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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

> A big part of Obama's original appeal was his entirely unrealised promise to try and reform Washington. Unfortunately he lost interest in that once elected. Not that he could really have fixed anything anyway: the mismatch between emphasis on the US President and how much power they actually have is kind of ridiculous.

I don't think it's fair to say he lost interest in it. It's a combination of 1) having less power than people think; and 2) having to be everyone's President, not just the people who elected him.

If you were President and had a good faith desire to govern by national consensus, what would you do? Deregulate industries? Increase regulation? Flat tax? Eliminate social security? Increase social security? Universal healthcare? No healthcare? End the drug war? How much of that do you think would drum up more than bare majority support?

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If I had campaigned on "fix Washington" and that seemed to be the primary driving force of my supporters, I guess I'd focus the bulk of my time on process. Ending gerrymandering, devolving power, making Congress' procedures work better, actually punishing even very top ranking officials if they broke the rules, things like that.

Obama campaigned on "fix Washington" but then went on to drive a fairly ordinary centre-left policy agenda (centre-left by American standards).

Apparently, it's much harder than it seems in our system: http://www.vox.com/2015/11/17/9749754/obama-presidential-pow...

'President Harry Truman complaining:

"I sit here all day trying to persuade people to do the things they ought to have sense enough to do without my persuading them. ... That's all the powers of the President amount to."'

How would he end gerrymandering? Voting districts are set by each state's respective legislative body (supposedly guided by the national census results).

> I don't think it's fair to say he lost interest in it. It's a combination of 1) having less power than people think; and 2) having to be everyone's President, not just the people who elected him.

I think its mostly #1, combined with the fact that reform was behind a few high-priority economic issues, and by the time they were taken care of, Congress was embroiled in campaigns for the midterm elections, where the Democratic majority fell to a Republican majority unusual (even in the history of divided government in this country) unwilling to work with the President (Mitch McConnell, famously, stated that his #1 priority as Senate Majority Leader was to assure that Obama was a one-term president), which meant there was no way for any reform agenda Obama had to make progress.

> If you were President and had a good faith desire to govern by national consensus, what would you do?

I don't think any President has had a good faith desire to govern by national consensus (nor do I think that governing by national consensus in the US, at any point in its history, would be a reasonable or even sane desire.) OTOH, Presidents have very little practical choice, on certain matters, other than to operate within the constraints set by Congress' willingness to participate.

It's probably more accurate to say reform was more his marketing hook than his genuine interest in the first place.

Why?

Because the questions you're asking (reform how?) were as present on the campaign trail as they are now. If you campaign strongly on "flat tax" or "end the drug war" and are elected then you have your mandate. If you campaign on "hope and change" then it creates the problem you're pointing out -- what is that supposed to mean? Change what?

Because he hired Henry Paulson, the ex-CEO of Goldman Sachs who single handedly devised the entire CDO ponzi scheme, as his Treasury Secretary.

For those interested, more here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzrBurlJUNk

Watch the entire documentary, lays it out plain and simple. To this day, not a single prosecution.

Obama's first appointee to Treasury Secretary was Timothy Geithner. He took over from Paulson 6 days after Obama became president. That delay is maybe slightly unusual, but it hardly makes Obama responsible for the actions that Paulson took 6 months prior (I guess hiring Geithner indicates that Obama didn't have a problem with those actions, as Geithner was also one of the architects of the bailout).

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