Chapter 6

Quest for a Common Purpose

Although the Obama administration managed to pass the Affordable Care Act (ACA) resulting in the largest expansion of health insurance in the nation’s history, the legislation became the single most unpopular measure of his administration. Instead of being widely hailed in the country as a historic achievement standing alongside Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid as one of the four most important pieces of social welfare legislation in the nation’s history, the ACA met a frosty reception by the American public. It also became the target of repeated attacks by Republicans and conservative groups throughout the country who were determined to repeal what they derisively called “Obamacare.”¹

Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), also received a harsh public reception. Although the legislation achieved much of what it set out to accomplish, it, too, became a target of outrage both from the political left, who felt the measure was not as large or as effective as it should have been, and from the political right, who highlighted it as an example of wasteful government intrusion into the economy and of an inefficient and bloated federal bureaucracy. Part of the problem was poor communication and messaging on the part of the White House. More important was widespread concern about the activism of the Obama presidency.

Instead of making any midcourse changes, the president remained committed to the fundamental policies he had outlined both before and after he became president. Rather than bowing to ideological appeals, he explained to the people of the United States that what he offered them was reform based on deeply held American values rather than drastic change.

Obama’s foreign policy was an extension of his domestic policy. Still promoting a multicultural, multiethnic, and multiracial world, he advocated a world order that restrained authoritarianism, brought democratic accountability to global capitalism, tackled the ever-present danger of nuclear proliferation, and confronted other transnational challenges, such as climate change. Unfortunately for the president, the American people did not buy his message. Instead, many of them joined into a political movement known as the Tea Party. In the 2010 off-year elections, the movement helped to inflict huge losses on the Democrats.

The Tea Party

Fearing what they regarded as a massive expansion of the federal government, groups of conservatives bonded together in associations to defeat liberal officeholders. Although the groups were loosely organized, ranged in degree of their conservatism, and lacked any central leadership, they built upon a political base going back at least to the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.²

In 1984, David Koch and his brother, Charles G. Koch, two conservative billionaires, established Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE), a political group committed to “less government, lower taxes, and less regulations.” In February 2009, an arm of CSE, FreedomWorks, organized a protest against President Barack Obama, who was holding a town hall on his stimulus bill. Less than a dozen people showed up at the protest, where they decried government waste and “Obama’s socialism.” The next week, one hundred people in Seattle protested against the “pork” in the stimulus package. On February 19, 2009, CNBC’s news editor, Rick Santelli, called on his viewers to come to Chicago in July for a “Tea Party” to protest the government’s mortgage lending policies. This was the origin of what became the Tea Party movement. Later, Obama referred to Santelli’s remarks as “bull shit.” “It was hard for me not to dismiss the whole thing for what it was: a mildly entertaining shtick intended not to inform but to fill airtime, sell adds, and make the viewers [of his show] feel like they were real insiders.”³

Encouraged by such conservative commentators and organizations as the right-wing conspiracy theorist, Glenn Beck, and Oath Keepers, a new player in a resurgent militia movement, Tea Party protestors organized into groups that included not only militia types but libertarians, anti-immigration advocates, and those who argued for the abolition of the Federal Reserve, which they considered a plaything of big banks. In their view, President Obama and his predecessors sought to undermine the Constitution and free enterprise for the benefit of an elitist, international, cabal.⁴

There was also a significant element of racism among the promoters of the Tea Party, such as when Beck famously stated that the president had “a deep-seated hatred for white people [and] the white culture” or when Richard Butler, the leader of the Aryan Nations, preached white separatism from his compound in Idaho, and his followers showed up at Tea Party gatherings. At these events, attended by mostly Caucasians, crude depictions were shown of Obama as an African witch doctor and signs labeled him a terrorist. Civil rights leaders worried about the coincidence of the nation’s first Black president and the return of racist rhetoric and violence.⁵

Often led by political neophytes, much of the Tea Party support came from those who were badly affected by the recession, including many who had lost their jobs, had their homes foreclosed, or witnessed the depletion of their retirement funds. Influenced by Beck and other conspiratorialists, they accepted as gospel exposes on the Federal Reserve, and read the work of George Orwell and Ayn Rand, both of whom wrote about the dangers of omniscient government. A popular T-shirt at Tea Party rallies read “Proud Right-Wing Extremists.”⁶

At first, Obama responded to the Tea Party movement by ignoring it, not only because David Axelrod made clear to him that white voters responded “poorly to lectures about race,” but because he did not believe “as a matter of principle” that “a president should ever publicly whine about criticisms from voters.” To the contrary, he soon made clear that he shared the concerns of the protesters on such matters as budget deficits and the extension of government authority in a free market economy. In an interview on NBC’s Today show, he remarked that while the movement was “still a loose amalgam of forces,” including those “who weren’t sure” whether he was born in the United States or was a socialist, there was a “broader circle around that core group of people who [were] legitimately concerned about the deficit,” and who were “legitimately concerned that the federal government may be taking on too much.” “And so,” he concluded, “I wouldn’t paint in broad brush and say that, you know, everybody who’s involved or have gone to a tea party rally or a meeting are somehow on the fringe. Some of them, I think, have some mainstream legitimate concerns.”⁷

At the same time, the president went on the attack. He welcomed journalists to the White House, made television appearances on late nighttime shows, and held a series of town meetings in which he defended his policies and condemned the Tea Party movement.⁸ Their extremist beliefs in internal conspiracies and international cabals and the overt racism of some of them put the movement beyond the pale, he stated. At a White House dinner in May 2010, he added that there was a “subterranean agenda” in the anti-Obama movement that was racial. There was nothing he could do about that except to be as effective and empathetic a president as he could be. He was the president of all Americans, not just Black ones, he emphasized. His agenda was not a Black agenda but an agenda for all Americans.⁹

