Obama is in his Legacy Closure years. It’s the time in a president’s second term when he (and one day, she) makes whatever final gestures he can to earn more than a paragraph in the history books of the next century. So far he hasn’t done much that will impress our great-great grandchildren.
There’s the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, which puts healthcare within the reach of most Americans, but let’s face it—it’s an ugly patchwork of compromises and halfway measures that makes it a laughingstock alongside the sensible single-payer systems of civilized nations.
There’s his patient struggle for fiscal sanity against the callous economic illiterates in Congress. Many say it’s at last paying dividends in a broad economic recovery. But like most presidents, he’s had little to do with either the collapse or recovery of the economy. Criminal greed was the cause of the former, and enlightened Federal Reserve policies were the cause of the latter.
There are his kept promises to disentangle our military from Iraq and Afghanistan. One has had unfortunate consequences, and the other, I’m afraid, will prove to be little better. When you make a mess, just walking away is rarely a good fix.
It’s clear that Obama keenly feels the need to rescue himself from historical insignificance. His unilateral actions since the midterm elections have told us as much. First, he said “screw you” to Congress and moved to shield 5 million undocumented immigrants from deportation. This wasn’t a solution to our fouled up immigration system; it wasn’t even a durable half-solution. Its effect is unclear (see an excellent analysis), and it might turn out to be illegal. Then he negotiated in secret with Raul Castro to renew diplomatic relations with Cuba. Bravo for that—it was a step long overdue! However, it’s far from the sort of brilliant stroke that earns a president a Ken Burns documentary. Its impact will likely be imperceptible for decades, and the highest tributes will eventually go to courageous Cubans whose names no one yet knows.
So, what does Obama have left? Are there other aces up his sleeve, or is he doomed to be the most pathetic lame duck to have ever waddled out of the limelight? The latter, I fear, because the man who would bring us together ironically has no clue how to make that happen. There has likely never been a presidential candidate who misadvertised himself more egregiously. That, sadly, is what the 22nd century history books will say.
Yet there is a chance, ever so slight, for him to escape that fate. It will require a big dose of non-Obama behavior. He’ll have to cave completely in his opposition to something the Republicans want badly so that he can get something he wants badly and, more important, that the nation needs badly. A horse trade. Let’s survey the political scene and find proposals that fit this equation.
The first part—a proposal the Republicans are clamoring for—is really easy to find. Just ask yourself, “What was the very first piece of legislation passed by the new House?” Right, it was a bill to approve the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. To hear liberal Democrats discuss the pipeline, you’d think the idea was conceived by Satan himself. They like to quote a NASA scientist who said that building it means “game over” for any attempt to rescue the planet from the dire effects of climate change. Wow!
Would building the Keystone XL pipeline really be catastrophic? Here are some facts to consider:
- The Keystone XL pipeline is the fourth and last part of an extensive pipeline system that begins in the Canadian town of Hardisty, in Alberta. The system ends at terminals in Illinois and Texas. The other three parts of the system already exist, so the debate is entirely about the addition of the last part.
- The oil that Hardisty produces is bitumen, an extremely viscous oil that comes from oil sands. To flow in a pipeline, it must be diluted. Currently, Hardisty sends both diluted bitumen (“dilbit”) and synthetic crude oil (“syncrude”) through the pipeline. If Keystone XL is built, light crude oil from the Williston Basin in Montana and North Dakota will also flow through the pipeline.
- If Keystone XL is not built, Hardisty will not stop producing dilbit and sending it to refineries. It will continue to be piped to refineries by the parts of the pipeline that exist now. The capacity that Keystone XL would have carried will be carried by railway cars (hazardous), by a pipeline to Eastern Canada, by tankers (also hazardous), or by a combination of all of these.
- One downside is that pipelines leak, sometimes trivially and, less often, substantially. Specific concerns have been raised about possible Keystone XL leaks in the Sandhills of Nebraska and into the Ogallala Aquifer, one of the largest reserves of fresh water in the world. To remove the threat to the Sandhills, TransCanada, the owner of the pipeline system, has agreed to reroute Keystone XL. They also point out that thousands of miles of existing pipeline have crossed the Ogallala Aquifer for years without incident and argue that Keystone XL will be the safest pipeline ever built.
- Another downside is that refining dilbit is very energy intensive. More fossil fuel is required to refine it than is needed to refine other forms of crude oil. This makes the refining process costly and worsens the problem of limiting carbon emissions. However, the overriding point, again, is that the refining of dilbit will happen with or without Keystone XL. Only market forces—cheap, plentiful oil—can reduce the production of dilbit.
I don’t know how you come out on this, but to my mind, building Keystone XL is merely an unattractive idea—far from a catastrophic one. Happily, it comes with an implicit “regulator mechanism”: the cheaper oil gets, the less profitable it is to produce dilbit, so less of the icky stuff flows through the pipeline. Oil is very cheap right now, and the increasing use of nonfossil fuels will continue to keep prices relatively low. So, as the negative half of a horse trade, I conclude that the Keystone XL proposal is an excellent candidate.
That brings us to the positive half of the trade. Again, it’s easy to pick. Obama has always wanted to be the Education President, a commendable thing to want. His administration has backed a number of education ideas, all different in the impact they would make and all received coldly by Congress. The latest would make community college free to students who make steady progress toward a university degree and maintain at least a C+ average. Unfortunately, Obama’s education ideas have not been building to a crescendo. The “free community college” idea is flawed, and it would have practically no effect in making Americans more knowledgeable and prosperous contributors to society. His best idea by far is the one he introduced in his 2013 State of the Union speech, the Preschool for All (PFA) plan.
PFA would enable participating states to offer free preschool to 4-year-olds whose families fall below 200 percent of the poverty line. In the first year, the federal government would pay 91% of the cost, but gradually the states would pay a larger share until the tenth year, when they’d assume 75% of the cost. For this cost, the children of the most disadvantaged Americans would get an educational boost at exactly the age when it will make the greatest difference in their lives. PFA holds the promise of being a life-changer for millions of children.
Of course, Republicans may say no. Funding PFA would require a new tax, and they avoid taxation like the plague. But if this is their decision, they lose politically. Obama can point out that he gave American voters what they’ve wanted from Washington, real political collaboration. He asked for a win-win, and the Republicans chose a lose-lose. His legacy would not grow, but the Republican leadership would be discredited at precisely the time when it badly wants to establish its governing credentials.
By the end of this month, we’ll know whether Obama will offer a horse trade of this magnitude. If he doesn’t grasp the opportunity, history’s judgment will surely be, “He failed to lead.”
Did you miss it—the president’s speech at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama? I did, but then I read reports that called it “powerful,” “emotional,” and even “inspirational,” so I knew I had to search for it. I found both the transcript, which I read, and the video, which I viewed in full. You owe it to yourself to do the same.
The Scratching Post 