This is a great article that must be shared especially now. I think it is most important that those on the far left and those that wanted the President to succeed but have been manipulated by the main stream media and the Right to disregard his many accomplishments to read this article in detail. It is not difficult to fact check.
It is easy for those on the far left (I consider myself far left but very pragmatic) to judge from a utopian standpoint not realizing that if they want there point of view which is generally more correct and factual than most to be taken seriously and adopted, they must work to fill the vessels of Democratic power with our lefty blood. I find that too many times the far left is happy to engage with those of like minds just as the far Right does instead of working extremely hard to infiltrate the powers of the Democratic Party to effect change.
Personally I believe President Obama thinks exactly like I do inasmuch as I get upset with some of his decisions. I think the President is in fact a pragmatic lefty. He realizes that he can only govern within the limitation of the body politic. If we want to move the country left, we must get off our asses and pull it in that direction. The Right even with all their failed policies are doing just that. It is time that we monopolize on their failures and use it as illustrative examples to move the country appropriately.
The Incomplete Greatness of Barack Obama
By Paul Glastris, The Washington Monthly
11 March 12
He’s gotten more done in three years than any president in decades. Too bad the American public still thinks he hasn’t accomplished anything.
n mid-January, pollsters for the Washington Post and ABC News asked a representative sampling of Americans the following question: "Obama has been president for about three years. Would you say he has accomplished a great deal during that time, a good amount, not very much, or little or nothing?"
When the poll’s results were released on January 18, even the most seasoned White House staffers, who know the president faces a tough battle for reelection, must have spit up their coffee: more than half the respondents – 52 percent – said the president has accomplished "not very much" or "little or nothing."
It is often said that there are no right or wrong answers in opinion polling, but in this case, there is an empirically right answer – one chosen by only 12 percent of the poll’s respondents. The answer is that Obama has accomplished "a great deal."
Measured in sheer legislative tonnage, what Obama got done in his first two years is stunning. Health care reform. The takeover and turnaround of the auto industry. The biggest economic stimulus in history. Sweeping new regulations of Wall Street. A tough new set of consumer protections on the credit card industry. A vast expansion of national service. Net neutrality. The greatest increase in wilderness protection in fifteen years. A revolutionary reform to student aid. Signing the New START treaty with Russia. The ending of "don’t ask, don’t tell."
Even over the past year, when he was bogged down in budget fights with the Tea Party-controlled GOP House, Obama still managed to squeeze out a few domestic policy victories, including a $1.2 trillion deficit reduction deal and the most sweeping overhaul of food safety laws in more than seventy years. More impressively, on the foreign policy front he ended the war in Iraq, began the drawdown in Afghanistan, helped to oust Gaddafi in Libya and usher out Mubarak in Egypt, orchestrated new military and commercial alliances as a hedge against China, and tightened sanctions against Iran over its nukes.
Oh, and he shifted counterterrorism strategies to target Osama bin Laden and then ordered the risky raid that killed him.
That Obama has done all this while also steering the country out of what might have been a second Great Depression would seem to have made him already, just three years into his first term, a serious candidate for greatness. (See Obama’s Top 50 Accomplishments.)
And yet a solid majority of Americans nevertheless thinks the president has not accomplished much. Why? There are plenty of possible explanations. The most obvious is the economy. People are measuring Obama’s actions against the actual conditions of their lives and livelihoods, which, over the past three years, have not gotten materially better. He failed miserably at his grandiose promise to change the culture of Washington (see "Clinton’s Third Term"). His highest-profile legislative accomplishments were object lessons in the ugly side of compromise. In negotiations, he came off to Democrats as naïvely trusting, and to Republicans as obstinately partisan, leaving the impression that he could have achieved more if only he had been less conciliatory – or more so, depending on your point of view. And for such an obviously gifted orator, he has been surprisingly inept at explaining to average Americans what he’s fighting for or trumpeting what he’s achieved.
In short, when judging Obama’s record so far, conservatives measure him against their fears, liberals against their hopes, and the rest of us against our pocketbooks. But if you measure Obama against other presidents – arguably the more relevant yardstick – a couple of things come to light. Speaking again in terms of sheer tonnage, Obama has gotten more done than any president since LBJ. But the effects of some of those achievements have yet to be felt by most Americans, often by design. Here, too, Obama is in good historical company.
The Incomplete Greatness of Barack Obama
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