As President Obama fights for congressional approval of action in Syria, it's worth asking: should presidents get credit for at least putting up a fight even if they fail?
(PHOTO courtesy Pete Souza of The White House: Presidents Carter, Clinton, Obama, and Bush share a laugh at the dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum in Texas on April 25, 2013).
In the annals of American presidential history, U.S. presidents inevitably get credit for policy achievements that occurred on their watch. Jimmy Carter will be remembered for securing the Camp David Accords, creating the Department of Education, and establishing a national energy policy. Central aspects of Bill Clinton's presidential legacy include comprehensive welfare reform, the creation of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), and the Family Medical Leave Act. George W. Bush left behind a legacy that includes the Medicare prescription drug benefit, AIDS relief to Africa, and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Thus far, Barack Obama's most notable accomplishments include the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare"), the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law, and the repeal of the military's Don't Ask/Don't Tell policy.
However, presidents' legacies also include significant legislative failures that are not usually highlighted in their libraries and the fights these presidents put up for causes they believed in are, at times, not heralded by historians if they failed. Each of the aforementioned presidents have suffered devastating legislative defeats. For Carter, it was the failure to pass his economic stimulus bill, consumer protection legislation, and welfare reform. For Clinton, it was the failure to pass health care reform and middle class tax cuts he promised in his 1992 campaign. Bush barnstormed the country vigorously for partial privatization of Social Security and for immigration reform in his second term but neither came to fruition. So far, Obama has failed to secure repeal of the sequester, in effect since March, and his passionate months-long campaign for gun control legislation ended in a stinging Senate defeat of background checks.
Interestingly though, despite these failures, most of these presidents also saw the items they fought for so intensely go on to become the law of the land in future administrations. Carter's vision for large federal economic stimulus and a consumer protection agency came to fruition under Obama, who signed into law the $826 billion American Reinvestment and Recovery Act in 2009 and created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) as part of Dodd-Frank in 2010. Carter's support of welfare reform was later championed by Clinton, who signed into law welfare-to-work legislation in 1996. Clinton's campaign promises of middle-class tax cuts and health care reform were accomplished by Obama - who signed into law "making work pay" tax credits, a two-year payroll tax holiday, and Obamacare. Bush's signing of sweeping federal national security powers were akin to proposals first backed by Clinton after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Bush's vision for immigration reform still has a solid chance of becoming law in the next year; it passed the Senate last June and has the votes to pass the GOP-controlled House. Some of Obama's gun control proposals could still pass before he leaves office but his predecessor, Clinton, actually secured a now-expired assault weapons ban and the Brady Bill -- and it is entirely possible a future Democratic president will achieve gun safety reforms.
Therefore, this dilemma raises the question: do the presidents who fought for but ultimately lost battles to change public policy deserve any credit for at least putting up the fight? Should they get credit?
On the one hand, there is a school of thought that says yes, they should get credit. Presidents who failed to enact proposals they fought for do sometimes lay the groundwork for those policy initiatives to gain traction in the future. They set a precedent, help convince more of the public of their rightness (in their view), bring that idea into the mainstream, insert it into the national political debate, coral their party and its apparatus around a cause, and allow for future presidents to learn from their mistakes or draw inspiration from their fights. Further, as Sen. Elizabeth Warren said, you would have less of a chance of something becoming law if you never fought for it than if you at least tried.
Carter may have never seen his push for economic stimulus, welfare reform and consumer protections become reality but these ideas outlived his presidency. The public came to support welfare reform. The Democratic Party, a decades-long defender of FDR's New Deal including Aid to Families with Dependent Children, embraced welfare-to-work legislation that eliminated AFDC and created Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) despite many of its most liberal members in Congress chastising Carter for his initial effort. This change was part of its late 1980s/1990s effort, led by the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) to remodel itself as a new, centrist party. Bill Clinton explicitly ran on not being a "tax-and-spend Democrat," repeatedly said in 1992 that "welfare should be a second chance, not a way of life," and, to the chagrin of the Congressional liberals, signed welfare reform into law. With regards to consumer protection, a public that is weary of big banks and the excesses of private corporations rallied around stronger government efforts to help Americans fend off scams and abuses. A federal agency devoted to this cause finally became law under Barack Obama, who championed this idea in 2008 and signed it into law in 2010. Economic stimulus, as aforementioned, also became law under Obama, who signed the Recovery Act.
Bill Clinton's push for health care reform failed both in the court of public opinion and in Congress but the lessons learned from his failed effort were picked up by the Obama administration. It is widely believed among studiers of the 1993-94 fight that Clinton's core mistake was sending an extremely detailed proposal to Congress without allowing them to mend it into something that could pass. Obama's team did exactly the opposite - and though they may have over-learned, Obamacare did pass: they sent broader outlines for what they wanted, allowed Congress to work out the details, and crafted something that passed. Further, Obama repeatedly said he drew inspiration from previous presidents' efforts to push for health care reform - they laid the groundwork for him to make his case to the public and the Congress. By the time Obama fought for what became the Affordable Care Act, more of the public was on board with specific elements of health care reform than they were in 1993.
When it comes to immigration reform, it should be noted that Obama himself said at the Bush library that if that legislation passes, Bush will deserve credit for being the president who initially fought for it despite misgiving in his party and for providing the impetus for Obama to take up the cause. The Daily Beast's Peter Beinart has already said that despite Obama's failure to get gun control done, "a future president will look back at [early 2013] as the moment when Barack Obama began" to make the "arc bend" in the long struggle to prevent gun violence. Indeed, despite the Senate's defeat of the Manchin/Toomey amendment, a majority of the public supports Obama's proposals for an assault weapons ban (the first time in decades), universal background checks, and banning high-capacity magazines.
There is another school of thought that says no, these presidents do not deserve credit if they failed, even if they fought so strongly for what they believed in during their tenures. These presidents often fought in the wrong way for their proposals, either refusing to compromise or comprising too much or choosing the wrong fight for the wrong time or misinterpreting the legislature and the public. In the case of Carter, one could easily say that his failure to understand Congress, a body then controlled by his own party, and his unwillingness to go along with proposals his party's members wanted in terms of water and bridge projects, defeated his chances of getting a consumer protection agency, economic stimulus or welfare reform done. Clinton underestimated public opposition to health care reform at a time when the country was still largely conservative in its mindset and his team misinterpreted how Congress would react to a very detailed proposal. Bush underestimated the extent of opposition within his own party to immigration reform thus causing a comprehensive bill to be defeated. Obama overestimated red-state Democrats' willingness to fight for nationally popular causes that these Senators thought would be unpopular in their Republican states. In this school of thought, what is important is the bottom line: did the president get what he wanted to get done achieved or not.
In truth, both of these schools of thought have legitimacy to them. Neither is entirely in the right. However, certainly the bottom line is what is crucial in terms of legacy. President Obama will always be remembered for Obamacare and there will be no asterisk in summaries of his presidency saying how President Clinton fought for it and laid the groundwork for Obama. President Clinton will always get credit for getting welfare reform done and there is no asterisk in summaries of his tenure saying how President Carter tried and failed in that fight. Perhaps that is not fair but in politics, much like professional sports, winning is often the only thing that matters in the end.
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