About That Obama 'Boom' Wall Street Journal So much for that economic boom that President Obama was supposed to have left his successor. That has been the spin among Democrats and progressive economists, but Friday's GDP report for the fourth quarter provided another in eight years of reality ... |
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About That Obama 'Boom' - Wall Street Journal
One of former President Barack Obama's last acts as military commander-in-chief was ordering bomber strikes in Libya that killed as many as 90 ISIS fighters last week.
The strike was captured in graphic video, and when the bodies were counted this week the initial estimate of 85 killed was revised upward. The missiles took out a remnant of an ISIS force that once controlled much of central and eastern Libya and that the U.S. had feared would establish a second Caliphate like the one in Syria and Iraq.
Does that mean the Obama administration achieved its goal of saving Libya from ISIS, and preventing the creation of a new safe haven for ISIS jihadis driven from their shrinking kingdom in Syria?
"This was the largest remaining ISIS presence in Libya," a U.S. defense official said of the two jihadi encampments taken out in the airstrikes. "They have been largely marginalized but I am hesitant to say they've been completely eliminated in Libya."
In mid-2014, three years after the collapse of the Qaddafi regime, ISIS had about 1,000 fighters in Libya. Taking advantage of a power vacuum in the center of the country, far from the major cities of Tripoli and Benghazi, ISIS expanded rapidly over the next 18 months. Local militants were joined by jihadis from the rest of North Africa, the Middle East, Europe and the Caucasus. The force absorbed or defeated other Islamist groups inside Libya, and the central ISIS leadership in Raqqa, Syria, battered by coalition airstrikes, began urging foreign recruits to head for Libya instead of Syria.
ISIS seized control of the coastal city of Sirte, Qaddafi's hometown, in early 2015, and then began to expand to the east and south. By the beginning of 2016, it had effective control of 120 to 150 miles of coastline and portions of the interior, and had reached Eastern Libya's major population center, Benghazi.
In spring 2016, the U.S. Africa Command estimated that ISIS had about 5,000 fighters in its stronghold of Sirte. (French estimates of total ISIS forces in Libya at the time were as high as 10,000.)
Then the indigenous rebel groups who had staked their own claims to Libya turned their weapons on ISIS with the help of airstrikes from Western forces, including U.S. drones. The Libyan population resented the outsiders who wanted to establish a fundamentalist regime on their soil.
"The Libyans don't like outsiders. That was one of the biggest assets in fighting ISIS there," the defense official said.
Militias loyal to the new Libyan unity government, plus a separate and rival force loyal to a former officer in the Qaddafi regime, launched an assault on ISIS outposts in Sirte and the surrounding areas that lasted for months. According to U.S. military estimates, ISIS ranks shrank to somewhere between a few hundred and 2,000 fighters.
Last August, the U.S. military began airstrikes that, along with continued pressure on the ground from the Libyan militias, pushed the remaining ISIS fighters back into Sirte, eventually relegating them to a few blocks of the city. In all, U.S. drones and planes hit ISIS nearly 590 times.
Throughout the fall, the Libyan militias cleared building after building, finally reclaiming the city in mid-December.
A senior U.S. counterterrorism official cautioned that recent successes should not be oversold. He said that while the strikes that killed 90 "squirters" were a serious blow to ISIS in Libya, the group had not been "decimated."
"We had success in killing a lot of people, but we are seeing camps in other ungoverned areas of Libya and they have a record of fading into the hinterlands and then reassembling.
"That's not to say they aren't on the downswing, but they can take a hit. Don't count them out."
A U.S. intelligence official agreed, saying "knocking out a terrorist group is never done with a single strike."
Defense and intelligence officials also worry that ISIS may soon be given an opportunity to recover. With the terror group temporarily on its heels, the country's indigenous militias may set their sights on each other.
A map showing location of Sirte, Libya, formerly an ISIS stronghold. Google Maps
Two rival governments, one in the east and one in the west, are contending for control of Libya.
The UN-backed unity government, known as the Government of National Accord and based in the western city of Tripoli, took power in March 2016. The U.S. recognizes the GNA as the legitimate government.
The GNA does not have an official military, but is backed by a collection of militias. The most important is the Misratan militia, which took the lead in the fight against ISIS in Sirte.