The president’s rejection of extremism of any kind cost the Democrats heavily in public opinion polls and revealed the racism of many of those participating in Tea Party rallies. One poll in January found that while 96 percent of African Americans still approved of the president’s job performance, the percent among whites had dropped from 62 percent the previous April to 44 percent at the beginning of the new year. Another poll in the spring found that 48 percent of voters believed that Tea Party members were closer to their views than the president. Even independents preferred the Tea Party over Obama by 50 to 38 percent.¹⁰

Making matters worse for the president was the fact the economy continued to hemorrhage jobs. Obama’s message that it would take time for the economy to turn around failed to resonate with the voters. Democrats appeared to an increasing number of Americans as members of a party whose constituency differed only to the degree they wanted to expand government power. The worst purveyor of bloated government was the president.¹¹

Even those who had backed the president in 2008 began to question his policies. In a town hall meeting in September 2010, just two months before the congressional elections, he confronted a barrage of questions from these disillusioned backers. “I’ve been told that I voted for a man who was going to change things in a meaningful way for the middle class,” one African American woman, remarked, “and I’m waiting sir, I’m waiting.”¹²

Part of Obama’s problem could be explained by the numbers, as the figures of those unemployed continued to mount and remained high. In January 2009 the unemployment rate was 7.8 percent. In January 2010, it stood at 9.8 percent. Although this was down from 10 percent in October 2009, it was still considerably higher than when Obama took office.¹³

The president insisted that his stimulus package was already beginning to turn the economy around and was actually growing jobs, such as by giving states and local communities the funds to retain and hire teachers, police officers, and other public workers. He also argued that without the package, more Americans would have been unemployed and the nation would have gone from recession into a depression similar to the Great Depression of 1932.¹⁴

By saving the big banks and the major auto companies and by gaining legislative approval of the largest stimulus package and the most far-reaching overhaul of the nation’s health system in the nation’s history, however, the president became the perfect foil of the antiestablishment protestors, who accused him of being a would-be despot. What he advocated was not an agenda for all Americans, they maintained, but one for the corporate world or, just the opposite, a socialist agenda that threatened the nation’s core belief in free enterprise.¹⁵

In reality, Obama continued to advocate a form of marketplace consumerism. In the same town hall meeting in September carried by CNBC, the president repeated much of what he had been saying throughout the first eighteen months of his presidency, telling his critics he favored free enterprise and free markets. He was in favor of limits on the role of government and on government spending. “We’ve always had a healthy skepticism about government, and I think that is a good thing,” he said. “I think there’s also a noble tradition … of saying that government should pay its way.”¹⁶

Turning to the Tea Party, the president remarked once again that while he understood many of the movement’s grievances, protesters running for office were obligated to identify what cuts in government spending they would make. “I think it’s important for you to say, ‘I’m willing to cut veteran’s benefits, or I’m willing to cut Medicare or Social Security benefits, or I’m willing to see these taxes go up. What you can’t do … is saying [sic] we’re going to control government spending.”¹⁷

Unfortunately for Obama, he was unsuccessful in moving hearts and changing minds. One poll after another showed double digit gaps between those intending to vote Republican and those planning to vote Democratic. Much of the excitement prior to the 2010 elections came from the Tea Party movement’s efforts to get the Republican candidates they had backed in the primaries elected to Congress. Sensing what was happening in the country, the White House blamed the media for what it considered its over-coverage of the Tea Party protestors.¹⁸

Foreign Policy

Clearly the president was troubled by the development of the Tea Party movement, but he was also concerned about the US standing in the world and what he considered the misguided foreign policy of the Bush administration. Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (9/11), Bush declared a war on terrorism and announced that “either you’re with us or you’re with the terrorists.” His policy of militant unilateralism and the fact that the United States was widely blamed for the worldwide economic recession led to a wave of anti-American sentiment even among America’s closest allies.¹⁹

In place of Bush’s foreign policy, the newly sworn-in president called in his inaugural address for multilateral cooperation and mutual understanding. He sought to fulfill a promise he made during the campaign “to build bridges across the globe.” The dilemma he faced was that he inherited from Bush an unpopular six-year-old war in Iraq and another eight-year-old one in Afghanistan. The imperatives of being a wartime president led him to adopt policies similar to those of the Bush administration.²⁰

In April, Obama made the first of three trips overseas in 2009 that took him to Europe, the Middle East, and the Far East. In each of his visits, the president made clear to foreign leaders that he sought to change the direction of American foreign policy as he promised in his inaugural address. In his first trip, the president traveled to London for the second meeting of the G20 nations and then to Strasbourg, on the French-German border, to attend a NATO summit meeting. Afterward he traveled to the Czech Republic, where he met with the country’s prime minister, Vaclar Klaus, and delivered a major address in historic Hradcany Square in Prague. This was followed by stops in Turkey, where he conferred with its prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Iraq, where he held talks with its president, Jalal Talabani, and its prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki.

When Obama went to Europe, there were 161,000 American troops in Iraq and another 38,000 in Afghanistan. A few weeks before he left office, Bush ordered 12,000 more troops to Afghanistan to provide security for elections scheduled to be held later in 2009. Convinced the war in Iraq was a terrible mistake, Obama had drawn up a plan during the campaign to withdraw American combat forces from Iraq within eighteen months after he took office. While in Iraq he presented the plan to General David Petraeus, the commander of American forces in Iraq, who had carried out a successful military surge against Sunni insurgents in the western province of Al Anbar, where some of the most difficult fighting of the war had taken place.²¹

Afghanistan was an entirely different matter for Obama. In the mountainous regions of southwest Afghanistan and northeast Pakistan, the Taliban and Al-Qaeda operated freely, and the leader of Al-Qaeda responsible for 9/11, Osama bin Laden, was believed to be hiding. What concerned the president was not just the stability of the Afghan government and the terrorist threat Al-Qaeda posed throughout the world, but the instability of Pakistan. His worst nightmare was one in which the Taliban succeeded in overthrowing the Islamabad government, thereby gaining access to the country’s nuclear arsenal. He was determined not to allow this to happen.²²

