I agree entirely.
My own view is that 2009 has been an extraordinarily successful year for Obama. Since this is currently a minority view and will prompt a chorus of “In The Tank!”, allow me to explain.
The substantive record is clear enough. Torture is ended, if Gitmo remains enormously difficult to close and rendition extremely hard to police. The unitary executive, claiming vast, dictatorial powers over American citizens, has been unwound. The legal inquiries that may well convict former Bush officials for war crimes are underway, and the trial of KSM will reveal the lawless sadism of the Cheney regime that did so much to sabotage our war on Jihadism. Military force against al Qaeda in Pakistan has been ratcheted up considerably, even at a civilian cost that remains morally troubling. The US has given notice that it intends to leave Afghanistan with a bang – a big surge, a shift in tactics, and a heavy batch of new troops. Iraq remains dodgy in the extreme, but at least March elections have been finally nailed down.
Domestically, the new president has rescued the banks in a bail-out that has come in at $200 billion under budget; the economy has shifted from a tailspin to stablilization and some prospect of job growth next year; the Dow is at 10,500 a level no one would have predicted this time last year. A stimulus package has helped undergird infrastructure and probably did more to advance non-carbon energy than anything that might have emerged from Copenhagen. Universal health insurance (with promised deficit reduction!) is imminent – a goal sought by Democrats (and Nixon) for decades, impossible under the centrist Clinton, but won finally by a black liberal president. More progress has been made in unraveling the war on drugs this past year than in living memory. The transformation of California into a state where pot is now more available than in Amsterdam is as remarkable as the fact that such new sanity has spread across the country and is at historic highs, so to speak, in the opinion polls. On civil rights, civil marriage came to the nation’s capital city, which has a 60 percent black population. If that doesn’t help reverse some of the gloom from Prop 8 and Maine, what would? And, yes, the unspeakable ban on HIV-positive foreigners was finally lifted, bringing the US back to the center of the global effort to fight AIDS as it should be.
Relations with Russia have improved immensely and may yield real gains in non-proliferation; Netanyahu has moved, however insincerely, toward a two-state solution; Iran’s coup regime remains far more vulnerable than a year ago, paralyzed in its diplomacy, terrified of its own people and constantly shaken by the ongoing revolution; Pakistan launched a major offensive against al Qaeda and the Taliban in its border area; global opinion of the US has been transformed; the Cairo speech and the Nobel acceptance speech helped explain exactly what Obama’s blend of ruthless realism for conflict-management truly means.
I pretty much agree. You can’t turn a ocean liner (or an aircraft carrier) to the opposite course quickly, and that what Obama has to do. The conservatives have been running things in Washington almost continually for nearly 30 years (Clinton could barely slow them down). Obama’s made quite a lot of progress in less than a year. People who expected him to accomplish all his goals immediately have no idea how Washington works.
I disagree completely. He’s actually praising the bank bailout? All that’s done is restore the Bush economy. He’s rebuilt the house of cards, and it’s only a matter of time before that comes tumblng down again. Health care is a mess, and may end up just being an abortion-limiting giveaway to the insurance companies. He’s escalating in the Empire of Nations. He’s done next to nothing for LGBT rights. Whenever the chips are down, he ALWAYS asks the progressives to sacrifice, and lets the BLue Dogs get away with murder. What has his insistence on leniency for Lieberman gotten us? He’s still a constant thorn in the side of the left.
I’d consider Obama a spectacular failure. Let 2009 be know as the year Leah turned on the Democrats. I am ashamed to have supported that corrupt bastard.