The Asterisk Presidency

Stanley A.
Renshon
Barack
AND THE P OLI TI CS
O F R E D E M P T I O N
Obama
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this they resemble in much reduced and narrower form presidential commissions
that are designed to appear to do something about a dicult problem without,
however, having to do any particular thing until much later, if at all. In this respect,
Obamas follow through to his hints about being open to medical litigation reform
follows the same path. They do begin an eort, but that eort is small and unlikely to
bear much policy fruit for many years, if at all. Having taken that small step, however,
allows Obama to burnish his credentials as someone willing to stand up to his own
party, without, however, taking the stronger steps that would have constituted real
political courage. It cannot really be counted under the category of having the courage
of your convictions. If anything, it reects a certain timidity in doing so.
The Asterisk** Presidency
Every president knows more than he can safely tell. In times of emergency or in
high-stakes domestic or national security matters, the president is hardly obligated to
share all of the doubts and reservations that may have been expressed during the course
of policy deliberations. On the other hand, if the matter is not an immediate crisis or a
high stakes national security question, the weight of argument moves toward fuller and
more honest accounting of the advantages and risks of a particular problem.
Presidents, especially smart ones, as Obama clearly is, almost surely know or
ought to know, the ambiguities and risks in the policies they propose. It is of course
possible that someone so committed to both their own worldview and the solutions
they deem appropriate might systematically err on the side of downplaying alter-
native arguments, even though being perfectly capable of repeating them. This is a
particular risk for President Obama.
The leadership legitimacy question at the heart of this dilemma is how honest to
be with the public. Every president, and Obama is no exception, accentuates the
positive. How could they do otherwise? After all, they have come to the conclusion
whether through debate, ideology, or worldview that their proposals are best. Few
presidents tout the virtues of opposition policy.
Obama on Obamas Leadership Probity
Still, Obama has gone out of his way, as Jimmy Carter did before him,
41
to
emphasize his policy veracity and desire to level with the American public. In a
campaign interview he said of himself, I do think that I have tried to conduct my
political career and my campaign in a way that is honest and candid and straight-
forward and minimizes spin.
42
The night he won the election, he said in a speech,
But I will always be honest with you about the challenges that we face.
43
Later in
another interview, he went further,
But one of the things Ive actually been encouraged byand I learned during
the campaignwas the American people, I think, not only have a toleration
The Question of Leadership Integrity 137
but also a hunger for explanation and complexity, and a willingness to
acknowledge hard problems. I think one of the biggest mistakes that is made
in Washington is this notion you have to dumb things down for the public.
44
In another interview Obama took up the theme of honesty and said,
But the second thing that I admire most in Lincoln is that there is just a
deep-rooted honesty and empathy to the man that allowed him to always be
able to see the other persons point of view and always sought to nd that
truth that is in the gap between you and me. Right? That the truth is out
there somewhere and I dont fully possess it and you dont fully possess it and
our job then is to listen and learn and imagine enough to be able to get to
that truth.
45
There are many shades of truth and they lie on a continuum that leads to mis-
representation and onto outright lies. Smart, knowledgeable presidents and leaders
dont often lie outright. However, they are tempted to mislead either by omission,
tailored representation that does not do justice to the facts, or phrasing that
misdirects. All of these are slight-of-words rhetorical techniques.
Obama is a very smart well-versed president and can easily be given credit for
knowing the dierence among all these choices. He has not always chosen to live
up to his Lincoln-like aspirations. As the New York Times reported,
During almost two years on the campaign trail, Barack Obama promised to
slay the demons of Washington, bar lobbyists from his administration and
usher in what he would later call in his Inaugural Address a new era of
responsibility. What he did not talk much about were the asterisks. The exceptions
that went unmentioned now include a pair of cabinet nominees who did not
pay all of their taxes. Then there is the lobbyist for a military contractor who
is now slated to become the No. 2 ocial in the Pentagon. And there are the
others brought into government from the inuence industry even if not formally
registered as lobbyists.
46
The most recent example is the report that the White House met with lobbyists
away from the Oval Oce which meant that the meetings would not show in
White House logs.
47
Caveat Civitas?
This is far from the only instance of what might be termed the asterisk** presidency.
It is not a presidency of outright lies. Rather it is one in which there may well be a
technically correct truth in a presidents statements, if the somewhat skewed, inaccurate,
debatable, or unrepresentative premises are accepted at face value.