During the campaign, the Democratic candidate had promised to remedy what he considered the inadequate resourcing of the war in Afghanistan during the Bush administration by sending additional troops to the country. Shortly after taking office, he ordered a two-month review of America’s Afghan policy. In the interim, the president approved an additional 17,000 combat forces to the 12,000 that Bush had committed to the Afghan conflict.²³

The administration was divided over the issue of what policy to pursue in Afghanistan. Vice President Joe Biden, whom the president sent to Pakistan and Afghanistan shortly before he assumed office, argued that the United States should withdraw from what he believed was a hopeless quagmire in which a volatile and untrustworthy leader, Hamid Karzai, was unable to control the country outside the capital. Instead, he favored a policy of counterterrorism involving strikes by drones (unmanned aerial vehicles used by the military to target and kill enemy combatants) and combat missions against Taliban and Al-Qaeda leaders. In contrast, Defense Secretary Bob Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton favored a more robust policy of counterinsurgency involving winning the support of the Afghan and Pakistani people by assuring their safety and security through a larger NATO presence in Afghanistan.²⁴

Listening to both sides, the president agreed with his two secretaries. After the review was completed in March, he set out a new strategy for Afghanistan aimed at strengthening the government in Kabul and eradicating the Taliban and Al-Qaeda elements in their mountainous strongholds by adding 4,000 trainers for Afghan security forces to the 17,000 combat forces he had already approved for a total almost twice the size of Bush’s commitment. He also doubled the number of drone attacks Bush had ordered against Al-Qaeda targets on Pakistan’s side of the border with Afghanistan. “I want the American people to understand that we have a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan,” he said in a televised speech on March 27. He looked to his NATO allies, who had sent their own forces to Afghanistan after 9/11, to increase their commitments.²⁵

The tension between what the president regarded as his responsibilities as a wartime president and his liberal values was palpable. At the meeting in London, the president sought to reach a final agreement with the G20 nations that would coordinate their economic recovery while getting them to work together to assist the world’s poorest nations. At Strasbourg’s town hall, he tried to reassure US allies that he hoped to “renew” Washington’s partnership with them. “America is changing,” he said, “but it cannot be America alone that changes. We are confronting the greatest economic crisis since World War II. The only way to confront this unprecedented crisis is through unprecedented coordination.”²⁶

In his speech at Hradcany Square in Prague, the president emphasized the need to prevent nuclear proliferation and warned specifically of the danger of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorist groups. Over the years he had come to believe that the spread of nuclear weapons posed the greatest threat to national and world security. He could not understand why world leaders did not take the issue more seriously. One way to harness the threat, he told the massive crowd assembled in the square, was to “build a new framework for civil nuclear cooperation.”²⁷

In Turkey, a majority-Muslim nation, tensions ran high with the Ankara government because of what Turkish leaders believed was anti-Muslim sentiment in Washington. In a speech to the Turkish parliament, Obama stressed the point that his administration respected all religious faiths and that he regarded Turkey as an indispensable partner in fighting the war against terrorism. He also expressed his support for Turkey becoming a member of the European Union. Then he went a step further. “I also want to make clear that America’s relationship with the Muslim community, the Muslim world, cannot and will not, just be based upon opposition to terrorism,” he said. “We seek broader engagement based on mutual interest and mutual respect.”²⁸

Obama’s efforts to replace Bush’s unilateralism with multilateralism had mixed results. In London, the G20 leaders agreed to commit $1.1 trillion in additional loans and guarantees to bail out troubled countries. While a significant achievement, it fell short of the more direct and larger stimulus measures the president wanted. France and Germany also resisted his pressure to boost their economies with big, coordinated stimulus packages, proposing instead tighter regulation of financial markets. France was also reluctant to reduce its nuclear program. An internal memo leaked to the press said his speech in Prague was mainly aimed at “improving America’s image.”²⁹

Overshadowing the president’s European trip was the war in Afghanistan. At the same town hall meeting in Strasbourg in which he offered a new partnership with Europe, he made clear that he expected NATO members to step up their commitments in Afghanistan. “I think it is important for Europe to understand,” he told them, “that even though I’m now President and George Bush is no longer President, al Qaeda is still a threat, and that we cannot pretend somehow that because Barack Hussein Obama got elected as President, suddenly everything is going to be okay.”³⁰

Obama was, in other words, accelerating, not rejecting, Bush’s policy toward Afghanistan even as he rejected his predecessor’s militant unilateralism. He wanted Afghanistan to be NATO’s main mission. Faced with mounting casualties in a seemingly intractable war and an economic recession and widespread opposition to the war at home, NATO members were reluctant to make that commitment They were willing to make Afghanistan a strategic goal of NATO, but not its main mission. They also agreed to increase the size of their forces in Afghanistan, but not to the level Obama wanted. Instead of combat roles, they also expected to employ their additional ground troops in noncombatant functions such as advising and training Afghan troops.³¹

While abroad, Obama made clear in his meetings with foreign leaders that his highest priorities remained the domestic economy and getting his legislative agenda through Congress. Returning home, he concentrated on these matters, saying so little publicly about the war that some journalists commented on his commitment to the conflict. Yet he never put building new bridges abroad or confronting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on the back burner. To the contrary, he went forward with his plan to withdraw most American combat forces from Iraq.³²

