Why Obama is Unacceptable in 2012

I fully recognize and appreciate the symbolic significance of Obama's victory in '08 (although I maintain that being awarded a Nobel Prize for winning an election is a bit much).  Furthermore, while I didn't vote for Obama, neither did I vote for McCain.  Therefore, I did not approach Obama's presidency with the acrimony of a partisan opponent.  In fact, I genuinely hoped he would do well, and that his policies or decisions would be productive and helpful for our country.  I genuinely hoped that Obama would govern openly, that he would be post-partisan (or at least less partisan than the last few years of the Bush presidency), and that he would guide us through an economic recovery.  However, I believe that Obama has revealed that he is either unable or unwilling to do those things which are necessary for America's recovery.  Let me explain a few of the indicators from his last term which tell me that Obama is simply unacceptable for another four years.

The Stimulus
Obama pushed through an economic stimulus to try and jumpstart our economy and save us from our free-fall.  I actually have no problems with that, at least conceptually.  I think a stimulus was the correct thing to do (despite how toxic the term has become, particularly amongst Republicans).  However, it is the particular elements of the stimulus and the way in which it was administered which indicate how poorly Obama understands both the economy and the government.  As far as I can tell, there were three basic prongs in the stimulus.  Number 1: a general granting of the Democratic wishlist.  This is to be expected, from whichever party was in power, but its actual stimulant effect is debatable at best.  However, because it's to be expected, I can't really place blame here.  Number 2: investment in shovel-ready infrastructure projects.  I said it at the time to all who I encountered, that shovel-ready was absurd in the current regulatory climate.  I don't oppose regulations in and of themselves, but the regulations which were in place made it basically impossible for any infrastructure project to go forward in a timely fashion.  In order for the projects to be truly shovel-ready, Obama would need to follow up the stimulus passed by Congress with a clearing of the regulatory path so as to get the projects going.  This he failed to do, either because he was unwilling or unable.  Therefore, much of the money from the stimulus directed towards the infrastructure wound up being spent merely trying to satisfy bureaucrats.  Such expenditures simply will not do much to stimulate the economy.  Number 3: investment in "green" jobs.  This was the biggest crock - a veritable hoax perpetrated on the American people.  Even basic, cursory research into these investments revealed that nearly all of these proposed industries were still in the research and development phase.  I have nothing against research and development, but paying billions of dollars to a few scientists to try and develop a new technology does not have a very large stimulant effect.  Beyond these three major prongs, there were some other expenditures, but they were relatively modest and never meant to be the crux of the stimulus.  Therefore, even a preliminary analysis would make clear that the stimulus would have little effect, because simply throwing money around doesn't create the value which is needed for a sustainable economic recovery.  As events have unfolded, all of this has become clear, and now we are in such dire financial straits that the effects of another stimulus would be seriously dampened by concerns about the ratio of debt to GDP (and thus America's ability to pay off its debts).  The upshot being this: Obama either has no clue how the government and the economy work or is so over his head that he is unable to properly carry out that which he intends.

Obamacare
The Affordable Care Act pursues, I must admit, a noble goal.  Who would object to increasing access to quality and affordable medical care?  However, fiddling around with people's healthcare is an understandably touchy subject and there are two major problems with the Act (besides the individual mandate).

