The collapse of Obama’s legacy

Only amid the most bizarre, most tawdry, most addictive election campaign in memory could the real story of 2016 be so effectively obliterated, namely, that with less than four months left in the Obama presidency, its two central pillars are collapsing before our eyes: domestically, its radical reform of American health care; and abroad, its radical reorientation of American foreign policy.

On Monday, Bill Clinton called Obamacare “the craziest thing in the world.” And he was only talking about one crazy aspect of it – the impact on the consumer. Clinton pointed out that small business and hardworking employees (”out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week”) are “getting whacked … their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half.”

This, as the program’s entire economic foundation is crumbling. More than half its nonprofit “co-ops” have gone bankrupt. Major health insurers like Aetna and UnitedHealthcare, having lost millions of dollars, are withdrawing from the exchanges. In one-third of the United States, exchanges will have only one insurance provider. Premiums and deductibles are exploding.

Young people, refusing to pay disproportionately to subsidize older and sicker patients, are not signing up. As the risk pool becomes increasingly unbalanced, the death spiral accelerates. And the only way to save the system is with massive infusions of tax money.

What to do? The Democrats will eventually push to junk Obamacare for a full-fledged, government-run, single-payer system. Republicans will seek to junk it for a more market-based pre-Obamacare-like alternative. Either way, the singular domestic achievement of this presidency dies.

On foreign policy, the president tried to move away from a world where stability was anchored by American power and move toward a world ruled by universal norms, mutual obligation, international law and multilateral institutions.

We would ascend to the higher moral plane of diplomacy. Clean hands, clear conscience, “smart power.”

This blessed vision has just died a terrible death in Aleppo. Its unraveling was predicted and predictable, though it took fully two terms to unfold. This policy of pristine – and preening – disengagement from the grubby imperatives of realpolitik yielded Crimea, the South China Sea, the rise of the Islamic State, the return of Iran. And now the horror and the shame of Aleppo.

After endless concessions to Russian demands meant to protect and preserve the genocidal regime of Bashar Assad, last month we finally capitulated to a deal in which we essentially joined Russia in that objective. But such is Vladimir Putin’s contempt for our president that he blatantly violated his own cease-fire with an air campaign – targeting hospitals, water pumping stations and a humanitarian aid convoy.

“What is Aleppo?” famously asked Gary Johnson. Answer: The burial ground of the Obama fantasy of benign disengagement.

If the 2016 campaign hadn’t turned into a referendum on character, the collapse of the Obama legacy would be right now on the ballot. And his party would be 20 points behind.

This story was originally published October 7, 2016 at 5:52 PM with the headline "The collapse of Obama’s legacy."