Financial Reform: Obama's Sales Challenge
Jules Witcover

Without the fanfare that marked his historic breakthrough on health-care insurance reform, President Obama posted the second major achievement of his presidency the other day with the enactment of massive financial industry regulation reform.

In overcoming near-solid Republican opposition to both initiatives, Obama faced down the central strategy of GOP Senate and House leaders Mitch McConnell and John Boehner of attempting to block the president's agenda by credible threat of Senate filibuster.

On the critical vote on health care, every Republican senator voting was against it. But on financial reform, three Republican senators -- Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine and Scott Brown of Massachusetts -- joined the solid Democratic vote for it.

Health-care reform was the highest declared legislative priority of Obama's administration, enacted in its first year. The financial reform, which was nowhere to be seen in his 2008 campaign agenda for the simple reason that its necessity was not yet clearly perceived, was a key element in his inherited burden.

As with Obama's unforeseen challenge of the Great Recession, he has been obliged to spend much of his time in the Oval Office reestablishing effective regulation of Wall Street and the banking/investment industry. And as in health-care reform, the results of the newly enacted legislation -- both positive and negative -- will not become clear for some time to come.

It's a fact that politically works to the advantage of the Republicans and to the disadvantage of the Democrats. The longer it takes for any positive outcome to reach Main Street, the longer the Republicans have to claim Democratic failure.

A few of the benefits of heath-care reform will bring early reward, such as an end to the old bar to eligibility for treatment of pre-existing medical conditions. But with the new financial reforms, benefits will take time to happen and to be perceived, such as creation of a new consumer protection bureau within the Federal Reserve.

Thus Obama is limited in claiming real accomplishments in his major legislative achievements by what is readily recognized by voters, particularly in the three and a half months before the next congressional elections in November.

In his intensified engagement on the campaign trail already begun, the president has been combining his regular reminder of the problems not of his making inherited from the Bush years with a sales pitch on his third major legislative victory, his $878 billion stimulus package. Advertised as the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, its benefits too will mostly be seen beyond the fall elections.

In a speech at a groundbreaking for a new factory in Holland, Mich., last Thursday, Obama emphasized the job-creation potential provided by the stimulus. Because of a federal grant for the manufacture of advanced batteries to power American-made electric autos, he said, "shovels will soon be moving earth, and trucks pouring concrete, where we're standing ... a grant that's leveraging more than 150 million private dollars (and) as many as 300 people will be put to work," and another 300 to operate the plant later.

Obama said the Holland plant is the ninth financed by the stimulus money that will make batteries for the new the Chevy Volt electric car and the electric Ford Focus planned in Michigan, a state with one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation. But seeing the impact is believing in these difficult times, in this state particularly.

The president noted that until recently only 2 percent of these advanced batteries were made in America, but that in five years "we'll have up to 40 percent of the world's capacity," bringing back manufacturing jobs from overseas.

Obama took the occasion to needle Republican Rep. Peter Hoekstra, seeking the GOP nomination for governor in Michigan, for voting against the stimulus but showing up at the event. Such votes, he said, "hasn't stopped many of these same people from turning up at ribbon cuttings and groundbreakings just like this one."

But the time lag between starting such projects and seeing tangible job creation poses a political gamble for Obama as he labors against prospective congressional losses in November, administered by discontented and impatient voters who don't see what his legislative achievements mean for them.

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