First, is that it distracted Obama from the economy.  He merely threw billions of dollars at the economy in the form of his stimulus bill and assumed that that would take care of the problem.  This indicates far worse economic stewardship than President Bush who at least actively engaged the problems.  By failing to resolve the number one concern of the people prior to moving on to creating a huge new bill, Obama made a MAJOR error in political calculations.  Obama was elected with one overarching issue on the mind of voters - the economy.  Had Obama spent the first two years focused like a laser on that issue, he would likely have done much more to assure an economic recovery, and in doing so, would have earned the respect and trust of a broad swath of the electorate.  He would undoubtedly have been met with opposition in some form or another, but he would probably have maintained a respectable advantage in Congress rather than turning it over to his opposition.  This major, and unforced, error has caused him no end of headaches and has indicated, to me at any rate, a serious lack of understanding of how politics works.  Barring a clear mandate, people elect a president with hope that that person will be not only morally good, but effective.  That hope needs to be transformed into trust through success on a major issue of the day but which also is not a source of major opposition, thereby allowing bi-partisan cooperation.  An example of such an issue would be our economic recovery.  While there is disagreement as to what exactly to do, nobody is against an economic recovery.  Therefore, Obama could have worked in a fairly bi-partisan manner in an effort to improve our economy.  If his policies had been successful, he would then have been largely free to pursue more controversial policies because he would have earned the trust of the people.  This Obama failed to do.  That is why talk of death panels and fear of losing health insurance were so pronounced in '09 and '10, and why other fears and lack of trust in government is still so high.

Second, the Act doesn't actually resolve the issue it seeks to address.  The goal, so far as I can tell, is to make affordable, quality healthcare more accessible.  Rather than focusing on healthcare, the Act focuses on health insurance.  This is a fatal flaw in my estimation.  All that is achieved by making health insurance more accessible is to increase the demand for healthcare.  The problem, however, is that medical professionals are already overworked.  By increasing the demand for their services, they will 1) charge more, thereby increasing the costs of insurance in the long-run (unless the government interjects itself to prevent doctors from charging more, but this would have the effect of making the basic business model less and less workable, thereby forcing more and more doctors to "retire," thereby decreasing access to healthcare), 2) spend less time with each patient, thereby resulting in lower quality healthcare, and/or 3) attempt to provide the same level of service, but work themselves to such a level of incapacity that the quality of healthcare provided will still decrease.  In order to make quality healthcare more affordable, the government should focus first on increasing the supply of healthcare professionals.  This can be achieved by providing greater financial assistance both in the education of doctors as well as to doctors who practice in areas which have fewer medical professionals than are necessary to adequately care for the people.  For example, San Bernardino, CA has far too few medical professionals to adequately care for the population there, largely because it is a much less desirable place to live than on the coast.  However, by subsidizing to some extent a doctor who opens a new facility in San Bernardino, more doctors would come there and the people would have greater access to healthcare.  This would have the additional benefit of increasing the competition, thereby lowering costs as much as is practicable.  Thus, by focusing on supply, the government can actually make quality healthcare more affordable.  There are, of course, more intricate issues to address and much more nuance than this simple illustration captures.  However, it does point out the most serious flaw of the Affordable Care Act.  By increasing demand, it will lower the quality of healthcare, and even increase the costs in the long-run.  If it were to instead increase supply, it would lower the costs and still maintain the high level of quality that patients have come to expect in America.

Therefore, Obama's signature legislation will be a momentous failure, despite providing some goodies for free, such as contraceptives.  Even if he had properly approached the issue politically by first earning the trust of most of the electorate, the solution he has enacted is simply bad policy.  This whole Obamacare ordeal has demonstrated once again, a lack of ability or willingness to do correctly that which is an otherwise appropriate or laudable objective.

Dodd-Frank
The Dodd-Frank bill is another piece of legislation where Obama has failed in a major way to properly do that which is otherwise correct.  After the financial crisis and the absurdity of institutions being "too big to fail," it makes perfect sense to change in some way the financial system so as to prevent such a disaster from happening again.  To me, the clear response was to inject a level of responsibility where the bailouts had removed it.  Thus, those banks which had received aid, while not being allowed to fail, should have been broken apart into smaller entities, each of which would be forbidden from hiring any of the executives which had led the larger institution to disaster.  Furthermore, any number of steps could be taken to prevent banks from ever becoming "too big to fail" in the future.  However, Dodd-Frank does none of this.  Rather, it imposes tough new regulations . . . on smaller institutions while largely exempting the big banks.  Thus, the big banks which have disgusted most Americans get away with robbing the public treasury (i.e. the middle-class taxpayer).  Even where the regulations apply to these large banks, they have the resources to sit back and do nothing while the smaller institutions struggle and die.  Furthermore, Dodd-Frank institutionalizes the bailout by merely adopting the ad hoc approach that was needed in '08 as standard procedure rather than actually addressing the underlying flaws in the system.  Once again, there is clearly a lack of ability or willingness from the president to do what's actually necessary.

