I am glad that Maggie Gyllenhaal said what many of my generation feel about being extremely disillusioned by President Obama. I believed that change we could believe in meant a true progressive in office. Obama once famously said, "I'd rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president." Yet save for some miracles in his final two years, mediocre, and many times worse, is exactly what kind of a president he has been.
One cannot ignore that the Republican Party has treated President Obama with unmerited disdain and blatant disrespect that they never would have accorded to a white president. At the beginning of President Obama's first term, Congressman Joe Wilson yelled at Obama "You lie!" while he was explaining Obamacare. (It is insane to think that even back in 2009, defeating Obamacare was the party's destructive obsession.) Even President Bush, who lied to our nation at disastrous proportions, was more trusted than President Obama. When a voter in Georgia told the New York Times during the government shutdown, "I just don't trust him," how can that have nothing to do with race? Why else do they deeply mistrust him? For providing health insurance to our massively uninsured and unhealthy citizens?
However, when formidable politicians like Mitt Romney accuse Obama of "rotting away" his second term, they are completely disregarding that their party has made doing most things nearly impossible. Even when President Obama does something the right wing would otherwise triumph, the party misconstrues what he is doing. Deport children back to poverty and violence stricken countries? What could be more GOP friendly than that?
Because Obama's hands are tied by the gridlock, I wish that he would go further with executive orders on gun control and the minimum wage. Because things will not get any better for our country while the GOP holds Congress. If President Obama views gun control legislation as the "biggest frustration" of his presidency, why doesn't he pass an executive order on gun control? The Republicans are already suing him so why not go further?
But not all of Obama's lackluster record cannot be entirely blamed on the GOP. Beyond the gridlock, some of his administration's signature policies, including mass deportations and drones, have devastated entire communities and are very unworthy of a Nobel Peace Prize.
While the Obama administration finally condemned Israel's bombing of a UN school, Obama-appointed White House adviser dismissed criticism of Israel killing hundreds of civilians. Rice went even further by chastising other nations for doing so, as if the U.S. can impose a gag rule at the United Nations on judgement of Israel's acts.
President Obama is massively disliked by the Republican Party even if he has deported more undocumented immigrants than any other president. So then why was he trying to speed up the deportation of the unaccompanied minors? As with many, many things, these actions have left liberals like me scratching our heads over the president we thought that we could believe in.