Obama's extraordinary, aimless presidency

What unites all of Obama’s qualities is a tendency toward high-minded superiority, a knowing aloofness and self-regard. These are traits more common in a world-class professor at an elite university than in a president. And it is this characteristic that has caused him his greatest problems as head of the executive branch — and inadvertently contributed to the rise and implausible triumph of his political bête noire.

As a neoliberal and a political moderate, it pains me to admit that Obama’s most fateful mistake may well have been his cautious, level-headed response to the financial crisis. Though countless millions of Americans lost their homes, jobs, savings, and investments due to the astonishingly reckless behavior of bankers, hedge fund managers, and others in the financial sector, no one was punished. Most of the perpetrators came through the crash with barely a scratch. Hardly anyone went to jail. And none of the big banks were allowed to fail or were broken up after the fact. On the contrary, they were bailed out by taxpayers.

I understand why. I supported those policies at the time. Had I been in charge, I almost certainly would have done exactly what Obama did. It was the prudent thing to do. Allowing banks and massive companies like AIG, General Motors, and Chrysler to collapse risked far worse damage to the global economy. It could have plunged the world into something as bad as or worse than the Great Depression. But the result was a massive injustice. Americans learned the lesson that if you’re a middle-class homeowner and things go wrong, you’re screwed, while if you’re wealthy (and even if your actions created the problem in the first place), Uncle Sam will come riding to the rescue. Trump and Bernie Sanders each tapped into this resentment in his own way, expressing, channeling, and purging the anger that the president never adequately acknowledged or legitimized. In that respect, Obama’s professorially cerebral and even-tempered response to the crisis helped to prepare the way for the anti-establishment, populist wave that has now capsized his party and the legacy of his own presidency.