UCSD Political Scientists, Economists Predict Issues
Obama Will Need to Tackle During First Hundred Days as President
Ioana Patringenaru | November 10, 2008
The U.S. economy is in disarray. A global recession might be next. U.S. soldiers are fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Barack Obama is facing historic challenges as he prepares to become the first black president to occupy the White House.
Thad Kousser
Over the past week, four UC San Diego political scientists and economists took a stab in interviews at predicting what the first 100 days of an Obama presidency might look like, touching on some of the topics the president-elect tackled during a press conference Friday in Chicago.
“His challenges are trying to keep us out of the great depression while getting us out of Iraq,” said UCSD political scientist Thad Kousser. “It’s going to be an extremely difficult presidency.”
During Friday’s press conference, Obama pledged to confront the nation’s economic crisis head on after his Jan. 20 inauguration. “I do not underestimate the enormity of the task that lies ahead,” he said. The new administration will have to make some difficult choices, he added. “It is not going to be quick and it’s not going to be easy for us to dig ourselves out of the hole we are in,” Obama also said. “But America is a strong and resilient country.”
Obama said he supports a stimulus plan that would include relief for the middle class, job creation and an extension of unemployment insurance benefits. He pledged to make the plan the first priority of his administration next year if it doesn’t pass during the current lame-duck congressional session. He also said his administration would review the federal bailout of the financial industry and would try to provide assistance to state and local governments that face crises of their own.
James Hamilton
Obama often talked about cutting taxes for the middle class during his presidential campaign. But UCSD economist James Hamilton cautioned that tax cuts won’t solve the nation’s economic woes. The real issues are trying to prevent a major meltdown, while preserving Treasury moneys, restoring trust and making sure foreign investors don’t lose confidence in the United States, Hamilton said. “We’re in uncharted territory,” he added. In this climate, transparency in the financial system is key, the economist went on. “We need a clear accounting of who owes what,” Hamilton said. “We let banks get away with too much.”
UCSD economist Richard Carson also cautioned against tax cuts and rebates as long-term remedies for the economic crisis. “The problem is that most of the money will be saved rather than spent,” he explained. To get the economy going again, the U.S. government must make a dramatic investment in rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure, Carson said. The money would help revive the flagging construction industry and create new jobs for out-of-work construction workers. In addition, the nation would gain a revamped infrastructure of roads, bridges and schools, UCSD political scientist Gary Jacobson said.
A stimulus package for the economy, including infrastructure investments and some form of tax rebates will happen fairly quickly, probably before a lame-duck Congress adjourns, UCSD political scientists said. Then the Obama administration might turn its attention to regulatory reform of the U.S. financial system, which enjoys bi-partisan support in Washington, D.C., said Jacobson, a well-known UCSD congressional expert. Jacobson also said that a quick economic turn-around is unlikely and Americans will have to adjust to lower standards of living. “He’s going to have to caution us to be patient,” Jacobson said of Obama.
Richard Carson
Both Jacobson and UCSD political scientist Kousser cautioned that tensions will arise between the Obama administration and Congress—and perhaps fairly quickly. Lawmakers and the president will disagree about how fast to move on an agenda, said Kousser. He warned against overstretching, as former President Clinton did at the beginning of his first term. “You don’t want to repeat the Bill Clinton experience,” he said. “You aim high, but it hurts your presidency and it compromises your presidency.”
In addition, Obama will have to reconcile two factions within the Democratic Congress, Jacobson said. He will have to keep the liberal wing of the party from controlling the administration’s image and policy, the political scientist went on. In the House of Representatives, the Democratic majority has become more conservative as more Blue Dog Democrats, who are fiscally conservative, are elected in traditionally Republican districts. “They can’t lurch to the left,” Jacobson said of the Obama administration. “The votes aren’t there.”
Meanwhile, an Obama administration will have to hope that Iraq doesn’t experience another wave of violence, Jacobson said. “He has to hope that things don’t blow up overseas while he’s trying to fix the economy at home,” the political scientist said. The administrations of the new U.S. president and the current Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, proposed similar timetables for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq—about 16 to 18 months respectively, Jacobson pointed out. The public and Congress also support a drastic withdrawal of troops in Iraq, Kousser said.
Gary Jacobson
But the Obama administration will have to decide how many troops actually come home and how many are redeployed to another part of the world, such as Afghanistan, Kousser said. “There are a lot of tough choices,” the political scientist said. He added he believes negotiations for troop withdrawal could go forward in parallel with efforts to shore up the nation’s economy.
These efforts, experts agree, will translate into increased government spending—and borrowing. “Thankfully, the government doesn’t have to balance its budget,” Kousser said. The U.S. government carries proportionally less debt that other nations, Carson pointed out. “The adverse consequences of having the economy collapse around you are so much larger than going further into debt,” he said.
All this spending will mean that several other pieces of Obama’s agenda will have to be delayed, experts agreed. “Things that are expensive will be put off,” Jacobson said. That might include an ambitious plan to invest in alternative energy and research. But Carson said the Obama administration does have a low-cost solution to make progress in this field. The president should appoint competent and technically savvy administrators to head the various agencies that play a vital role in environmental regulation, such as the Environmental Protection Agency and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Carson said. This also holds true for cabinet posts, such as heads of the Department of Energy and the Department of the Interior, he added. “If you do that, you get a lot of strain out of the system,” the UCSD economist said. “You can’t do everything at the White House.”
Zoltan Hajnal
UCSD political scientist Zoltan Hajnal published a book last year titled “Changing White Attitudes toward Black Political Leadership.” He argued that white voters’ opposition to black candidates melted away as black leaders took office and their fears failed to materialize. This Week@UCSD asked Hajnal how Barack Obama’s election would influence white voters’ attitudes.
Hajnal said he expects Obama’s presidency to continue diminishing the fears that some white voters might still harbor. An Obama administration is unlikely to shift resources from white to black Americans and that too should alleviate white voters’ concerns, he said.
But Hajnal also said he doesn’t expect political differences between the white and black electorate to go away. Black voters are generally more liberal on issues such as government intervention, affirmative action, poverty, welfare and jobs. The Obama presidency won’t change that, Hajnal predicted.
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