An essential question continued to trouble the president. As he asked one of his advisers: “If this doesn’t work then what?” He was especially worried about developments in Pakistan, where Taliban fighters attacked Pakistani outposts within an hour’s drive of Islamabad, virtually paralyzing the Pakistani government. When asked by his friend and former colleague in the Senate, Dick Durbin, how things were going, he responded that he had to deal with a lot of issues at once, but that the one thing that kept him “awake at night [was] Pakistan.” He grew impatient at the news that the additional troops he had approved for Afghanistan would not arrive in the country for at least six months.³³

In June, the president traveled to the Middle East where he met King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia before going on to Egypt where he delivered a highly billed address, “A New Beginning,” before a crowd of three thousand at Cairo University. He decided to make the speech as a way of letting the Muslim world know that he wanted to make a clean break from the Bush administration policy in the Middle East. He also told one of his speechwriters, Ben Rhodes, that he wanted the speech’s focus to be “less about outlining new policies and more geared toward helping the two sides understand each other.” He chose Cairo to deliver the speech because it was historically and geographically at the center of the Arab world. In preparing his message, he consulted with Islamic religious leaders, other experts on Islamic history and culture, and Islamic business leaders in the United States. He also sought out Jews and people of other faiths and experts from academia.³⁴

As in all his speeches, Obama spent much time thinking about what he wanted to say. He wrote many of its key sentences and paragraphs himself. Because he regarded his speech as his most important statement on foreign policy since assuming office and wanted to attract worldwide interest in what he was about to say, he had his administration leak key portions of his message to the press. In it, he committed the United States to a policy responsive to regional needs and aspirations. In language almost identical to what he said in his inaugural address and in his first interview with Al Arabiya a week later, he remarked that he had come “to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect.”³⁵

In his fifty-five-minute address, the longest he delivered since becoming president, he made flattering remarks about Islam’s contribution to civilization, stretching from algebra to poetry. He also acknowledged US complicity in overthrowing the democratically elected government in Iran in 1953. At the same time, he criticized Iran’s ambition to be a nuclear power at a time when he considered nuclear proliferation to be one of the greatest threats to world peace and envisioned a nuclear-free future. He sought a new dialogue with Iran, he said, and acknowledged that, like any other nation, Iran should have the right to peaceful nuclear power. First, though, Tehran needed to comply with its responsibilities under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which gave the nuclear watchdog the right to conduct snap inspections of its nuclear facilities. Iran had signed the agreement in 2003 as a way of disproving US claims that it had a secret bomb program.³⁶

The longest part of Obama’s speech was a candid assessment of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He defended passionately the Jewish right to a homeland, blamed the Palestinians for their acts of violence against Israel, and condemned Muslim anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial. In the same paragraphs, he also called for a Palestinian state and criticized Israeli settlements on the West Bank, which, he said, “violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace” between Israel and the Arab world. “Progress in the daily lives of the Palestinian people,” he said, “must be a critical part of a road to peace.”³⁷

During his address, the president addressed a host of other issues ranging from women’s rights and human rights to religious freedom and economic opportunity, all of which he supported. “No system of government,” he acknowledged, “can or should be imposed by any other.” But he had “an unyielding belief” that all people yearned for such things as freedom of expression, confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice, and the freedom to live as one chooses. “These are not just American ideas,” he concluded, “they are human rights. And that is why we will support them everywhere.”³⁸

His speech was carried live on state-run television. Most of those who commented on it welcomed it. Daoud Kuttab, a Palestinian journalist and critic of the president, wrote that he “clearly won over the hearts and minds of many people, who have so far rejected America, by being empathetic—warm but honest.” As Arab and Israeli leaders and commentators in the United States pointed out, however, Obama spoke in platitudes and generalities rather than offering specific recommendations that might have persuaded the Arab world that he had really turned a new leaf in US-Arab relations.³⁹

One issue the president mentioned in his address that commentators largely ignored was his ongoing concern about Pakistani instability and the danger of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists. He would, he said, “gladly bring every single one of our troops home [from Afghanistan] if we could be confident that there were not violent extremists in Afghanistan and now Pakistan determined to kill as many Americans as they can. But that is not yet the case.” As he all but acknowledged, there was simply no detailed strategy for keeping the Pakistani government intact.⁴⁰

Over the summer and fall, Obama was pressed by his military commanders to increase the number of American ground forces in Afghanistan by another 40,000 troops. The president was skeptical about the need for such a large deployment, especially on the heels of the additional 30,000 troops he had already committed. He and his advisers had read a number of books on the Vietnam War, which described how little White House scrutiny there had been of military requests for additional troops to fight the war. Not enough attention had been paid during the conflict to such basic questions as how the additional troops would be used, where they would be deployed, for how long, or even what constituted victory in Vietnam. Obama was determined not to repeat the mistakes of the past. He also believed, correctly, that his commanders were trying to box him into supporting a longer and more sustained conflict than he intended.⁴¹

Weary of the military, the president ordered in September a three-month review of war strategy, including a province-by-province assessment of Taliban strength, the effectiveness of the local leadership, and a determination of how quickly American forces could leave certain provinces. Obama participated actively in the review. By all accounts, he was a tough interrogator of the military asking them thoughtful, detailed, and specific questions. In October, he told the Joint Chiefs of Staff that he did not intend to make an open-ended commitment in Afghanistan.⁴²

At the beginning of October, the president received notice from the Norwegian Nobel Committee that it was awarding him the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009. In announcing the award, the committee said it had selected the president for the prize because “of his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between people.” The panel’s decision surprised the world. Many journalists asked how the panel could give the award to a president who had been in office for only six weeks when nominations for the award were closed and who had accomplished so little in enhancing world peace compared to other persons whose names had been floated as deserving of the prize.⁴³

