Obama Seeks Time for Policies to Take

November 23, 2009

The Caucus

By JOHN HARWOOD

President Obama’s scramble for a health care overhaul, like his dash across Asia last week, obscures an irony of his first year in office.

As he tries to effect his agenda, the politician who campaigned on “the fierce urgency of now” plays for time to demonstrate the benefits of policies that, if they work, will not work quickly.

Mr. Obama, backed by some independent economists, believes that his stimulus plan has helped pull the economy into recovery. But he is at least months away from being able to make that case by pointing to a decline in joblessness.

Mr. Obama returned from Asia to lobby Congress on his health policy goals, and won a significant preliminary victory in the Senate over the weekend. Many changes would not even be in place until 2013 — including such popular provisions as subsidies for buying coverage and prohibitions against insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.

His initiative to curb global warming by limiting carbon emissions may raise energy costs long before Americans perceive environmental or economic benefits, if they ever do. The most demonstrable near-term result of his forthcoming Afghanistan strategy will be more troops for an unpopular war.

In Asia, Mr. Obama pushed to “rebalance” the world economy through policy shifts in Beijing that he hoped would benefit Americans via more exports to China. The world’s oldest continuous major civilization showed no sign of a quick pivot.

The president’s challenge is pursuing far-reaching changes in a political and media culture centered on short-term consequences. He has disdained the values of the “24-hour news cycle” and vowed to ignore day-to-day fluctuations in polls, financial markets and cable-TV chatter.

“I’ve got to be looking at the horizon,” Mr. Obama said in a January interview. That becomes harder to afford with an approaching election.

Not to Be Rushed

In Beijing, Mr. Obama praised China’s $585 billion economic stimulus, whose emphasis on infrastructure projects paid immediate dividends for American exporters of heavy equipment.

“There are opportunities right now that are available for American companies,” said Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, who accompanied the president.

More promising for American companies and workers in the long term is the prospect of an expanding Chinese middle class going on American-style shopping sprees. Mr. Obama wants China to make American imports cheaper by letting its currency rise in value, and to provide more incentives for Chinese families to spend.

Signs exist that the Chinese government and families want that to happen as they adapt to explosive economic growth. But statements from Mr. Obama and President Hu Jintao of China after their consultations made clear Beijing would not be rushed on its currency policy. Other changes to spur domestic spending, like development of broad-scale consumer credit and investments in a social safety net, will not happen quickly either.

“Changing the orientation of this economy is not something that can be achieved in two to three years,” said Arthur Kroeber, an analyst at the Beijing consulting firm Dragonomics. “It’s more like a five- to 10-year process.”

Needing Results Soon

White House aides bristled at news media reviews suggesting Mr. Obama had failed to secure diplomatic victories in China. “This isn’t an immediate gratification business,” said David Axelrod, the presidential adviser.

But midterm elections arrive in 11 months. For Congressional Democrats — facing politically risky votes on Mr. Obama’s health care, energy, budget and immigration initiatives — the horizon is approaching rapidly.

For their sake and its own, Team Obama is not ignoring that reality.

A White House “jobs summit” will explore near-term steps to accelerate job creation, even though the administration is loath to widen the budget deficit and additional spending may not reduce unemployment rapidly anyway.

To ensure that voters see immediate benefits from health legislation, Democrats have included quick-trigger provisions to bar insurers from putting lifetime caps on benefits and to help expensive-to-cover patients buy insurance through government “high-risk pools.” Weeks before visiting Beijing, Mr. Obama nodded to the anxieties of American workers by imposing tariffs on Chinese tires.

Mr. Obama enjoys thicker political insulation than Democrats in Congress; polls show that voters like him personally, and he does not face re-election until 2012. But he feels the pressures of his strategy, nonetheless.

Before returning to Washington, he took solace in the timelessness of the Great Wall. “It gives you a good perspective on a lot of the day-to-day things,” he mused. “They don’t amount to much in the scope of history.”

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company