A rival, anti-Islamist government opposed to the GNA and called the House of Representatives is based in the eastern town of Tobruk, near the Egyptian border. It is backed by its own group of militias, with the largest calling itself the Libyan National Army.
Led by a Qaddafi sidekick-turned-foe, Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, the LNA is supported by Russia, Egypt and the UAE. The LNA drove Ansar al-Sharia, an al Qaeda affiliate, out of Benghazi, but it has also taken over oil fields held by militias allied with the GNA.
Without ISIS to keep both sides busy, U.S. defense officials and experts are concerned the rival armed groups will intensify their efforts against each other.
It is also unknown what the new administration plans to do about Libya. According to officials, the Trump team is likely to authorize a greater number of manned and unmanned airstrikes around the world than the Obama administration, but it is not known yet where that will be.
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Did Obama Defeat ISIS in Libya? - NBCNews.com
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- American public opinion changed in significant ways over the course of Barack Obama's eight years in the White House, including on issues such as the economy, race relations, and the level of confidence the public has in different aspects or actors in the government. Many of these changes were the result of social and cultural forces that would have occurred regardless of who was president. Others can be more directly attributed to the Obama presidency.
But whatever their provenance, a look at how attitudes have shifted over the Obama years can be important. These shifts help explain the current political climate and provide a context for President Donald Trump's attempts to pursue his agenda now that he is in the White House.
In the following sections, we review changes since 2009 in five major areas of public opinion.
1. Views of the U.S. Government
In his farewell address, Obama said that widespread disillusionment with the political system can "weaken the ties" that bind the nation. And indeed, marking one of the most significant shifts in public opinion over the past eight years, Americans are losing faith in all aspects of their government, from its political leaders, to long-standing institutions, to many of the agencies that provide public services.
Several measures relating to the public's confidence in government recorded historic lows at some point over the Obama presidency, while others flirted with this landmark. These include:
Americans' trust in the nation's political leaders struck its lowest level in the final year of Obama's presidency, standing at 42%. In 2009, the figure was 49%.
Confidence in the Supreme Court and Congress sunk to record lows in 2014, at 30% and 7%, respectively.
Throughout the past eight years, Congress continuously received dismal approval ratings, dropping to a yearly low of 14% approval in 2013. By December 2016, little improvement had taken place, with approval standing at 17%.
Obama's job approval rating tended to fare better than that of Congress, as typically is the case when comparing the president to the Congress. But Obama's average approval rating over his two terms ranks among the lowest in Gallup history.
Though Obama often spoke of bipartisanship, the president was a highly polarizing figure. The difference in his job approval rating among Democrats and Republicans is the largest in Gallup polling history. This is the continuation of an in-progress trend; Obama's immediate predecessor, George W. Bush, was also the most polarizing president ever when he left office.
But Americans did not just lose confidence in elected officials -- they also lost confidence in the electorate. In 2016, prior to that year's presidential election, a new low of 56% of Americans said they had trust and confidence in their fellow citizens when it comes to making decisions in our democratic process. In 2009, 73% had such trust and confidence.
Bottom Line: Obama said many times before he left office, including in his last State of the Union address, that he regretted making no progress in reducing the divisiveness that has come to define American politics since at least the Bush presidency. The lack of confidence in political (and other) institutions helped contribute to Trump's victory, based on his positioning as a change candidate who consistently derided many government institutions as ineffective or corrupt. It seems Obama understood the problem facing American democracy but was unable to provide an immediate solution.
2. Social and Values Issues
The number of Americans who consider themselves "liberal" or "very liberal" on social issues rose markedly over Obama's eight years. In 2009, about a quarter of Americans saw themselves as liberal on social issues, a figure in line with those observed in past years. By 2016, closer to a third (32%) identified as socially liberal, the highest since Gallup began asking this question in 1999.
The broad acceptance of legal gay marriage is perhaps the best specific example of this shift to more liberal social positions. In 2009, 40% of the country said same-sex marriages should be recognized as valid throughout the U.S., while a majority (57%) -- including President Obama -- disagreed. By 2016, the year after the Supreme Court made its landmark ruling legalizing gay marriage, a clear majority of 61% believed such marriages should be valid throughout the country.
