to make of that? Who cares?

This isn’t about her. It’s about what it’s always been about: Barack Obama. In the final weeks of his administration, we have seen Obama the patrician, gracious and patient in his relations with Trump’s transition team. Then there’s Obama the Caesar, with an eye on his immortal reputation. His relations with Congress have been bad, so he has relied on executive orders to get things done. That leaves his legacy exposed, since his successor can come in and overturn them. Thus the outgoing president is trying to get as much done as possible, to leave Trump with a pile of policies so thick that his first months will be dominated by repealing them. Obama has ordered the transfer of detainees from Guantanamo Bay. In an effort to reduce the number of nonviolent drug offenders in jail, he has set a record for commuting sentences: 231 in one day.

Funding for abortion provider Planned Parenthood will be protected. Oil drilling in much of the Arctic and off the Atlantic coast is now banned. But all these pale into insignificance next to his foreign policy manoeuvres. Obama has expelled Russian diplomats in protest at alleged hacking during the US presidential election. It’s far too little, too late. In 2012, Obama laughed at the Republicans for identifying Russia as a strategic threat. Since then, he and US Secretary of State John Kerry have presided over the carve-up of Ukraine and Russian dominance in the Syrian conflict. We now know that Obama warned Putin twice over allegations of hacking. By implication, he was ignored twice. That’s humiliating. Why get tough now? I suspect Obama’s goal isn’t to punish the Russians, but to pass on a new Cold War-style standoff to Trump. Trump got lucky: Putin didn’t take the bait.

Meanwhile, Obama decided to wave through a United Nations resolution condemning Israeli colonies. On this, the president defies sanity. He overturned decades of US policy, removed any doubt in Palestinian minds that they have a right to demand Israeli land and left many Israeli citizens in a legal no-man’s land. None of this was necessary: Today, Israel is far from the heart of the Middle East’s troubles. And it doesn’t even fit Obama’s record of largely unblemished support for Jewish self-determination. So why, why, why? Domestic politics.

The Republicans have allied with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; Trump wants to join an Israeli front against the Iran deal. Obama is, again, tying his opposition up in knots. It is petty, it is spiteful. It’s what he does. Let me give you a chilling example. To get his health reform bill passed in 2010, Obama said federal funds would never be used to finance abortions. But when the law was implemented, the government found a way around this: Employers would pay for them instead.

To brand Trump a divisive candidate ignores that America was a very divided place before he came along — and it’s Obama who widened those divisions. Trump and Obama are stylistically opposite. But they share a view of the presidency as a tool to get things done, a blunt instrument used in the most careless and imperious manner. Neither man is seriously interested in bringing America together. Their loyalty is to their coalition alone. Anyone who doesn’t like them isn’t worth talking to. One refreshing change is that Trump is at least honest. Last Saturday, he tweeted: “Happy New Year to all, including to my many enemies and those who have fought me and lost so badly they just don’t know what to do.” That tweet was aimed at Barack Obama — the sorest of losers.

— The Telegraph Group Limited, London, 2017

Tim Stanley is an English blogger, journalist and historian.

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