Voters start to recognize Obama’s successes

Like many political junkies, I’ve been spending too much time looking at polls and trying to understand their implications. Can Donald Trump really win his party’s nomination? (Yes.) Can Bernie Sanders? (No.) But that’s not the only things being polled; we’re still getting updates on President Obama’s overall approval. And something striking has happened on that front.

At the end of 2015, Obama was still underwater, with significantly more Americans disapproving than approving. Since then, however, his approval has risen sharply while disapproval has plunged. He’s still only in modestly positive territory, but the net movement in polling averages has been about 11 percentage points, which is a lot.

What’s going on? One answer is that voters have been given a taste of what really bad leaders look like. But I’d like to think the public is also starting to realize how successful the Obama administration has been in addressing America’s problems. And there are lessons from that success for those willing to learn.

I know it’s hard for many people on both sides to wrap their minds around the notion of Obama-as-success. On the left, those caught up in the enthusiasm of 2008 feel let down by the prosaic reality of governing in a deeply polarized political system. Meanwhile, conservative ideology predicts disaster from any attempt to tax the rich, help the less fortunate, and rein in the excesses of the market; and what are you going to believe, the ideology or your own lying eyes?

But the successes are there for all to see.

Start with the economy. You might argue that presidents don’t have as much effect on economic performance as voters seem to imagine—especially presidents facing scorched-earth opposition from Congress for most of their time in office. But that misses the point: Republicans have spent the past seven years claiming incessantly that Obama’s policies are a “job killing” disaster, destroying business incentives, so it’s important news if the economy has performed well.

And it has: We’ve gained 10 million private-sector jobs since Obama took office, and unemployment is below 5 percent. True, there are still some areas of disappointment—low labor-force participation, weak wage growth. But just imagine the boasting we’d be hearing if Mitt Romney occupied the White House.

Then there’s health reform, which has (don’t tell anyone) been meeting its goals.Back in 2012, just after the Supreme Court made it possible for states to reject the Medicaid expansion, the Congressional Budget Office predicted that, by now, 89 percent of the non-elderly population would be covered; the actual number is 90 percent.

Then there’s financial reform, which the left considers toothless and the right considers destructive. In fact, while the big banks haven’t been broken up, excessive leverage—the real threat to financial stability—has been greatly reduced.

Last, but one hopes not least, the Obama administration has used executive authority to take steps on the environment that, if not canceled by a Republican president and upheld by future Supreme Courts, will amount to significant action on climate change.

All in all, it’s quite a record. Assuming Democrats hold the presidency, Obama will emerge as a hugely consequential president—more than Reagan.

The 2008 election didn’t bring the political transformation Obama enthusiasts expected, nor did it destroy the power of the vested interests: Wall Street, the medical-industrial complex and the fossil-fuel lobby are all still out there, using their money to buy influence. But they have been pushed back in ways that have made American lives better and more secure.•

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Krugman is a New York Times columnist. Send comments on this column to ibjedit@ibj.com.