The Obama Legacy

October 20, 2014 7:43 AM

The Obama Brief: The President considers his judicial legacy. (SL New Yorker)
posted by roomthreeseventeen (30 comments total)

Two more years! Two more years!

Which is to say, his presidency isn't yet a thing of the past, to gaze upon as "legacy."

Still, interesting to see an actual interview with Obama on his role in selecting judges at various levels, and the role they've played in carrying forward some of his politics.

Here's the Ruth Bader Ginsburg interview with Elle (titled "I'm Not Going Anywhere"), which was mentioned in the New Yorker article.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:37 AM on October 20, 2014

Two more years! Two more years!
Which is to say, his presidency isn't yet a thing of the past, to gaze upon as "legacy."

Well, seeing as how this mid-term election appears poised to hand the Senate to the Republicans, which will pretty-much green-light obstructionism and attempts to dismantle every trace of Obama's previous six years, on a scale not before seen, now might be exactly the time to look back, while there's still something to look back upon.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:44 AM on October 20, 2014 [6 favorites]

this article is spinning in all different ways trying to stay "fair and balanced" on what is a pretty simple story: as you can see by the numbers, Obama has not been able to fill the vacancies in the judiciary.. a core responsibility of the executive. This is because the Republicans have employed obstruction *and* because Obama has never made it a priority. This has created a crisis in the federal judiciary because even though Obama has now finally had confirmed as many judges as Bush, the number of vacancies is higher.
posted by ennui.bz at 8:45 AM on October 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

Well, seeing as how this mid-term election appears poised to hand the Senate to the Republicans

For those who are following the races, is this considered a fait accompli?
posted by Atom Eyes at 9:39 AM on October 20, 2014

is this considered a fait accompli?

pretty close to one, yes. It's all quite depressing.
posted by mcstayinskool at 9:55 AM on October 20, 2014

(Well, 62% chance of Republican control is hardly a fait accompli. But it does look bad.)
posted by RedOrGreen at 10:15 AM on October 20, 2014

You know what can help change that? Voting.
posted by foonly at 10:24 AM on October 20, 2014 [6 favorites]

On the upside, two years of Republicans running rampant over everything might get a whole lot of people to go "Oh hell the fuck no" and vote in 2016.

From TFA:

"“Estrada is the poster child for how the Democrats destroyed the process,” Sessions told me."

Said, apparently, without a trace of irony.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:32 AM on October 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

fffm, I can only hope so, or we'll double-down for another four years.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:38 AM on October 20, 2014

Well, seeing as how this mid-term election appears poised to hand the Senate to the Republicans, which will pretty-much green-light obstructionism and attempts to dismantle every trace of Obama's previous six years, on a scale not before seen,

Not really. They won't get 60 votes, so they won't be able to get stuff through the Senate any better than the Democrats. Even if they could, they would need 67 votes to get past Obama's veto.

Controlling the majority in the Senate certainly makes it impossible for Obama to get much done, but that's not very different from now, when the GOP can filibuster and holds the House. The Supreme Court is a little different, because they won't filibuster, but they might just vote straight down. However, there will be little difference for regular legislation.

The actual danger comes from them taking the Senate and holding it and the House in 2016, while winning the White House. Until then, it's going to be more of the same regardless of what happens this November.
posted by spaltavian at 11:18 AM on October 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

Obama reminds me of a great many lawyers and law students, even some who post here, in that his primary interest in domestic affairs is more in keeping everyone on board with "the process," which he understands as time-tested, elegant, complex, and technically superior to the alternatives. He is only secondarily interested in achieving particular, concrete outcomes, especially if they come at the cost of derailing process...and here, mostly in the arena of foreign policy.

Unfortunately, proceduralism pretty much depends on everyone being a good-faith participant, and having an investment in certain norms of decorum surrounding "the process" to the point of accepting unwanted outcomes in the near or medium term order to preserve the process as a whole int he long term.

