Featuring: Philip Brooks & Gerardo Duran
Editor: Mia Tamayo
Introduction: In this American History episode, Phil and Gerardo discuss Obama, Trump, and 2020.
Phil: Today is our last episode. Gerardo and I are done with all of history after today. We'll be discussing Obama, Trump and 2020, and a little further, but that isn't a good title, so Obama, Trump and 2020. Let's start with the election of 2008.
Phil: In this election, the Democrats nominated Senator Barack Obama from Illinois, while the Republicans nominated war hero, John McCain. The Republicans have been increasingly unpopular because of the many failures of the Bush administration. Senator Obama was particularly charismatic, which led him to victory, making him the United States’ first Person of Color to ever become president. This popularity carried over to 2012, as Obama defeated then Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts. Let's start off with Obama's domestic policy.
Phil: After the stock market crash of 2009 that I mentioned in the last episode, Obama decided to bail out banks and manufacturing companies in order to deal with the recession. While it severely raised the deficit, it ended the recession and allowed for some job growth after that. In fact, Obama's administration had the second highest GDP growth in one year after Ronald Reagan's.
Phil: The next major issue was health care, where Obama's plan was called “Obamacare,” which was a plan to help those who cannot afford private insurance companies, although it had many faults, and some critics argued providing too much, while others argued it provided too little. As far as social issues, Obama was initially opposed to same sex marriage, but later endorsed it, leading to the Supreme Court case that made it legal in all states.
Phil: Another social issue was gun rights. This conversation began as a result of the shooting of an elementary school called Sandy Hook. Democrats use the attack as evidence for tighter gun control, while Republicans remain firmly opposed as a result of people's right to bear arms. Finally, in terms of environmental policy, Obama rejected the construction of the Keystone pipeline and complied with the rules of the Paris Climate Accords, which his successor left.
Phil: As for foreign policy, Obama traveled to Cuba for the first time since the start of the trade embargo, and reopened free trade between Cuba and the United States. This too, was met with criticism as the embargo was meant to stop the communist regime. Arguably one of Obama's greatest accomplishments, however, was killing was the killing of Osama bin Laden, the terrorist responsible for the attacks on 9/11. Lastly, Obama handled the Iran nuclear deal by unfreezing all of their assets and sanctions so that they could not obtain nuclear weapons. This brings us to the election of 2016.
Phil: In this election, the Democrats ran former Secretary of State and former First Lady Hillary Clinton, making her the first woman to be nominated for president, while the Republicans ran businessman and celebrity Donald Trump. Hillary Clinton was widely believed to be the clear victor, as Trump faced countless scandals regarding various statements and actions. Unfortunately for Clinton, he brushed off these allegations and she faced a scandal regarding her emails sent on a private server while Secretary of State. Trump revolutionized the Republican Party and its platform with his right wing populist campaign and his unique policy ideas that were popularized through his overwhelming presence on Twitter in the end, and to the surprise of at least half the country, Donald Trump won.
Phil: One of Trump's first actions was the passage of the tax cuts and Jobs Act, which cut corporate taxes to stimulate growth for businesses, although raise capital gains taxes as well as some others to compensate. Other than this, Trump's goal was to undo many of Obama's policies with or without success. Among these reversals was the exit from the Paris Climate Accords and the authorization of the Keystone pipeline. Trump also promised to repeal Obamacare, but was extremely unsuccessful.
Phil: Trump also faced many scandals throughout his administration, the first of which was accusations that he colluded with the Russians intelligence to sway the election of 2016 in his favor, the second of which, was accusations that he colluded with Ukrainian government officials to get information on Hunter Biden, whose father Joe Biden, was a potential challenger to Trump in the next election. This actually led to his first impeachment for which he was not convicted. He also faced many accusations about misogyny, racism, sexual harassment, adultery, etc. Which is a lot.
Phil: Lastly for domestic policy, the COVID-19 pandemic began under Trump, whose contradictory statements led to hysteria and lack of public cooperation when working on stopping the spread of the virus. His “Operation Warp Speed,” however, did provide pharmaceutical companies with enough funding and resources to produce a vaccine in record time for the next administration. Unfortunately, young people, minorities and Trump supporters did not trust the vaccine which slowed the process of delivery. For foreign policy, Trump ran on the idea that he would build a border wall along the border of the United States and Mexico. This was a bit of an odd idea and led to the unsuccessful and needless government shutdown as a result of Trump's feud with the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.
