OBAMA IN OFFICE ★^1137A cartoon in the Boston Globe suggests the
progress that has been made since Rosa Parks
refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white
passenger.administration’s executive orders lim-
iting women’s reproductive rights,
and abandoned Bush’s rhetoric about
a God- given American mission to
spread freedom throughout the world.
When Supreme Court justice David
Souter announced his retirement,
Obama named Sonia Sotomayor, the
first Hispanic and third woman in the
Court’s history, to replace him. He also
appointed his rival for the nomination,
Hillary Clinton, as secretary of state.
Obama’s first budget recalled the
New Deal and Great Society. Break-
ing with the Reagan- era motto, “Gov-
ernment is the problem, not the solution,” it anticipated active government
support for health- care reform, clean energy, and public education, paid for in
part by allowing Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy to expire in 2010. He pushed
through Congress a “stimulus” package amounting to nearly $800 billion in
new government spending— for construction projects, the extension of unem-
ployment benefits, and aid to the states to enable them to balance their bud-
gets. The largest single spending appropriation in American history, the bill
was meant to pump money into the economy in order to save and create jobs
and to ignite a resumption of economic activity.
A year into his presidency, in the spring of 2010, Obama had to deal with
one of the worst environmental disasters in American history. An oil rig in
the Gulf of Mexico owned by British Petroleum (BP) exploded, spewing millions
of gallons of oil into the sea. The oil washed up on the beaches of Louisiana,
Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, killing marine life, birds, and other animals
and devastating the Gulf tourist industry. It took months to stop the oil from
rushing into the Gulf, and much longer to restore the beaches.
The Gulf oil spill illustrated some of the downsides of globalization and
deregulation. The government agency charged with inspections was so cozy
with the oil industry that it allowed the companies to set their own safety stan-
dards and looked the other way in the face of BP’s long record of cutting corners,
safety violations, and accidents. The rig that exploded had been built in South
Korea and was operated by a Swiss company under contract to BP. Primary
responsibility for safety rested not with the United States but with the Republic
of the Marshall Islands, a tiny, impoverished nation in the Pacific Ocean, where
the rig was registered. Thus, BP enjoyed freedom from the effective oversight
that might have prevented the disaster.
What kinds of change did voters hope for when they elected Barack Obama?