The left and right have both lost their faith in "the process" to a great extent and respond in kind, the right by rolling back governmental involvement in most areas and recklessly disregarding the decorum, and the left by opting out. Both groups put outcomes ahead of processes, which frankly makes quite a bit of practical sense.

An process that most people think about in terms of its unsatisfying results is a process that will collapse. And that's what we're seeing, really: the slow and ugly death of liberal proceduralism in American politics. But then, there's plenty of political history and culture here that's outside the liberal-proceduralist tradition.
posted by kewb at 11:35 AM on October 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

Controlling the majority in the Senate and the House will mean delivering a sh!t-ton of bills designed for Obama to veto and give the GOP issues-based ammo for the 2016 Presidential election. If they do it right (and from past experience, that is far from a sure thing), they'll have a serious chance of defeating Inevitable Hillary with an Empty Suit (no wonder Mitt is considering re-running). I'm still holding out for a Jeb Bush vs. Hillary Clinton Battle of the Dynasties; there's also Rand Paul, but he won't go any farther than his daddy did without jettisoning every position considered 'anti-mega-corporation', which is as NOT that unlikely.
I'll just leave this here and check back on it periodically to see how much I get wrong between now and November '16. Everybody else does.
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:03 PM on October 20, 2014

Seriously? Romney gives new meaning to hubris.

And I guess my takeaway from this article is feeling even more uncomfortable about how the judiciary is staffed in the USA. Judges should rule based on the merits of the cases in front of them, not on political ideology. I know at this point there's no putting that toothpaste back in the tube, but it's worrisome that advances in law can be so easily undone by partisanship.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:32 PM on October 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Well, Obama managed to keep the evildoers entombed in Guantanamo Bay out of the judicial system, so that's great.
posted by tecg at 1:09 PM on October 20, 2014

If they do it right (and from past experience, that is far from a sure thing)...

True. What are the Vegas odds on the House jumping right into an impeachment vote once the new Senate is seated? I think the House membership is just unhinged enough to pull that particular trigger, and I'm not convinced the leadership will be able to stop it.
posted by Thorzdad at 3:06 PM on October 20, 2014

Well, Obama managed to keep the evildoers entombed in Guantanamo Bay out of the judicial system, so that's great.

This crap again? Obama tried to shut Guantanamo down--I believe it was one of the executive orders he signed literally minutes after taking the oath in 2009. Congress wouldn't allow it.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 3:43 PM on October 20, 2014 [6 favorites]

Obama reminds us in this interview of the brilliance he usually covers up with his brand of political blandness. He has clearly been thinking systematically all along about the relationship between the branches of government. And it explains his reluctance to play more aggressively. He knows that if he exerts the power of the executive to its utmost, pushes the envelope, that Congress can shirk yet more responsibility. Then the executive has to step in yet more. It's a vicious and unhealthy cycle for a democracy. I don't agree with all his individual calls, but I'm certainly sympathetic to his wise concerns.
posted by shivohum at 4:24 PM on October 20, 2014

The fact remains that closing down the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay was one of the central campaign promises of Obama's campaign and it's still open. And no, he didn't sign an executive order to shut down Gitmo, the order he signed said he'd like to shut it down within a year, which never happened. The truth is that he could have likely done it against the opposition of congress (remember when both senate and house of representatives had Democrat majorities?), but he just didn't make it a priority.

I'm really tired of this crap that all failures and broken promises of Obama's administration are somehow the Republicans' faults.
posted by tecg at 4:46 PM on October 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

Controlling the majority in the Senate and the House will mean delivering a sh!t-ton of bills designed for Obama to veto

Again, not really, because the filibuster works both ways. And since refusing to vote for cloture doesn't have any really dramatic angle, and no one really takes responsibility for it, their won't be a lot of hay to make out forcing Democrats to do it. It will just be more of "those jerks in Congress!". Shaming the GOP for filibustering constantly for the last 6 years really hasn't moved the needle.
posted by spaltavian at 4:48 PM on October 20, 2014

The truth is that he could have likely done it against the opposition of congress (remember when both senate and house of representatives had Democrat majorities?)