138 Understanding the Obama Presidency
Among those areas where there was a substantial gap between promise and
reassurance on one hand and reality on the other were:
1. Obama repeatedly vowed during the 2008 presidential election campaign that
he would not raise taxes on individuals making less than $200,000 and house-
holds earning less than $250,000 a year.
48
However, taxpayers earning less than
$200,000 a year will pay roughly $3.9 billion more in taxesin 2019 alone
due to health care reform, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation,
Congresss ocial scorekeeper.
49
2. The president disowned any involvement in the unsavory horse trades that
allowed this health care bill to proceed,
50
but his chief of sta was intimately
involved with making these deals happen.
51
3. The president and his administration said repeatedly that the GOP had no ideas
on health care.
52
An independent evaluation by Politi-Fact found those and
similar statements to be untrue.
53
4. The president urged Congress to adapt pay as you go which he described as
follows: Congress can only spend a dollar if it saves a dollar elsewhere.
54
Yet,
pay-as you go does not necessarily require savings, new spending can be oset
by taxes, or by ending tax breaks already enacted, and in this case, the proposal
excluded the trillions of dollars in new spending mandated by the presidents
stimulus bills.
55
Nor would the PAYGO law apply to discretionary spending
programs, which account for about 40 percent of the federal budget.
56
5. In his seventh press conference as president-elect Obama said,
Let me repeat what Ive said earlier, there is a bipartisan consensus among
economistsyou can talk to Conservative as well as Liberal economists, that
right now our biggest challenge is putting people back to work and stabilizing
the economy the thing that we have to do right now is to have a bold
economic recovery plan.
57
In reality, while conservative and liberal economists might agree that putting
people back to work is a priority, there is no consensus on what steps to take to
do so, much less that the presidents bold economic plan is an appropriate and
eective one.
6. The president has repeatedly pointed out that health care reform of the kind that
he proposed would improve the long-term budget outlook.
58
This is not accurate.
CBO Director Dr. Douglas Elmendor has written in a report that, Rising
health costs will put tremendous pressure on the federal budget during the next
few decades and beyond. In CBOs judgment, the health legislation enacted earlier this
year does not substantially diminish that pressure.
59
And indeed, in campaigning for
the 2010 midterm elections, Key White House allies are dramatically shifting
their attempts to defend health care legislation, abandoning claims that it will
reduce costs and decit, and instead stressing a promise to improve it.
60
7. In speaking of his administrations plan to rescue Chrysler and GM Obama said,
Its a partnership that the federal government will support by making addi-
tional loans that are consistent with what I outlined last month. As part of
their agreement, every dime of new taxpayer money will be repaid before Fiat
can take a majority ownership stake in Chrysler.
61
Listeners might be excused for failing to catch the importance of the adjective
new before taxpayer money. In reality, many billions of dollars had already
been loaned by the time of Obamas comments and were not likely to ever be
repaid.
62
8. Regarding health care Obama said, If you like your doctor, you will be able to
keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health-care plan you will be able to
keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter
what.
63
That turned out not to be accurate. An early draft of administration
regulations on this matter, estimates that many employers will be forced to
make changes to their health plans under the new law. In just three years, a
majority of workers51 percentwill be in plans subject to new federal
requirements.
64
And that is only for the so-called grand-fathered plans.
9. With regard to some of his principal core support groups, even as Obama
is, publicly keeping them at arms length and saying little on so-called
wedge-issues, hes been quietly advancing their agendas, hitching many of them
to the economic crisis that, hes said, is also an opportunity America cannot
aord to waste. For example, When Obama ended Bushs ban on funding
overseas groups that perform or promote abortion, he did it quietly, on a Friday
afternoon, with no popping ashes or handshakes with the directors of
womens groups. But the groups say that as long as he keeps pushing the
policyhis budget includes more funding for family planning programs,
and cuts to abstinence-only programs, for instancethey have nothing to
complain about.
65
10. Obama said, [My plan] will not help speculators who took risky bets on a
rising market and bought homes not to live in but to sell. It will not help
dishonest lenders who acted irresponsibility, distorting the facts and dismissing
the ne print at the expense of buyers who didnt know better. And it will
not reward folks who bought homes they knew from the beginning they
would never be able to aord.
66
However, While the Obama administration
initially said it would focus on owner-occupied properties, Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac said they would renance loans for some second homes and
investment properties, too.
