Saturday, August 6, 2011

Perspective

With the bruising battle over the debt ceiling, huge drops in the stock market, and now S&P's downgrading of U.S. treasuries (depite making a $2 trillion mistake in their calculations - oops), perhaps its time to step back from the day-to-day and get some perspective on the Obama presidency.

Jonathan Capehart does just that.

Ever since Obama walked through the doors of the Oval Office for the first time as president, he has been beset by one crisis after another that would sap his support or raise doubts about him and his leadership. There was the imploding economy in early 2009 and the actions taken to prevent another Depression; the politically debilitating health-care debate and the law that helped fuel the rise of the Tea Party and the loss of the House; the response to the gulf oil spill and the swine flu epidemic; the struggling economic recovery and frustration over the lack of jobs; the debt-ceiling fiasco; the delegitimizing birther nonsense that gained traction; and a Republican minority in the Senate and then a Republican majority in the House that see their sole purpose as thwarting anything that might be viewed as a success for the president, even if it might do right by the country.

Given all that, a 48 percent approval rating is damned impressive.

And Andrew Sullivan weighs in on the question of Who is Washington's most effective politician?

I think Obama is easily the winner and currently stupidly under-rated - and drowned out by all the noise in the conservative-media-industrial-complex.

Here are the political accomplishments: defeating the most heavily favored party machine in decades (the Clintons) while actually bringing his biggest rival into his cabinet, where she has performed extraordinarily well; helping to cement the GOP's broad identity as extremists opposed to compromise; entrenching black and Hispanic loyalty to his party; retaining solid favorables and not-too-shabby approval ratings during the worst recession since the 1930s. 44 percent of the country still (rightly) blame Bush for this mess, only 15 percent blame Obama.

On policy: ending the US torture regime; prevention of a second Great Depression; enacting universal healthcare; taking the first serious steps toward reining in healthcare costs; two new female Supreme Court Justices; ending the gay ban in the military; ending the Iraq war; justifying his Afghan Surge by killing bin Laden and now disentangling with face saved; firming up alliances with India, Indonesia and Japan as counter-weights to China; bailing out the banks and auto companies without massive losses (and surging GM profits); advancing (slowly) balanced debt reduction without drastic cuts during the recession; and financial re-regulation...

When I read commentaries expounding on the notion that this man is competely out of his depth, I just have to scratch my head. Given his inheritance, this has been the most substantive first term since Ronald Reagan's. And given Obama's long-game mentality, that is setting us up for a hell of a second one.

In contrast with what I wrote yesterday about the Republicans, I'll just ask the same question again...who's record would you rather be running on?

No comments:

Post a Comment

Preparing for the zone to be flooded with shit

Historically, a president-elect starts announcing their cabinet nominees by the end of November. But Donald Trump has already announced mos...