This blog’s title presumes there might be a realistic answer to a political question. But is that presumption justified? Let’s examine the matter further, both in terms of political assessments and comparable historical antecedents. We can begin with a few political perspectives. Conservatives have said that President Obama is against the 2nd Amendment, American “exceptionalism”, industry/corporate “job creators,” religious freedom, and family values. They would conclude that his style of progressivism was far too liberal, even radical, for America. Progressives, on the other hand, claim him as their own because of his advocacy for more income equality, universal health care, gay and women’s rights, and his alleged restraint in the use of executive war powers. These assessments are far too expansive to be addressed thoroughly in this medium. But I feel we can determine how he fairs in answer to this question by reviewing some illustrative highlights of this President’s policies, as follows:

• Economic policy – Given the recent financial crisis, how far left or right did our President lean? With his support of the Dodd/Frank bill, he often quoted Theodore Roosevelt as the architect of corporate regulation. It is true that Theodore Roosevelt fought crony capitalism. But his fight was not the same as William Jennings Bryan, the leading progressive of that era. The latter sought the betterment of the commonwealth, whereas Teddy wanted a better run economy where the barons of industry were curtailed. His was a management philosophy that included both prosecution and regulation. On the progressive side, Bryan supported the former, but not the latter. He, like other progressives of that era, feared that regulatory agencies would eventually fall under the influence of those they were tasked to control. The Obama administration has more often relied upon government regulation rather than the prosecution of miscreants. So he was not aligned on the left or the right with either of these men. Perhaps this fact explains why his economic recovery actions have not wholly won over either side.
• Campaign finance reform – William Taft, considered more conservative than Roosevelt, was wary of the influence of money on politics and passed the first campaign contribution disclosure act. (He eventually became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Therein is an irony, considering the “conservative” makeup of our current Court and its recent rulings on campaign financing.) President Obama, for his part, has repeatedly voiced his concern about hidden money in politics. But he does accept money from the OFA PAC (which does, incidentally, publish its donor list) and has done little to support those in Congress who advocate campaign finance reform. In fact, he declined public financing in both of his presidential campaigns. So whether you consider campaign reform a liberal, conservative, or non-partisan issue, you would have to say that our President is ambivalent on this matter.
• Foreign policy – The President has wound down two wars and has declined to take the bait of armed conflict in Syria, the Ukraine, and Libya (at least as far as putting troops on the ground). By contrast, his four predecessors have waged wars in South America, Africa, Eastern Europe and the Middle East. In fact, with the exceptions of Harding, Hoover, Coolidge and Carter, America has been on a war footing with every other American President for the last 100 years. Although it might appear that President Obama has been disinclined to use force, he has actually used force in a different way. He has bombed military targets in Libya, breached sovereign borders to conduct surgical drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Sudan. He has threatened Syria with aerial bombing; and he has implied the same course of action with respect to Iran. As a result, Syria has agreed to rid itself of chemical weapons; and Iran is negotiating a settlement to forgo the development of nuclear weapons. But it isn’t the threat or use of force that seems to be the preferred instrument of coercion or persuasion for this President. Instead, it is the use of our diplomatic influence and economic power. He has used economic sanctions against North Korea, Iran, and now Russia. Whether his advocacy for international order and respect for borders will harbor a new century of conflict resolution without wars remains to be seen. Like H. W. Bush, he has used diplomacy to pull together a coalition of nations to support his foreign policy. Perhaps his dogged tendency to preserve peace in the world through international diplomacy and the support of the United Nations harbingers Woodrow Wilson more than any other president. Whether he will succeed without the use of force—where the first Bush could not–remains to be seen. Though he has expanded the use of drones and economic sanctions, his preference for diplomacy seems to me more like the first Bush and Wilson, that is, a conservative and a liberal President, respectively.
• Domestic policy – President Obama’s major domestic achievement is the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Although only liberal Democratic presidents have called for universal healthcare, the expansion of private health care insurance authorized by this President was notably a Republican construct. It was originally proposed by the conservative Heritage Foundation as an alternative to the Clinton plan for a public health care expansion. Senator Bob Dole, a Republican nominee for President, advanced this proposal before his more liberal colleagues, including Senator Kennedy, rejected it. Former Governor Romney successfully implemented the very same mixture of private insurance exchanges and mandated coverage in Massachusetts, though he declined to advance it as a federal program during his presidential campaign. So President Obama has successfully moved the country closer to a very liberal objective of universal healthcare by means of a complicated, conservative mechanism that uses the private sector. Was his initiative liberal in intent, but a move to the right in form and execution? Well, if it was the President’s purpose to win support from all sides of the health care reform sector, his policy formulation seems to have persuaded less than he had desired. For conservatives, it was a disastrous policy failure for which they will continuously dissect every aspect to justify their position. For liberals, the ACA’s “reform” of a monstrously complex private insurance market failed to deliver fundamental and transformative change to the health care delivery system. For most people, regardless of their political persuasion, the new law is simply too complex to assess, especially in its long term impact. In principle, the ACA is reflective of healthcare reform either proposed or enacted by two recent Republican nominees for President. In practice, Democrats find its complicated provisions difficult to explain to a wary and confused liberal base.

What can we learn from these comparisons about our President’s political persuasions? He seems to disagree on substance with both the conservative Roosevelt and the progressive Bryan on how to deal with the excesses of capitalism. His philosophical position on campaign financing more closely aligns with the very conservative Taft, though his actions seem out of line with Taft’s (though Taft’s conservatism would hardly be recognizable in the current version of the Republican Party, as is the case with much of that Party’s contemporary platform). The emphasis of his foreign policy is aligned with H. W. Bush, a conservative Republican, and bears an ideological concurrence with Woodrow Wilson, a liberal Democrat. His most important legislative contribution utilizes a conservative, private industry inspired, solution to extend healthcare provisioning to more Americans. Though it achieves one aspect of a liberal agenda, many progressives find it difficult to lend the President their wholehearted support.

In all fairness, most Presidents fail to deliver on all aspects of their respective Party platform or ideology. Reaganomics led to burgeoning federal deficits AND higher taxes for wage earners. Clinton’s compromise on Glass-Seagull may have achieved health care for more American children, but it paved the way for Wall Street excess and near collapse. I can find enumerable examples in presidential history that illustrate my point: American Presidents might campaign on the basis of their Party’s platform, but they usually attempt to govern in the interest of all and at the behest and/or concurrence of Congress.

My conclusion: politics can become a virtual world that bears limited resemblance to reality. The problem we in the electorate have with political questions is our failure to realize that fact. We too often vote the “party line,” or accept campaign promises on ideological grounds, rather than on the formulation of actual policy. Therefore, the question in my title is purely rhetorical, as our most of the conservative/liberal bromides proffered in campaigns. In fact, as long as we continue to label political candidates, we will continue to be disappointed by their performance in office. The key problem, in my estimate, is the failure to recognize that politics exists to serve policy. The reverse situation condemns a democracy to a puerile parody of itself.