No one was more surprised than Obama when he learned he was receiving the world’s most prestigious award. “To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who’ve been honored by this prize,” he remarked in a brief statement to the press corps in the White House Rose Garden. He went on to say that he would accept the prize as a “call to action.” Walking back to the Oval Office, he later recalled thinking to himself, about “the widening gap between the expectations and the realities of my presidency… . October would become the deadliest month for U.S. Troops in Afghanistan… . And rather than ushering in a new era of peace, I was facing the prospect of committing more soldiers to war.”⁴⁴

In November, the president made the third of his trips abroad, this time to the Far East. In Japan, he delivered a major address on Asia’s relationship with the United States. Then he went to Singapore to attend the Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) economic summit. On the third, and most important, leg of his trip, he traveled to China, where he met with Chinese president Hu Jintao, and premier Wen Jiaboa, in an effort to bridge major differences between their two countries and to seek China’s assistance in persuading Iran and North Korea to give up their efforts at developing nuclear weapons. The president ended his eight-day trip with a ceremonial visit to Seoul, where he met with South Korean president Lee Myung-bak.⁴⁵

In his speech in Japan, the president sought to revitalize US-Japanese relations, which had been strained for some time because of the US military presence in Okinawa and became even more tense as a result of an impending decision to build a new airstrip for the US Marines stationed there. Speaking in Tokyo, the president tried to frame US-Japanese relations within the broader context of Washington’s relations with all Asian-Pacific nations. While Washington’s ties to the region begin with Japan, he said, “it doesn’t end here.” Although the United States may have started as a group of ports and cities along the Atlantic Ocean, “for generations we have also been a nation of the Pacific. Asia and the United States are not separated by this great ocean: we are bound by it.” Obama also tried to show that he was more in line with Asian interests than his predecessors, even calling himself “America’s first Pacific President” because of his upbringing in Hawaii and Indonesia.⁴⁶

In traveling to Singapore, he emphasized the point that the United States’ interests in Asia extended beyond the traditional American focus on North East Asia. Despite a population of six hundred million, some of the world’s most thriving economies, and its location on the strategic crossroads between China and India, Southeast Asia had been largely overlooked by the Bush administration. He wanted to change that. Earlier he had sent Secretary of State Clinton to Indonesia where she acceded to the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, and he also appointed the first US ambassador to ASEAN.⁴⁷

One issue of major concern to Obama that he took up in Singapore was climate change: his belief that the use of carbon-based fuels, specifically coal and oil, were destroying the climate in ways already visible in global warming and major changes in weather patterns. In his speech following his election as president, he vowed that his would be the administration “when the rise of oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” As president, he made dealing with global warming one of his administration’s goals. He sought to replace fossil fuels with climate-friendly energy sources like solar panels and wind turbines, which were becoming increasingly competitive with oil and coal.⁴⁸

On the day after arriving in Singapore, Obama attended a breakfast meeting on climate change that attempted to lower expectations for a global summit in Copenhagen the following month. Talks ahead of the summit had not gone well enough to anticipate any major breakthrough, Danish prime minister Lars Lorke Rasmussen told those at the breakfast. Afterward, the president and other leaders announced that a binding climate-change agreement could not be negotiated in time for the Copenhagen meeting. Nevertheless, he continued to press the issue of cooperation on climate change.⁴⁹

At the ASEAN summit, Obama was greeted with a flurry of complaints about US trade policies. Mexican president Felipe Calderon was the bluntest in his remarks, accusing the United States of moving “in the opposite sense of free trade.” The president tried to allay these fears, stating that the United States would “engage” in a free-trade Trans-Pacific Partnership, but without a full trade policy, this failed to diminish the concerns of the ASEAN members.⁵⁰

From Singapore, Obama traveled to Beijing for talks with President Hu and Premier Wang. The administration had been preparing for months for the president’s visit to China, the most important leg of his trip to Asia. It even delayed a scheduled visit in late October from the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet, which Beijing had forcibly incorporated as part of China, knowing that such a meeting would provoke the Chinese government. It also deferred a decision on arms sales to Taiwan.⁵¹

In contrast to previous administrations, which pushed China to follow the Western model of governance, the president sought to strike a more conciliatory policy toward China that recognized its status as one of the world’s leading powers and the largest foreign lender to the United States. Instead of prodding China, he sought to reassure it. His aim was to align the government more closely to the United States on matters ranging from currency reform to encouraging Iran and North Korea to give up their nuclear weapons programs.⁵²

Obama spent three days in China. Following six hours of meetings with President Hu and two state dinners, he held a town hall meeting in Shanghai, visited historic landmarks, and issued a joint statement with the Chinese leader. Afterward, he left for Seoul for a brief visit before returning to Washington. As critics later pointed out, the Chinese tightly controlled every aspect of the president’s visit. The administration wanted, for example, an audience of 1,500 at the town hall meeting, but the Chinese restricted it to 500, and they handpicked the audience.⁵³

The Chinese also resisted most of the administration’s wish list for the visit. These included support for tougher sanctions against Iran and North Korea if they failed to curb their nuclear programs, revising China’s policy of currency manipulation, and reaching agreement on climate change. Instead, the Chinese managed to shift public discussion from the global risks posed by China’s currency policy to the dangers of loose monetary policy and protectionist tendencies in the United States. In the news conference that followed the end of his talks with Obama, President Hu did not allow any questions and candidly acknowledged that Beijing and Washington “have differences.” As one critic described the president’s visit to China, “Lots of talk, little action—just the way the Chinese like it.”⁵⁴

What most of these critics ignored was that his purpose in visiting China was not to pressure the Chinese on issues that divided their two countries, but to place them within the broader context of replacing confrontation with cooperation. Past American leaders had usually insisted in advance on some concrete development from their visits abroad. This was not Obama’s intention. As Richard C. Bush of the Brookings Institution pointed out, it was “not useful to assess President Obama’s trip according to goals he didn’t set for himself… . Among other things, he set to affirm that the United States remains a Pacific Power… . The major goal … was to make the case for multilateral cooperation regarding the pressing challenges of the global economy, climate change, proliferation, and Afghanistan-Pakistan.” In these limited respects, he succeeded. President Hu even agreed to visit the United States and to resume US-Chinese military-to-military exchanges that had been suspended since Bush’s notification to Congress of arms sales to Taiwan.⁵⁵

