Here is a summary of our thoughts:
Barack Obama is only twenty months into the job of being president of the most powerful country in the world. When he was elected, he inherited probably the worst presidential legacy of any president in U.S. history.
On the economic front alone, he was facing a $10 trillion budget deficit while handling the worst financial crisis since the 1930s along with a one-year old recession. To stop the bleeding of the financial sector, and to reverse some of the effects of the recession, he was forced to increase the public debt. He managed to do so while keeping interest rates at historically low levels. The budgetary impact of the increased public debt was minimal thanks to those low interest rates. An important side effect was that American home owners were able to refinance their mortgage debt at the lowest levels in a decade.
President Obama took an aggressive stance to put into place the Dodd-Frank Act, a new regulation that will (hopefully) avoid the country's being taken hostage by greedy financiers on Wall Street who played the U.S. economy like a game of roulette. Europe is not even close to addressing these kinds of issues.
On another front, the president inherited two wars that cost tens of thousands of lives and more than a trillion dollars, yet it is difficult to justify either as defending the interests of the United States. He deftly managed to reduce the commitment of the country in Iraq and is seriously trying to find an escape from the ill-conceived Afghan war. He is also working hard to establish a peace process in the Middle East.
While doing all of these things, Obama has pushed the United States to solve one of its most shameful societal problems -- 40 million residents deprived of health care. This delicate and dangerous task is something previous presidents had been unable or unwilling to tackle.
In the midst of this tremendous juggling act, a potentially catastrophic environmental problem in the Gulf of Mexico occurred, leaking millions of barrels of oil into those waters, causing a rift between corporate and governmental responsibilities.
President Obama has dealt with all of these problems in just twenty short months. Twenty months! What is wrong with us? Don't we understand that things take time, and that with the impossible legacy he inherited, the President of the United States has achieved more than has any other president in his first half-term? Have we become so shortsighted that we believe that we can get rid of unemployment in a matter of months? We see that company results are improving and the debt and equity markets have been the strongest in three years. These are great beginnings. Yet they are only beginnings.
Isn't it time that we realize what has been done and that patience is essential? Of course, the opposition will blame the president: that's all they can do since they have had nothing to offer for two years and essentially caused the problems Mr. Obama is now facing during the previous eight years when they were the majority party.
It will take at least two terms to put a country back on track that has lost the respect of other countries because of its moral, military, and financial deterioration. It will take at least that long for any serious improvement in unemployment to take place. This will not happen before 2011. We always knew it.
Truly responsible leaders should not encourage disappointment among the American people. They should not foster fear and dissension. All of us need to stop creating unrealistic expectations. Right now we believe that the worst of the economic and of the financial crisis is behind us. While things are far from perfect, progress is happening. This progress gives us hope, something none of us felt at the end of 2008.
Can we continue to blame just one man for all of our woes? Can we expect him to solve all these problems he did not create, and to do so immediately? If we do, are we acting like spoiled children?
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He is repairing much that has been going wrong in the past years.
I wish Obama was doing more FDR moves, that I believe we need now. Conservatives didn't just crash us into a ditch. They Eliminated all the speed limits and traffic laws, they would not spend any money on maintenance, so the brakes don't work, and accelerators sticks.
The ditch we crashed into, is next to a river, just above a huge waterfall. There is a possibility of the car slipping into that river and over that waterfall.
I am disappointed that Obama has not done more to get as out of this dangerous situation. I understand that Obama be doing everything that needs to happen, based on the resistance and sabotage by the conservatives. But vote GOP????? NO WAY!
Wasn't Obama's HIR supposed to keep insurance companies from ripping off? Why did Obama cut a deal with insurance company lobbyists to gut the public option?
I would be willing to bet that when the next Republican president is elected and he has to fix all of the debt and problems that Obama has caused, you will not write an article about how Obama caused this and we need to stop blaming the president. Instead it will be that our president is making bad choices, or even better it will all still go back to President Bush. This all began in the Bush era is what people will say.
Stop using past presidents as a scapegoat. It worked for a little while but its getting old now. He needs to take responsibility and handle it without pointing fingers.
I have counted 5 references in this article that puts blame on something the President in the past had done. How is that objective? An objective approach would have put the blame on no one but rather just touched on the fact that there was a problem and here is how Obama handled it. Whether or not it was right or wrong is up for debate. But when you throw it stuff like, "When he was elected, he inherited probably the worst presidential legacy of any President in U.S. history.", then you are no longer talking objectively but rather subjectively. You have stated an opinion and a very poor one in my book.
1= he promised trasnsparency in the gov and that was a lie.
2= hes part of the BP hide and seek the truth game.
3= his healthcare plan is making it cost more and forcing us to buy it is wrong.
The gains this writer refers to are undeniable and significant. But think of what could have been accomplished had President Obama not been obsessed with "bi-partisanship" and allowed the Republican party, in complete disarray following the 2008 election, to get their foot back in the door. Think of how much stronger the health care bill, just to give one example, could have been if Republican claptrap about "death panels", just to give one example, had been met head-on with the outrage it deserved by the President himself, from the moment it appeared. I could name a half dozen issues and a half dozen Republican red obstructionist herrings for each to which the same comment could apply. Yes, the Obama administration has accomplished something. But it could have accomplished much more, and the majority who put them in power were expecting much more.
Yeah, silly me. Gee, I thought honoring our treaties and indicting people who clearly violated them would happen, but obviously this is "off the table" (h/t N.Pelosi). What I find most ironic is the CATT (Convention Against Torture Treaty) was signed by a 'far leftist radical communist'. You know, Ronald Reagan (h/t GlennGreenwald).
By caving on FISA, by harboring proven w_ar criminals, by using states secrets, by denying FOIA, by embracing 'indefinite detention' and 'targeted assassination' of U.S. citizens without habeas corpus- Barack has lessened the respect of our nation by the entire world. You know, the parts that don't believe FOX noise (or CNN, for that matter). The white house doesn't take it's orders from the American people- we now have Intelligence & the Pentagon doing that now for going on 35 years. Yippee.
However, unless he proves to be a dreadful one, and I doubt that he will, his election was bloody marvellous!!
Sure, why not? Bush wasn't responsible for the 2008 meltdown; Clinton's econmic guys were (including Summers and Geithner), after having lied to congress following the FIRST meltdown in '98, insisting OTC derivatives should not be regulated, despite knowing exactly how dangerous the market was. But that never prevented Obama from telling his Kool-Aid chuggers that it was the fault of Bush, the Republican, instead of Clinton, the Democrat. And liberals never question anything their party spoon-feeds them, so it's not like Obama was ever gonna get busted: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFnPT-umZxw Whoops.
How were they supposed to know it was bad? That's the very reason they called upon Rubin, Summers, Geitherner, and Greenspan, to advise to them. Is there some part of the facts that you don't get? http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/view/?utm_campaign=viewpage&utm_medium=grid&utm_source=grid Try watching it and learning what actually went on instead of the bogus crap the man of change has been telling you.