Obama and Jefferson?

There is a particular clique of conservatives who are expressing the hope that Obama, despite his liberal creds., will govern as a moderate. Chris Buckley comes to mind as one of the more conspicuous doyens on the right articulating such an expectation. How realistic is this? Call me cynical but I'm not too inclined to believe that Obama will govern from the center. This may be his m.o. for the first term, but if reelected (God forbid) he would most likely push his left-wing agenda to the hilt, without quibbling about causing offense to the Right. But we'll cross that bridge when we reach it. (Hopefully, Obama will be derailed in '12 by Gov. Jindal.)

But what about the first term? Just how will President Obama govern? After the election that witnessed the elevation of Thomas Jefferson to the office of the presidency in 1800, his most ardent Federalist foes predicted utter disaster for the nation at the very least, the collapse of the nation at worst. But upon taking office, Jefferson shirked certain vestiges of his radical ideology, as articulated in earlier letters to James Madison written in the 1790's, and governed with a surprisingly moderate hand. To be sure, there was much of the Federalist agenda that carried over into Jefferson's presidency, like the national debt and the central bank. Jefferson loathed both things but he recognized that there was little he could do as president in terms of getting rid of them completely. His Treasury Secretary, Albert Gallatin, actually ended up following through with many of Alexander Hamilton's policies. Jefferson, who throughout the presidency of Washington claimed that Hamilton was a crypto-monarchist, himself exercised the greatest display of executive power when he signed off on the Louisiana Purchase, an act that no one seriously doubted was grossly unconstitutional. For this is why John Quincy Adams opposed the measure. The opportunity was simply too good to let slip away so Jefferson, with a blush, bent the rules a bit and with the stroke of a pen, more than doubled the size of the nation. Understandably, Hamilton took note of his nemesis' executive solecism with a bit of mirth. Upon taking office, Jefferson promised to "sink Federalism into an abyss from which there shall be no resurrection of it." But he soon learned that he couldn't rejigger everything and that pragmatism had its proper place. Federalism as a political Party was on its way to extinction but for better or worse many of its fundamental policies remained, thanks to Chief Justice John Marshall, as various bits and pieces were assimilated by subsequent Parties.

Ok, back to Obama. So there may be precedent for a politician like Obama to assume the office of the president with somewhat tempered ambitions. We are already starting to see this with his team's assessment of the prisoners held at Guantanamo. He campaigned vigorously on the promise that he would close it, lickety-split. But he now seems to be equivocating a bit. Time will tell. Another interesting item on the agenda will be the fate of the terrorist surveillance system employed by the government since 9-11. There was much hue and cry among liberal hacks prior to the election, alleging the violation of civil liberties and Democrats like Obama dutifully promised to revise the way information is harvested so as to better protect Americans from having their privacy violated. (Please, spare me.) It will be noteworthy to follow how consistent President Obama will be with his campaign pledges to oppose initiatives like the Patriot Act, now that he bears unique responsibility for securing the nation. Open homosexuals in the military will be another hot-button issue which will force Obama to square his campaign rhetoric up against the recommendations and preferences of the military's top brass. On other social issues, I predict Obama will govern as a doctrinaire liberal. He has a comfortable majority in Congress and only on the extremely controversial issues, like the Freedom of Choice Act, will an effective resistance in the form of a Republican filibuster likely hold up in the Senate.

Obama's past experience as legislature, however paltry, also bolsters my pessimism. Despite his soaring panegyrics on the virtues of Republicans and Democrats coming together, Obama has always preferred to eschew bipartisanship in favor of liberal purity. It is true that Obama's constituency in Illinois demanded liberal policies from him. With that in mind, there may be some chance that Obama, realizing that the majority of Americans are not carbon copies of south side Chicago Democrats, may position himself somewhat to the center. But lest we forget, this is a man of immense ego. Obama believes that his mandate for "change" is strong. Last week he said that, upon taking office, he plans to "hit the ground running." Interpret that as you wish. In so many ways, Obama is no Jefferson. I expect little from the former in terms of moderation, good judgement and balance. But maybe he'll surprise me.