67
11. Obama weighed in, seemingly forcefully, in a highly public venue, on the right
of Muslims to build a cultural center at the site of the World Trade Towers,
68
a
right that no one disputed. He avoided the question of whether it was
appropriate or sensitive to do so on what he termed hallowed ground, and
when confronted with the view that his strong endorsement of their right
would be seen to also endorse their decision to do so, he disclaimed the strong
endorsement implied in his rst statement, even as he stood by its assertion.
69
The result was that what seemed to be a strong and unequivocal statement
became substantially less so and even severely muddled by subsequent clar-
ications. As one report put it, Obamas new remarks, literally speaking, re-
open the question of which side hes on,
70
a not uncommon Rorschach
moment for the president.
12. In March 2011 President Obama announced that he had reversed his two-year-
old order suspending military trials at Guantnamo.
71
The new Executive Order
emphasized the right of review for Guantnamo inmates,
72
along with other pro-
cedural privileges such as the ability to call witnesses who are reasonably available
and willing to provide information.
In issuing the Executive Order the president touted the order as furthering
our commitment to bring terrorists to justice consistent with our commitment
to protect the American people and uphold our values.
73
Critics on the left
were concerned that, It is virtually impossible to imagine how one closes
Guantanamo in light of this executive order.
74
On the right, critics essentially
saw the Executive Order, as the Wall Street Journal headline announced, as a
tactical ratication of the Bush administration.
75
Less noticed was at the fact that at the same time the administration was pub-
lishing the presidents Executive Order, it also published a Fact Sheet that
contained the following revelation not contained in the presidents Executive
Order, nor his ocial statement, nor was it discussed by administration aides
with the major newspapers that reported the story: Our adherence to these
principles is also an important safeguard against the mistreatment of captured U.
S. military personnel. The U.S. Government will therefore choose out of a sense of
legal obligation to treat the principles set forth in Article 75 as applicable to any individual
it detains in an international armed conict, and expects all other nations to adhere to
these principles as well.
76
What is article 75?
77
It is part of Protocol I of the 1977 amendments to the
1949 Geneva Conventions that grants further procedural redress to those cov-
ered by those conventions.
78
It has not been ratied by the United States. Nor is
the administration submitting Article 75 to the Senate for approval as con-
stitutionally required. Rather, the president is simply announcing at the end of a
Fact Sheet that it will now be administration policy.
That policy requires the United States not to engage in outrages upon per-
sonal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment. It is unclear
just what this means and the administration will surely be required to dene it.
However, it does seem to open up a wide basis on which to challenge any
information gained as a result of interrogation, even with techniques sanction by
the U.S. Army code of conduct.
79
The protocol under which the administration
pledged to make its operating policy also requires that, Anyone charged with
an oence shall have the right to examine, or have examined, the witnesses
against him and to obtain the attendance and examination of witnesses on his
behalf under the same conditions as witnesses against him. The phrase have
examined seems to contradict the presidents Executive Order that any wit-
nesses called must be reasonably available and willing to provide information.
After all, inmates may now have their representatives depose any witness, residing
anywhere and of whatever level in the intelligence, military, or administration with
information asserted to be germane to their status.
The thrust and likely result of this little noticed policy initiative, stuck in at
the end of a Fact Sheet will be to make the military trial system, that the
president has opposed since it was rst formulated after 9/11 by the Bush
administration much more dicult to successfully utilize against those designated
as enemy combatants.
Perhaps that is its purpose and perhaps that purpose is legitimate. However,
if both of those are the views of the Obama administration, they would
seem to be important enough to be publicly direct about and to mount a public
case for their appropriateness and not be placed at the very end of a Fact
Sheet.
Every president must, and should, adjust policies as circumstances change.
Every president nds himself in a position in which he cannot follow through
on campaign promises. Most, if not all presidential administrations have adjusted
the policy numbers to put the best face on their eorts.
The Lincoln Standard
Yet, for the sheer range, number, and tempo of asterisk statements, this president
surely stands apart. This partially reects Obamas role as singular embodiment and
spokesman for his many initiatives. In part, it reects Obamas clear intelligence
and his ability, not second to any president including Bill Clinton, to parse words
and meaning.
When Obama called attention to his idealization of Lincolns ability to nd the
truth, he went on say that,
Most of our other great presidents, there was that sense of working the angles,
and bending other people to their will. FDR being the classic example. And
Lincoln just found a way to shape public opinion and shape people around
him and lead them and guide them without tricking them or bullying them but
just through the force of what I was talking about: that way of helping to
illuminate the truth. I just nd that to be a very compelling type of leadership.
Its not one that Ive mastered.
80
In truth, he has not.

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