Phil: Next, Trump banned the immigrants from several Muslim majority countries, which was heavily criticized as Islamophobia. Next, he redid the embargo on Cuba that was undone by Obama that I just mentioned. And lastly, but probably most importantly for foreign policy, was the trade war on China, in which heavy tariffs were imposed on China that resulted in a slight decrease in imports and a major decrease in exports because of China's ability to buy from other markets. The trade war was highly praised by some but highly criticized by many more as was true for many of his policies. This brings us to the election 2020.
Phil: In this election, the Democrats nominated former Vice President Joe Biden, while Trump ran as the Republican incumbent. Biden's platform was largely just anti-Trump, which was enough to rally voters behind him because of Trump's lack of popularity. Because of this, Biden won the election with his historic play for running mate Kamala Harris, the first woman and the first Person of Color to be elected to the position. On January 6, a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol Building to stop the certification of the election for Biden. After this obviously failed, Trump was investigated for any potential role he may have played and was impeached for the second time, especially since he failed to act during the insurrection, or the attempt.
Phil: So now, that brings us to the administration for Joe Biden. Luckily for Biden, companies like Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson released vaccines that saw the beginning of the end of the pandemic and led till the end of lockdowns and mask mandates despite Democrats continuing to push for such policies. In order to stimulate the economy. Biden created fairly large stimulus packages through Congress and supported many federal aid infrastructure projects, prod many infrastructure projects that had trouble because of congressional gridlock and conservative Democrats like Joe Manchin and Kristen cinema.
Phil: Biden has been mostly criticized for high inflation that is leading to an increase in gas prices, which contributes to the rise in price level of many other things. As far as foreign policy, Biden ended the war in Afghanistan by pulling American troops out rather rapidly, but he was highly criticized for his sloppy work while doing so. Lastly, Biden has had to deal with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which we discussed more in some past episodes. So Gerardo, do you want to quickly discuss some media partisanship and biases, social media and culture wars?
Gerardo: Yes, so first, I want to focus on a little bit of the changing campaign strategies that you see during this time period. The first is that beginning with Obama, there's a campaign based on the rallying of a group of people, specifically for Obama, it was people of color. Then, for the 2016 election, it was more of a populist movement, those who are upset with the current government. With the 2020 election, it was a movement against an incumbent president. And then, from the term of media bias, you have this emergence of media outlets that are advancing a political agenda. The most common examples are Fox News, who have expanded their conservative and right-wing programs. CNBC, which is a little bit more liberal, and you have CNN, which is somewhere in the middle. You also see the emergence of external media. So specifically, within the last two presidencies, beginning with the Trump presidency, a lot of private media, shows such as Infowars and the Joe Rogan podcast, radio shows, and television shows, gaining popularity amongst conservatives groups. This creates a media bias because the media begins to play a bigger role in the people's perspective of elections.
Phil: Specifically, within the last two presidencies, there's been this concept of culture wars. It really begins with a conflict between two social groups for their values, which has always been present in our society. But in the last few presidents it has intensified. The most recent example is the cultural wars relating to abortion regulation in the United States. It also happened as a result of immigration laws. There's also been culture wars regarding operations of the election. And more specifically, though, race and gender ideology.
Gerardo: Like Phil mentioned, there's been gender, race, and culture wars as well. I'd like to go back, and focus on some of the policies that I think are kind of important to this time period. Specifically, for Obama. I think the health care reforms, Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act; if you want to think about an impactful reform that Obama did, it's definitely that one because you have this new Medicare program that comes in at a time period where it's a Republican health Senate. The second I would say, is this emphasis on climate change revitalizing the US economy. And third of all, is this immigration policy. Now, this immigration policy for Obama was relating to the DACA program, it's for the children of undocumented immigrants in the United States. This program is important to recognize because this leads me on to connect to Trump's presidency, as Phil mentioned. Trump tried to undo all the policies that were just listed. Then, Biden at the beginning of his presidency, he sat down and went in, with presidential executive orders, and stripped all of Trump's reversals. It's this concept of these policies that are like the center of American sight today. This is the tumultuous time we live in the United States every day. There's developing conflict in our political culture. But it's the culmination of years of social media and political changes.
Phil: Now, that about wraps up our last dialogue ever. I hope you enjoyed our contributions to the history series. Thank you all. And as Gerardo was saying, it's not just a tumultuous time to live in the United States, but the rest of the world too. And the one thing that we can't forget is the role history plays in our lives and in our societies. And through all the tumult, we have to remember that this is another part of history, and our small lives can make a big impact on the course of human events. So that about wraps everything.
Gerardo: Thank you to our editors and to our readers.
Fin~
Editor’s Note: Thank you for reading Phil and Gerardo’s conversation about Presidents Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and the year 2020. We hope you enjoyed!