A month after returning to the United States, the president delivered yet another major address, this time at the at the US Military Academy. He spoke after reading the review he had ordered on increased troop levels to Afghanistan. Unlike his often lengthy and didactic responses to questions in press conferences and in other speeches, his thirty-three-minute address was characterized by clarity, precision, and conciseness. “I want to speak to you tonight about our efforts in Afghanistan,” he told his audience of 4,200 cadets. Point by point he then laid out the case for why the United States and its NATO partners had combat forces in Afghanistan. He also explained why he was ordering an additional 30,000 troops in what he hoped would be a rapidly executed surge that would end eighteen months later when they would begin to be withdrawn.⁵⁶

“The people and governments of both Afghanistan and Pakistan are endangered,” Obama warned. “And the stakes are even higher within a nuclear-armed Pakistan, because we know that al Qaeda and other extremists seek nuclear weapons, and we have every reason to believe that they would use them.” Although he was committing an additional 30,000 forces to Afghanistan, he reiterated the need for the NATO allies to step up their own commitments. He wanted them to provide an additional 10,000 troops, bringing the total number of forces in the country to well over 100,000. “For what’s at stake is not simply a test of NATO’s credibility,” he argued, “what’s at stake is the security of our allies, and the common security of the world.”⁵⁷

He also made clear, as he told the generals earlier, that he did not intend to make an open-ended commitment to Afghanistan. After eighteen months he expected to leave the fate of the country to the Afghans themselves. “The days of providing [the Karzai government] a blank check are over,” he commented. In an overly optimistic assessment, he predicted that by July 2011, the date when the withdrawal was supposed to begin, the momentum of the Taliban would be reversed and it would even be possible for the Afghan government to open negotiations with those Taliban who abandoned violence and respected the human rights of their fellow citizens.⁵⁸

Obama anticipated that his decision to send additional troops to Afghanistan and to set an end date for the withdrawal of these forces would be criticized by Republicans objecting to any end date, and by Democrats opposed to additional troops for another unwinnable war like Vietnam. Unlike Vietnam, he reminded the cadets “the American people were viciously attacked from Afghanistan, and remain a target for those same extremists, who are plotting along its border.” To continue the war without adding additional forces, “would simply maintain a status quo in which we muddle through, and permit a slow deterioration of conditions” on the ground. To not set a time frame for withdrawal “would commit us to a nation building project of up to a decade.” As president, he added, “I refuse to set goals that go beyond our responsibility, our means, or our interests.”⁵⁹

In ending his speech, Obama tried to tie together his foreign and domestic policies by addressing what he considered the overarching problem confronting the country as he neared the end of his first year in office: the breakdown of the national unity that existed at the time of 9/11 and the growing partisanship in Washington in recent years. “This vast and diverse citizenry will not agree on every issue—nor should we,” he remarked. “But I also know that we, as a country, cannot sustain our leadership nor navigate the momentous challenges of our time if we allow ourselves to be split asunder by the same rancor and cynicism and partisanship that has in recent times poisoned our national discourse.” With “every fabric” of his being, he concluded, he believed Americans could “still come together behind a common purpose.”⁶⁰

As he had done in the past, Obama later recounted the solemnity of his surroundings in delivering his address and the self-doubt he felt, but hid so well at the time, about his ability to achieve the goals he set forth in his speech, especially given his realization that young men and women would die as a result of the decision he was announcing. “As I entered the stage to the band playing the ceremonial ruffles and flourishes, the cadets stood in unison and applauded; and looking out at their faces,” he commented, “I felt my heart swell with an almost paternal pride. I just prayed that I and the others who commanded them were worthy of their trust.”⁶¹

For the most part, the president’s speech was well received. It was even singled out as his most important address since taking office. Even Republican skeptics, including McCain, who served on both the powerful Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees, his running mate, Sarah Palin, and the chairman of the Republican National Committee, Michael Steele, welcomed the fact that the president was now sending enough troops to Afghanistan to defeat the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. As the president anticipated, however, other Republicans criticized his speech for setting an end date for withdrawing American forces from Afghanistan, while some Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, took issue with his decision to commit more troops to the Afghan conflict.⁶²

Other points Obama stressed were the unity of the United States and the NATO alliance after 9/11, the distraction of the Iraq War from the real threat in Afghanistan, and the rifts at home and “between America and much of the world” as a result of the decision to go into Iraq. That was the past, he continued. Now combat forces in Iraq were being withdrawn, and the United States found itself in a better position to carry out the war where the real danger to America’s national security rested. The additional troops he was recommending for Afghanistan would be deployed in opium-rich Helmand Province and nearby Kandahar Province, the Taliban heartland in the country’s southern region next to Pakistan.⁶³

A week after his address at West Point, Obama flew to Norway to accept the Nobel Peace Prize. He had spent the night before writing a draft of his speech before handing it to his chief speechwriter, Jon Favreau, and his deputy national security adviser in charge of communications, Ben Rhodes, to turn it into final form. According to Rhodes, he looked tired and annoyed. “I had to stay up all night writing this,” he told his speech writers, handing them seven pages from a yellow legal pad he had filled with his neat but small handwriting. The only other time he had written an address from scratch was his 2008 address on race in Philadelphia during his campaign for the Democratic nomination. Favreau, Rhodes, and Obama spent the entire overnight flight to Oslo and the morning of his address revising and polishing his remarks.⁶⁴