Additionally, Americans' views of a number of once-controversial behaviors as "morally acceptable" rose, especially with issues such as divorce, sex between an unmarried man and woman, having a baby outside of marriage, and gay or lesbian relations. Americans also became slightly more tolerant of sex between teenagers and suicide, although these behaviors remained morally unacceptable to a large part of the population.
In Obama's final year in office, a record 60% of Americans said marijuana should be legal. In 2009, by contrast, that figure stood at 44%. Among Democrats, the level of support nearly doubled over about a 10-year period.
Bottom Line: Whether directly related to his presidency or not, the Obama era saw a rise in social liberalism across a number of moral and values-related issues.
3. Economic Issues
The Obama administration, taking office at one of the worst economic times in U.S. history, focused heavily on measures designed either to prevent economic conditions from worsening or to strengthen the economic recovery when it came. By most measures, Americans' views of the economic situation improved significantly over the eight years of Obama's presidency.
In Obama's first year as president (2009), 23% of Americans said they were better off financially than the year before. In 2016, over four in 10 (44%) said so. This 21-point shift represents one of the largest shifts in public responses among all the questions examined in this review.
Gallup's measure of Americans' confidence in the economy via its Economic Confidence Index improved significantly over Obama's tenure, though unevenly. The index registered -54 in January 2009 when Obama took office and climbed to +9 by December 2016.
American workers' reports of hiring and firing at their places of employment improved significantly over the eight years of the Obama presidency. This U.S. Job Creation Index stood at -3 in January 2009, and by December 2016 it had improved to +33.
The percentage of Americans mentioning any economic issue (e.g., jobs, the economy in general, etc.) as the most important problem facing the nation dropped from 79% in January 2009 to 29% in December 2016.
Bottom Line: Although Trump's campaign focused in large part on what he portrayed as an economically ravaged country, most tracking indicators relating to the economy showed marked improvement from 2009 to 2016.
4. U.S. Position in the World
Under the Obama presidency, more Americans came to believe that the U.S. is seen favorably by the rest of the world -- 45% thought so in 2009 compared with 54% in 2016. Americans, however, were no more satisfied with the position of the U.S. in the world under Obama than they had been in the late years of the Bush presidency. Less than four in 10 Americans (36%) were satisfied with the position of the U.S. in the world in 2016, essentially equivalent to the first reading in the Obama years (35% in 2011) and marginally better than the 30% in 2008, Bush's final year in office.
Americans' views of the military position of the U.S. deteriorated during the Obama years. In 2010, 64% said that the U.S. was the No. 1 military power in the world. By 2016, that number had dropped to 49%. In similar fashion, the share of Americans who said the government spends "too little" on defense climbed 13 percentage points to 37% from 2009 to 2016.
The public gradually lost confidence in the federal government to handle international problems over Obama's tenure. In 2009, 62% had confidence in the federal government's ability to handle international problems. This fell as low as 45% in 2015 before recovering slightly to 49% in 2016.
One of the most controversial aspects of Obama's foreign policy was his choice to engage in diplomatic relations with two nations with which the U.S. had officially been incommunicado: Cuba and Iran. With respect to Cuba, Obama and the Cuban government agreed to take measures to normalize relations between the two countries for the first time since 1961; Iran reached a deal with the U.S. and five other world powers regarding its nuclear program.
These efforts seem to have paid off for Cuba, in terms of that nation's image with the American people. In 2009, less than a third of Americans had a favorable view of Cuba. In 2016, a majority (54%) saw Cuba favorably.
But opinions of Iran remained largely unchanged after the 2015 deal -- 14% had a favorable view in 2016, compared with 11% the year before and 12% in 2009.
Other countries saw their images among the American people improve, but likely for reasons unrelated to Obama. France, once deeply unpopular for its decision not to participate in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, saw its favorable rating zoom to a new high of 87% in 2016. France's favorable rating was 64% in 2009.
Meanwhile, two countries saw their images decline over the Obama years. In 2009, 28% of Americans had a favorable opinion of Iraq; in 2016, with American troops back in the country to advise Iraqi forces in their fight against terrorist groups, 15% had a favorable rating.
Russia, a country the Obama administration would come to accuse of interfering with the 2016 presidential campaign, saw its favorable rating decline 10 points from 2009 (40%) to 2016 (30%).