He never had a filibuster-proof majority. Franken didn't get seated until the summer, and even then the 60 votes depended on, among others, Lieberman, who was never going to go for it. Then Ted Kennedy died. Blaming Obama for this takes ignorance of recent history.
posted by spaltavian at 4:50 PM on October 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Here's what Obama could have done: "Hey, prisoner-guys? I'm sorry but it looks as though our judicial system is broken. Some of you are clearly innocent, and many of the rest of you can never be tried. So you're now free to go. Congress won't allow me to spend any public money on taking you back home, but I understand that some private individuals will be contacting you to ask if they can help with your travel plans. Good luck, and my apologies."
posted by Joe in Australia at 1:13 AM on October 21, 2014

Though that would have made it harder to perpetuate the War on Terra.
posted by flabdablet at 4:55 AM on October 21, 2014

When people vote, they get a little "I voted" sticker. Do they get only one? Would a person be denied a sticker if he or she walked into the polling area and ask for one, but didn't vote?

If the answer is Yes to these, what's to prevent someone from, say, buying those stickers from voters who live in democratically gerrymandered urban areas for $2-$5?

IANAL: Would that be legal? Would it be legal to set up a SUPERPAC to fund the activity?
posted by Monkey0nCrack at 2:01 PM on October 22, 2014

When people vote, they get a little "I voted" sticker.

Not in my neck of the woods.
posted by Thorzdad at 3:09 PM on October 22, 2014

Is Obama Any Kind of Republican? (SPOILER: No.)

This is really not complicated. Obama is a moderate liberal Democrat. He’s not any kind of Republican and in the context of American politics he’s not any kind of “conservative.” Pretending otherwise involves some combination of distorting actual Republican preferences, ignoring inconvenient facts, and simply making stuff up.

posted by tonycpsu at 9:20 PM on October 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

A moderate liberal Democrat that bails out banks and pardons torturers while pursuing wars in ... I'll say a dozen countries, but that's probably an underestimate. Oh, and who has built the biggest surveillance state ever. That's not a liberal Democrat, surely. He may not be a Republican, but then again, who is?
posted by Joe in Australia at 10:53 PM on October 23, 2014

Joe in Australia: That's not a liberal Democrat, surely.

If you read the piece, Lemieux states that hawkish foreign policy doesn't break down along party lines in the U.S. and hasn't for some time, so it's not really something you can put on a Democrat/Republican axis. Likewise, Bartlett doesn't even cite the surveillance state in his attempt to paint Obama as a Republican, knowing full well that the GOP has never met a surveillance program they didn't like (Rand Paul and maybe six back-bench Tea Partiers in the House notwithstanding.)
posted by tonycpsu at 10:47 AM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

A moderate liberal Democrat that bails out banks

Any true liberal would have let the global financial system collapse! Also, real liberals don't have time machines, as Obama clearly did when he signed TARP into law before he took office.
posted by spaltavian at 12:14 PM on October 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

Yeah, torch Obama all you want for his administration not prosecuting any of the banksters, but there was no alternative to bailing out the banks. We didn't have to do it in the way we did with virtually no conditions, but the complaint as it was expressed is silly, as there's not a politician alive, perhaps not even Ron Paul himself, who would have allowed the banks to simply go under and take the global economy with them.
posted by tonycpsu at 12:30 PM on October 24, 2014

Bobo's Comedy Classics

Shorter Verbatim David Brooks: "The federal government should borrow money at current interest rates to build infrastructure, including better bus networks so workers can get to distant jobs. The fact that the federal government has not passed major infrastructure legislation is mind-boggling, considering how much support there is from both parties."

Yes, it's a real puzzle. If both Republicans and Democrats support major infrastucture investments, why hasn't Congress passed any since the ARRA? Why, it's almost enough to make me think that one of the premises is false!

posted by tonycpsu at 2:02 PM on October 24, 2014 [2 favorites]