Destruction Rather Than Construction or Even Reformation
Obama has been relatively active in the sphere of administrative law.  This can be seen in his involvement with the bailout of the auto industry and the proposed oil pipeline from Canada.  Interestingly, each case of his involvement actually destroys the framework which is needed for economic recovery.  Obama himself makes much ado about his intervention to "save" the auto industry.  However, the decision to direct TARP money to the auto industry was made under the Bush administration.  Obama's decision to save the car companies amounted to little more than bringing somebody in to do precisely what Mitt Romney had been saying needed to be done all along, i.e., taking the companies through structured bankruptcy so that they could renegotiate their contracts and have many of their debts forgiven and come out on the other side as more structurally sound companies.  Having brought a specialist in, Obama then interjected himself and forced the process along a path which is contrary to bankruptcy law.  According to the law, certain investors with preferred shares collect any available monies first; all other stakeholders and creditors collect from whats left.  Obama, however, decided to subvert the law by allowing the union, which did not have preferred shares, to collect ahead of those stakeholders who did.  While the value of workers over investors may be laudable (although that is debatable and smacks oddly of Soviet Communism), Obama's actions were plainly contrary to established law.  Obama and other Democrats now complain that companies have lots of money on their books but aren't spending or investing it.  The obvious reason is that there is very little incentive to invest money when the rules aren't followed by the only ones authorized in any way to use force, i.e. the government itself.  So long as the specter of Obama's arbitrariness hangs over the business world, people will not invest on the scale that is needed for an economic recovery.  Another example of the arbitrariness of Obama's administrative policies is found in the Keystone XL Pipeline.  The projected path had been extensively studied to determine its environmental impact, and it was approved.  Then, unable to accept that not every cause is a winner, or even the basis of sound policy, radical environmentalists protested.  They succeeded in getting Obama's attention and he subsequently cow-towed to these radicals, stepping into the process and overruling the determination that the path for the pipeline was OK.  The project is now delayed as a new path had to be found and studied and approved, and hopefully not torpedoed by the President again.  These are only two examples, but there are others (such as the labor dispute with Boeing).  The tendency of Obama's administrative policies is to subvert established legal frameworks when they fail to match up to his own standards.  Under such conditions, uncertainty and instability are established and no undertaking which requires large sums of money and an extended period of time can be fully executed in confidence.  What we have seen, is not Obama the reformer, bringing laws into conformity with his views of justice; nor have we seen Obama the constructor, creating new standards and procedures; but rather, Obama the destroyer, subverting established law and procedure with his own arbitrary standards.

Unacceptable in 2012
The foregoing reasons make Obama an unacceptable choice for 2012.  This does not make a positive case for his main opponent, Mitt Romney, but it does mean Obama is not a real option.  Now, some will probably say that conceding to the proposition that Obama is not an acceptable choice necessarily hands the White House to Romney.  That may be true insofar as the wool remains pulled over the eyes of the electorate.  People need to realize that they should vote according to their conscience; not for the candidate that their emotions or animalistic instincts or even the media or their peers tell them to.  In order for one's vote to really be meaningful, one must vote for the candidate which one's most reasoned judgment indicates will govern according to the same standards as one harbor in one's own conscience.  This includes candidates from "unconventional" parties.  A vote for the lesser of two evils will always result in evil.  A vote for the most good of many options will occasionally result in goodness.  One standard that I think should be in everybody's conscience would be a general good faith effort to improve America.  Because Obama is either inept or unwilling to make the decisions necessary to improve America, I think a vote for Obama is a terrible mistake.  And just because the foregoing doesn't make a positive case for Romney doesn't mean that there isn't a positive case to be made.  But that is a subject for another day, which Romney himself should be most capable of expressing.