2013 in Review: A Lost Year for Obama

The 2013 political year was one of the most divisive and heated in recent memory. A year dominated by caustic budgetary debates, the president's health care plan, the Edward Snowden saga, the Benghazi attacks, all on top of your typical partisan maneuvering that you find in any political cycle. What makes the 2013 year so interesting is that it was not supposed to be so chaotic and incendiary.

President Obama was strolling victoriously back into the White House, fresh off a successful re-election campaign coupled with the Supreme Court upholding his cornerstone health care plan to add to his well-being. With the ruling and the election behind him, it should have been smooth sailing. Republicans were quick to react to the election results, stating that they should focus on immigration reform, as the exit polls indicated Obama won handily with immigrants. But it seemed working on a bipartisan deal on immigration and a rather smooth political season was not meant for the president, as a bombshell was dropped on his lap in the form of Booz Allen contractor Edward Snowden and his treasure trove of data on NSA surveillance.

As we know, the effect of the information Edward Snowden shared with the world in regards to NSA surveillance has been profound. Not only has it soiled the reputation of the NSA and arguably the president, but also that of the latter with crucial allies abroad, particularly key regional players Germany and Brazil. German Chancellor Merkel, reacting to revelations that foreign heads of state were not only being spied on, but also mobile phone conversations listened to, likened the NSA to the Stasi, the oppressive East German secret police. Even if a it is a bit of hyperbole, it is definitely not good company for the NSA. The surveillance is cited for the reason Brazil awarded a 4.5 billion dollar fighter aircraft contract to SAAB over the established favorite, Boeing and their famed F-18 Super Hornets.

Despite the administration's best efforts to smother the outrage, the situation was not helped by NSA Director James Clapper's March 2013 testimony to the senate, in which he blatantly lied about the breadth of the surveillance program. Let's think about this. You remember when Roger Clemens was indicted by a federal grand jury on the grounds he might have lied to the bipartisan House committee about his steroid use? Well that was all about the role of performance-enhancing drugs in major league sports, you know, something that definitely is not a national security issue. However, our government still wasted no time in trying to indict Clemens. Now it is ironic when we have a government employee, James Clapper of the NSA, who openly lied before congress and has yet to be punished. Talk about twisted priorities.

I am still surprised by President Obama's inaction on the NSA issue. When it became evident that Clapper did lie as Snowden released more information, Clapper should have been sacked immediately. Now that would not have fixed the problem of the NSA surveillance, but at least it would bring an aura of accountability back into the fold, something the American people have been desperate to see. Let's not forget that a federal judge also ruled the NSA surveillance was likely unconstitutional, that the NSA can't prove the surveillance has prevented any attacks, and recommendations made by a White House review board to curtail surveillance which may have well been waving the white flag.

President Obama's inaction towards holding members of the NSA accountable for unconstitutional surveillance is just one example of his tragic flaw: the unwillingness to diffuse political issues before they boil over. As with the NSA, President Obama also had an opportunity to diffuse a political fiasco before it started in the 2012 Benghazi attacks, where the American ambassador to Libya was killed. Now, I do find it disingenuous that Republicans, who have used Benghazi as a rallying cry since 2012, all the sudden care about our foreign casualties abroad when they had eight years to care about such casualties during the Iraq war under the Bush Administration, mainly John Boehner and Lindsey Graham. In fact, Boehner is on record in 2011 disagreeing with the president's stance on providing NATO support in Libya, before Benghazi even occurred. Such rhetoric is telling in that it seems Boehner all the sudden had an epiphany about US foreign policy. However, the timing of his about-face, when a Democrat is now in office office, is questionable at best.

Despite the typical partisan politics at play, the recent Senate hearing shows that, at the very least, mistakes were made and heads should have rolled at the State Department. Another example of the President's inaction is toward his unpopular Attorney General, Eric Holder. Here is a Justice Department who tarnished its reputation with the Fast and Furious scandal, then continues to build upon this less-than-stellar reputation by handing out only fines to investment banks, instead of prison sentences. As mentioned in a previous post, the leadership at the Justice Department seems only concerned with little fish, letting the big ones like JP Morgan swim idly by with impunity.

Perhaps this is where I disagree with mainstream Republicans the most in regards to President Obama's agenda. I do not know how many times I have heard President Obama referred to as some "master manipulator" trying to push his "socialist agenda" be it in email forwards or fiery rhetoric from Fox News. But the fact is, he is nowhere close to that. As discussed, he has been almost unwilling to take a proactive approach in holding members of his administration accountable for their ineptitude and his crowning achievement, ACA, has fallen flat on its very face. Not exactly indicative of some master manipulator. Its almost as if he is stuck in some Hamlet-esque conundrum, placed in check by his own indecisiveness. Furthermore, for those in the Republican Party that keep making such allusions (or maybe it is illusions?), what does it show of them when they are unable to make tangible political gains due to Obama's inaction? With both sides unable to take advantage of one another's faults, perhaps it shows how weak actually each side is and that Obama and the Republicans in Congress truly deserve one another.

The 2013 year was a lost one for not only the voting public, but President Obama as well. Plagued the political fiascoes of Benghazi, the ACA implementation, the Edward Snowden Saga, and the invertebrate nature of his Justice Department, one can only wonder what 2014 will hold.

References:



http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/29/us/supreme-court-lets-health-law-largely-stand.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/17/merkel-compares-nsa-stasi-obama
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/18/brazil-jets-idUSL2N0JX17W20131218
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/dec/12/keene-failing-to-do-the-honorable-thing/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Clemens
http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/17/politics/nsa-court-ruling-questions/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-phone-record-collection-does-little-to-prevent-terrorist-attacks-group-says/2014/01/12/8aa860aa-77dd-11e3-8963-b4b654bcc9b2_story.html
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/nsa-metadata-report-terrorism-snowden
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Benghazi_attack
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/14/boehner-warns-obama-on-libya-operations/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_And_Furious_scandal
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-jpmorgan-20140107,0,1798319.story#axzz2qctmfsqF
http://themiddlethirty.blogspot.com/2013/06/what-good-is-justice-department.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/14/senate-state-department-benghazi_n_4598495.html
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/12/white-house-declares-obamacare-website-fixed-but-problems-persist/