In his address, the new Nobel Laureate sought to reconcile what seemed irreconcilable—accepting the peace prize at the same time he was escalating the war in Afghanistan. Developing the theme of a “just war,” he relied on the reflections of one of his favorite thinkers, the theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr. During World War II and the Cold War, Niebuhr tried to justify the principles of Christianity with the imperatives of national security by engaging in what he referred to as “morally hazardous action,” such as the use of military force to confront evil in the world. In an interview with Obama during the presidential campaign, the columnist David Brooks asked the future president what he took away from Niebuhr. Obama responded, “I take away the compelling idea that there’s serious evil in the world, and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn’t use that as excuse for cynicism and inaction.”⁶⁵

Obama echoed these thoughts in his acceptance speech. Acknowledging the controversy that the prize committee had stirred by awarding him the peace prize, he addressed directly “the most profound issue” surrounding his receipt of this prize, the fact that he was commander-in-chief of the military in the midst of two wars. How, he asked, could he accept the peace prize while being in the midst of two wars, one of which he was ending but the other of which he was expanding?⁶⁶

The president’s response was to talk about “just wars,” which emerged as codes of law that were established “to regulate the destructive power of war.” Although the concept of a “just war” was rarely observed as the “capacity of human beings to kill one another proved inexhaustible,” it remained his responsibility to protect the national interest (in this respect by defeating Al-Qaeda and the Taliban) without engaging in limitless war. “So yes,” he remarked in his address, “the instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace. And yet this truth must co-exist with another: that no matter how justified, war promises human tragedy. The soldier’s courage and sacrifice is full of glory… . But war itself is never glorious… . War is at some level … an expression of human folly.”⁶⁷

The president also justified force on humanitarian grounds. Inaction in the face of evil, he continued, “tears at our conscience and can lead to more costly intervention later. That is why all responsible nations must embrace the role that militaries with a clear mandate can play to keep the peace.”⁶⁸

The real issue for Obama, then, was not engaging in war when it was justified, but on how “to build a just and lasting peace.” One way was through the use of meaningful sanctions against nations that break rules and laws. Another was to protect human rights. “If human rights are not protected, peace is a hollow promise,” he remarked. This did not mean “an endless campaign to impose our values on the world” because such principles as the right of citizens to worship as they please or assemble without fear, or choose their own leaders were predicated on the inherent rights and dignity of every individual. “So even as we respect the unique culture and traditions of different countries,” the president continued, “America will always be a voice for those aspirations that are universal.”⁶⁹

The final way to bring about the type of world he advocated was to assure economic security and opportunity for every inhabitant of the globe. “For true peace is not just freedom from fear, but freedom from want.” Besides adequate nourishment for even the world’s poorest inhabitants, it included the same goals he sought to achieve at home—guaranteed health care, better educational opportunities for children, and alternatives to fossil fuels.⁷⁰

Everything Obama advocated was predicated on the need for nations to come together, whether that involved the use of military force or economic sanctions, preventing nuclear proliferation or confronting climate change. “America’s commitment to global security will never waver,” the president remarked. “But in a world in which threats are more diffuse and mission more complex America cannot act alone. America alone cannot secure the peace.”⁷¹

Obama then argued that no Holy War, such as that being waged by Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in the name of God, can be a “just war” as he claimed the war being fought in Afghanistan by the United States and its allies was a “just war,” because no Holy War could ever be a “just war.” “For if you truly believe that you are carrying out divine will, then there is no need for restraint—no need to spare the pregnant mother, or the medic, or the Red Cross worker, or even a person of one’s own faith.” In fact, a cardinal principle of all the major religions was “that we do onto others as we would have them do unto us.”⁷²

In accepting the peace prize, the president was arguing the ethics of war against terrorism, while mapping out the road to world peace. “As Dr. [Martin Luther] King said at this occasion so many years ago,” the president concluded, “ ‘I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history.’ … Let us reach for the world that ought to be—that spark of the divine that still stirs within each of our souls.”⁷³

Like many of his speeches at this time, his address received a mixed response in the United States and abroad. Antiwar activists criticized the president for increasing troop levels in Afghanistan, but other commentators pointed out how, instead of using traditional arguments to defend what the president called “just wars,” he had taken a much more difficult and subtler path. Fred Kaplan of the Daily Beast remarked that the president “outline[d] nothing less than a vision of moral realism for the conduct of war and peace in the modern era—as clear and complex statement on the subject as any American president has delivered in nearly a half-century.” Even former house speaker, Newt Gingrich, one of Obama’s harshest critics, credited the president for taking a realistic view of war and peace. One thing most commentators agreed upon was that, in his speech, he was reintroducing into the dialogue about the ethics of war the views expressed by Niebuhr, which had been so influential during the Cold War.⁷⁴

The 2010 Midterm Elections

Little that the president said or did, including passage of the ACA two months later, worked to his advantage in the midterm elections. Before the elections, he had traveled throughout the country in support of Democratic candidates. Everywhere he went, he later recounted, the crowds seemed “energized, filling up basketball auditoriums and public parks, chanting ‘Yes we can’ and ‘Fired up! Ready to go.’ ” “But,” as he also remembered, “even without looking at the polls, I could sense a change in the atmosphere on the campaign trail; an air of doubt hovering over each rally, a forced, almost desperate quality to the cheers and laughter.” On election day, Axelrod predicted that the Democrats would lose thirty congressional seats or more.⁷⁵

He underestimated the size of the party’s defeat. In November the Democrats were shellacked at the polls. Republicans gained control of the House, capturing 63 formerly Democratic seats, the largest number of turnovers since 1948. Although Democrats were able to retain control of the Senate, Republicans picked up 6 seats narrowing the Democratic hold in the upper chamber to 4 seats (51 to 47 with 2 independents caucusing with the Democrats). On the state level, Republicans gained 680 legislative seats and won a net 5 gubernatorial seats, including Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, all important to the reapportionment and redistricting of House seats following the 2010 census. They also won the governorship in Maine for the first time in decades, won the gubernatorial race in New Mexico, regained the governorships in Iowa, Kansas, and Tennessee, and held key governorships in Nevada, Georgia, Texas, and Florida.⁷⁶