5. Race Relations
Former President Obama will occupy a place in history as the nation's first African-American president. But while his election would seem to signal that American society has overcome its past history of racial discrimination and tension, Americans' views of race relations in fact became far less harmonious during Obama's tenure in office.
In 2010, slightly more than one in 10 Americans said they worried about race relations "a great deal" (13%). By 2016, 35% of Americans said they worried about race relations, following a number of high-profile cases involving police officers shooting unarmed black men and several instances of white police officers being targeted by blacks.
More Americans over the past eight years came to believe that Obama's election and his presidency made race relations "worse" in the U.S. rather than better, with 46% believing the former in 2016 and 29% saying the latter. This represented a sharp reversal of opinion from 2009, when 41% of Americans believed Obama's election and presidency made race relations better and 22% said worse.
Relatedly, Americans became less certain about whether Obama's presidency in and of itself represented "one of the most important advances" for black Americans. In 2009, 71% of blacks and 56% of whites thought this; by 2016, the figure had fallen to 51% for blacks and 27% for whites.
Bottom Line: Many spoke of Obama's election ushering in a new "post-racial" period in America. But as even Obama himself admitted in his farewell address, this has not been the case. If anything, his presidency appears to have illuminated the previously hidden fault lines that still exist in U.S. race relations.
Andrew Dugan is an Analyst at Gallup.
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5 Ways America Changed During the Obama Years - Gallup
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Malia Obama joined a protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline on Monday.
Looks like
The 18-year-old daughter of recent President Obama was praised by fellow protester, Shailene Woodley, who also attended the event at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.
It was amazing to see Malia, the actress told Democracy Now.
To witness a human being and a woman coming in to her own outside of her family and outside of the attachments that this country has on her, but someone whos willing to participate in democracy because she chooses to, Woodley said. Because she recognizes, regardless of her last name, that if she doesnt participate in democracy, there will be no world for her future children.
Reading this on your phone? Stay up to date with our new, free mobile app. Get it from the Apple app store or the Google Play store.
Malia left her familys Caribbean vacation to attend the festival, before starting her internship for producer Harvey Weinstein in February, according to the New York Daily News.
Woodley has been a mainstay at the protests, even getting arrested at one point.
Id like to see someone try arresting Malia with her Secret Service detail standing there.
The proposed pipeline would cross a river near Native American land and opposition is concerned it could contaminate the drinking water and damage Native American cultural sites.
President Obama halted the project until an alternate route could be found. Earlier this week, President Trump signed an executive order allowing the construction to move forward as originally planned.
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Malia Obama joins Dakota Access pipeline protest at Sundance - The Mercury News
Slide: 1 / of 1. Caption: Caption: Barack Obama gives his farewell address in Chicago on January 10, 2017. Jon Lowenstein/Redux
It was 10:15 am on Inauguration Day, and John Paul Farmer was beginning to lose hope.
The former Obama White House staffer had spent the last night at his sisters apartment in Washington DC, working the phones and emailing any sentient being hed met during his years in Washington. Farmer was trying to find someone, anyone, who could get the Tested Ability to Leverage Exceptional Talent Actthe Talent Act, for shortto President Barack Obama. The bill would make law a program to give technologists temporary tours of government duty.
It had received bipartisan support in the House and Senate that week, but it still needed the presidents signature to become law. If he signed, it would take another act of Congress to dismantle.
But with roads closed throughout Washington, security checkpoints causing even more gridlock, a shoestring staff left at the White House, and less than two hours to go in Obamas presidency, odds seemed slim that the physical piece of parchment on which the law was printed would get to the 44th president before there was a 45th.
Farmer, who co-founded the so-called Presidential Innovation Fellows program, the centerpiece of the bill, wasnt sure they were going to make it. Neither was Matt Lira, a senior advisor to House majority leader Kevin McCarthy whod been instrumental in McCarthys decision to introduce the bill. Lira hoped the Talent Act would show that bipartisan consensus is possible in Washington, particularly when it comes to technology. But it was starting to look like the opportunity would pass.
