Obama not a "radical socialist"

At the risk of making some of President Obama's decisions look unwise, I think it is critically important to show that he is not the radical that the Republican nominees say he is. Thus my latest "letter to the editor."

I’m not a Republican, yet I found much to agree with in “lifelong Republican” Carla Wallach’s opinion piece, Calling all moderate Republicans: Where are you? (Greenwich Time, February 23, 2012). Agreed with her, that is, until the end where she equated Republicans’ shift to the extreme right with President Obama’s shift “far to the left.”

No analysis of Obama’s presidency would put him anywhere other than as a moderate Democrat. He extended Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy, a key contributor to current fiscal problems. He was willing to cut trillions from federal safety net programs, only to be rebuffed by the Republican leadership who want to preserve tax breaks for the wealthiest. He presented a plan to fully fund the extension of the payroll tax cut, a much more fiscally conservative approach than Republicans’ budget-busting unfunded tax cuts.

On health care reform, Obama never even considered a single payer model, and compromised with Republicans by taking the public option off the table, despite ample evidence that the government run, single payer program—Medicare—operates far more efficiently than privately run programs. He made a grand bargain with the insurance industry to pass health care reform, to the dismay of many Democrats.

Obama has expanded offshore drilling (with improved oversight), and in his State of the Union address, pledged support for shale gas drilling, anathema to environmentalists. Cap and trade, which he supports, is a market-based solution to pollution control that avoids government regulation. Twenty years ago it was sponsored by President Bush and voted for by Mitch McConnell and Newt Gringrich.

On matters of military policy, Obama escalated the war in Afghanistan and substantially increase drone strikes in Pakistan. He reneged on his pledge to shut Guantanamo Bay and resumed military trials, despite the infractions of constitutional protections brought to light during the Bush administration.

Empirical analysis reinforces the moderate policies of President Obama. Political scientist Keith Poole uses presidential policy positions to document that Obama is the most moderate Democratic president since World War II. Far from the “radical socialist” that GOP candidates accuse him of being.