There were a few bright spots for the Democrats who won Senate races in Colorado, West Virginia, and Nevada, where Majority Leader Harry Reid beat off a tough challenge from a Tea Party favorite, Sharry Angle. In California, Barbara Boxer defeated her Republican challenger, Carly Fiorina, while Jerry Brown reclaimed the governorship by defeating his Republican opponent, Meg Whitman. Brown replaced Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, “the Governator,” who had held the post for eight years.⁷⁷

Despite these Democratic victories, there was no denying that Republicans had pummeled the Democrats. “Election Day proved to be an even bigger ‘wave election’ than anyone anticipated,” said the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, Ed Gillespie. Political analysts attributed much of the oversize Republican victory to the Tea Party movement. In interviews with local and national media, many of these newly elected lawmakers, at least forty of whom had gotten help from the Tea Party, made clear that they were not looking simply to blend in with other legislators.⁷⁸

Still shocked by the size of the Democratic defeat, the president held a lengthy news conference the day after the election in which he took much of the blame for the magnitude of the Democratic defeat. “I think there is no doubt that people’s number one concern is the economy,” he stated. “People are frustrated—they’re deeply frustrated—with the pace of our economic recovery and the opportunities that they hope for their children and grandchildren. They want jobs to come back faster, they want paychecks to go further.” And for not making enough progress in these regards, “I’ve got to take direct responsibility.”⁷⁹

At the same time, the president pointed to the success his stimulus package was already having on the economy and defended other initiatives his administration had undertaken in such areas as clean energy and education. “I don’t think there’s anybody in America who thinks that we’ve got an energy policy that works the way it needs to… . I think everybody in this country thinks that we’ve got to make sure our kids are equipped in terms of their education, their science background, their math backgrounds, to compete in this new global economy.”⁸⁰

Following the president’s remarks, reporters asked him hard questions. Several reporters pointed out that in defending his administration, he did not seem to reflect on or second-guess the policy decisions his administration had made. Was this true? Another reporter asked whether he was willing to concede that the election results were not just an expression of frustration about the economy but a “fundamental rejection” of his agenda? “If you’re not reflecting on your policy agenda,” Sandra Guthrie of NBC wondered, “is it possible voters can conclude you’re still not getting it?”⁸¹

Obama responded to these questions by reiterating that he was “doing a whole lot of reflecting” and that there were areas where his administration “was going to have to do a better job.” One exception was health-care reform. When asked about Republican opposition to the ACA and whether it might be repealed as a result of the previous day’s election, he made clear that he considered the measure off-the-table for discussion. “I know that there’s some Republican candidates who won last night who feel very strongly about it,” he remarked. “As I said before, though, I think we’d be misreading the election if we thought that the American people want to see us for the next two years relitigate arguments that we had over the last two years.”⁸²

The point the president emphasized throughout the press conference was that the actions he took during his first twenty months in office were a response to an emergency situation. The decisions he made with respect to the bank and auto bailouts were not reflective of his core values or his agenda for the nation, which, he stated once more, was his belief in a free market economy as the best engine to expand and strengthen the nation’s middle class. “My core responsibility is making sure that we’ve got an economy that’s growing, a middle class that feels secure, that jobs are being created,” he stressed.⁸³

One point hardly touched upon during the press conference was the messaging of Obama’s legislative initiatives during his time in office. Most media experts agreed that the president allowed himself to be overexposed—too many TV appearances, interviews, and town meetings. His problem extended beyond overexposure, however. The Tea Party simply out-messaged him. Because Obama’s domestic programs were complex and came with enormous price tags, they were difficult to explain and justify to the American people, and, unlike former president Bill Clinton, he lacked the ability to do so in ways his audience could easily understand. He was also reluctant to boast about his accomplishments. He did not allow himself to get credit for what he achieved. Instead, his explanations lacked self-congratulations and were too often long and complicated. The Tea Party message, in contrast, was simple and direct; cut back the size of government and lower taxes.⁸⁴

Although the 2010 election was fought mostly over domestic issues, differences among Democrats over expanding the war in Afghanistan made disaster at the polls all the more likely. Even leading members of the party and international allies criticized the president over the lack of progress, including whether it was even possible to work with President Karzai because of his erratic behavior and corrupt regime. Although the president thought progress was being made in Afghanistan, American casualties in that mountainous country gnawed at Obama as he grappled with the issue of whether their sacrifice was worth it. “Each time, I met with wounded soldiers at Walter Reed and Bethesda,” he remembered about his visit to these two hospitals, “I was reminded of the awful cost of such incremental progress. Whereas my earlier visits had taken roughly an hour, I was more often spending at least twice that time, as the hospital appeared to be filled almost to capacity.”⁸⁵

In the election campaign, the president also failed in his effort to bring his domestic and foreign policy together in a winning message for 2010. In March, Obama visited Afghanistan, where he met with President Karzai and then visited American forces in nearby Bagram Air Field. In his meeting with Karzai, the president told the Afghan leader that the corruption taking place within his government had to stop. He also made clear that there was a timeline for the withdrawal of American troops from the country and that it was up to the Afghans to provide for their own security. Three months later, he fired the commander of American forces in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal, after he and his staff made critical remarks about senior administration officials, culminating in an article in Rolling Stone harshly critical of the administration’s Afghan policy. The article was based on access McChrystal, whose relationship with Obama had always been strained, gave to the article’s author, Michael Hastings. The president’s ongoing problems with Karzai and his firing of McChrystal crystallized for many Americans the failure of Obama’s Afghan policy rather than any success on his part.⁸⁶