Over the last week, its become clear how much of a presidents legacy can be erased with a signature. On everything from immigration to the Dakota Access Pipeline, President Donald Trump has begun the work of erasing the last eight years. But this isnt a story about that. This is the story of how a band of technophiles from both sides of the political aisle joined forces in the last minutes of the Obama administration to ensure that President Obamas efforts to modernize the government would survive his term of office.
The Presidential Innovation Fellows launched in 2012 as a sort of Peace Corps for programmers. The idea was to make it possible for technologists to take on temporary projects within government, from simple tasks like building user-friendly websites to quite complex ones, like saving the broken Healthcare.gov website.
Fellows worked on Vice President Joe Bidens cancer moonshot, building tech tools to fast track patients through clinical trials. They helped build the Blue Button Initiative, an effort to make peoples health records readily available to them. And they designed elements of the Veteran Affairs offices online employment center, making it easier for vets to find job opportunities. More than 100 fellows have cycled through the program since 2012.
Whats more, the success of the program inspired the launch of the United States Digital Service, a more permanent, but separate, tech agency within the White House, as well as 18F, a sort of consulting firm inside the General Services Administration that deploys technologists to various government agencies.
But the Fellows only ever existed because of an executive order signed by President Obama. So, last summer, in hopes of codifying it into law, McCarthy introduced the Talent Act of 2016. It passed the House almost unanimously. But the Senate didnt go as well. It got caught up in election year politics, Lira says.
We thought, Well thats it,' Farmer says. President Obama is leaving office and a new Congress is coming in. Wed have to do the whole process over again.
When the 115th Congress was sworn in in January, McCarthy reintroduced the billnow the Talent Act of 2017. This time, three days before the Inauguration, it passed the Senate unanimously. The last stepas any Schoolhouse Rock fan knowswould be for President Obama to sign.
Thats hard enough even when half of Washington hasnt already turned in their Blackberries. Its the oldest school of old school processes, Lira says. It has to be printed on a certain kind of parchment and everything.
Which brings us to Friday morning. By around 8 AM, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Orrin Hatch, president pro tem of the Senate, had signed that piece of parchment. It was sitting in the House clerks office, ready to be delivered to President Obama. But no one, it seemed, knew how to get it to him.
Thats when Farmer and Lira, as well as former US deputy CTO Nick Sinai, former head of the fellowship program Garren Givens, and his wife (and a former Senate staffer) Alexandra Reeve Givens, sprung into action. They called the clerks office, the White House, and every Senate staffer they knew. At around 10:15, after reaching one of the Presidents senior advisers, they figured out how to get the House clerk into the Capitol holding room where President Obama would spend a few private moments before watching Trump take the oath of office.
At this point, we go dark, Givens says. He was negotiating all of this via his mobile phone, from a trampoline park where he and his wife were babysitting their nephews. Theres no one else to call. Theres no one else to ask.
I watched the president get out of the car and walk into the Capitol, says Farmer, and I knew wed done everything we could.
A hundred miles away in Charlottesville, Virginia, Lira was watching, too, and was just as tense. Would the clerk make it in time? It was this Argo-like moment, he says.
To be fair, Lira had faith the Trump administration would pass the bill even if Obama couldnt. Givens and Farmer didnt. More than that, though, Farmer felt the bill would be a fitting coda to President Obamas tech legacy. It was foundational to so much of the progress his administration made, he says.
At this point, we go dark. Theres no one else to call, no one else to ask. Garren Givens, former head of the Presidential Innovation Fellows program
At some point after 11 AM, the House clerk entered the holding room where President Obama was waiting and presented him with the bill. Obama paused. This, then, would be his last official act as president. Obama looked at the parchment, and signed.
The group gathered around the soon-to-be former president applauded, and at 11:07 AM on January 20, 2017, the Talent Act became law. It was like the ending to a great movie, Lira says. The good guys won.
The Presidential Innovation Fellowship may be one of the few slivers of the Obama presidency that endures the next four years. In another small consolation to Obamas tech legacy, the White Houses new chief digital officer also recently tweeted that the US Digital Service is here to stay in the new administration. Period.
That may not comfort Obamas admirers, who are watching the signature accomplishments of his presidency quickly slipping away. But its as clear a sign as any that the role of technology in government should never be a partisan issue. And that it doesnt have to be.
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The Race to Pass Obama's Last Law and Save Tech in DC - WIRED