One Year Later Where Do We Stand: Some Intriguing Theories
posted by: Nisha C. 43 days ago
One year later, where do we stand?
A year ago today, Barack Obama was elected, breaking records and shattering the world’s notions about America. You probably remember exactly where you were and what you did. I took a moment today to reflect on where I was a year ago and what I was thinking and the kind of excitement I was feeling. It was the kind of excitement that was palpable, the kind that had people running in the streets, cheering, setting off fireworks, and celebrating.
Today, the nation is in a strange place. It’s one year after that historic day and everyone has something to say. Everyone has their version of the “one-year report card” (forget the fact that he hasn’t even actually been in office a whole year). The fact that the anniversary coincides with the release of Obama campaign manager David Plouffe’s new book, “The Audacity to Win,” has only further fueled the discussion: what has happened in the last year? Did he keep his promises?
What are they saying? It seems the outlook is bleak from all sides.
Glenn Reynolds, New York Post, “The Obama magic has faded”:
“In fact, the elections [yesterday] underscored Obama’s political weakness just one year after his triumphant victory over Republican moderate John McCain. The Obama invincibility that was so much in evidence then seems to have lost its power. People can argue the reasons why these elections, all in places Obama carried handily, were so close. But if he were the political marvel he was thought to be, these races wouldn’t have been contests, but walkovers. So one consequence of this Election Day is the end of his special political magic.”
Ari Melber, The Nation, “Promises Kept and Broken, One Year Later”:
“Beyond supporters, the public at large is now less confident that Obama can deliver in this tough environment. In a new anniversary survey, Gallup finds that the share of the nation that thinks the Obama administration will "be able" to achieve several key goals has dropped sharply: a 12-point drop on winding down the Afghanistan war; down 18 points on "improving" health care; and, in a blow to that promised bipartisanship, a staggering 26 point fall on healing "political divisions in this country." (About 54 percent of the public thought the administration could do that a year ago; it is now 28 percent.) Then, of course, some of Obama's unfulfilled pledges are not a matter of ability or time. They were simply broken.”
Arianna Huffington, Huffington Post, “Obama One Year Later: The Audacity of Winning vs. The Timidity of Governing”
“How did the candidate who got into the race because he'd decided that "the core leadership had turned rotten" and that "the people were getting hosed" become the president who has decided that the American people can only have as much change as Olympia Snowe will allow?
How did the candidate who told a stadium of supporters in Denver that "the greatest risk we can take is to try the same old politics with the same old players and expect a different result" become the president who has surrounded himself with the same old players trying the same old politics, expecting a different result?
How could a president whose North Star as a candidate was that he "would not forget the middle class" choose as his chief economic advisor a man who recently argued against extending unemployment benefits in the middle of the worst economic times since the Great Depression?”
Peter Baker, The New York Times, “No Walk in the Park: For Obama One Year Later, It’s the Slog of Governance”
“A year later, as a few smaller elections yielded a more critical judgment, the hope and hubris have given way to the daily grind of governance, the jammed meeting schedule waiting in the morning, the thick briefing books waiting at night, the thousand little compromises that come in between. The education of a president is complicated, and as Mr. Obama has spent the last 12 months learning more about wielding power, his country has learned more about him.”
One year later, it’s clear to everyone that the candidate Obama has become vastly different from the President Obama. His approval ratings are dropping from their soaring highs earlier this year, and people on all sides are starting to worry.
But I say: can we look past all the policy for a minute? Forget Olympia Snowe and Joe Liberman’s votes; forget Larry Summers and Colin Powell’s roles in the administration. Forget the daily Gallup polls, the million report cards being issued from every major media organization reminding us that Congress and the President’s approval ratings are steadily dropping.
What I want to know is, how are American people doing? A person in Detroit without a job to support their family or a person in Ohio without health insurance doesn’t care what those of us in Washington and New York think about Obama’s approval ratings or performance. Has the quality of life for the average American gotten better or worse? That’s what I want to know. And if they are struggling – which in this economy, so many people are – is the hope that was so prevalent a year ago still alive? Are we still optimistic and hopeful that things will improve? That matters more than anything else.
Read more: anniversary, election, politics, disappointed, obama, one year, too soon
comments
Harold M, thanks, I never thought anyone would accuse me of giving President Obama the benefit of the doubt or supplying excuses for his leadership, or lack thereof.
I agreed with your comments and your lack of space for more. I would not leave out Congresses role in all of this, both the current and former congresses.
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Paul, by implying that Obama's real problem is Congress and it's leaders, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, you are once again giving Obama the benefit of the doubt, supplying excuses as to why he has been unable to implement change as he promised us. What you are forgetting, and what is being glossed over here, is that there are certain things that Obama has done that Congress has very little say about, that should reflect his personal agenda, the selection of his cabinet. Allow me to list them here:
1) He could have selected an economic and financial team that reflects support for strong regulation and oversight of the financial markets. Instead, he selected Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, Ben Bernanke, and Hank Paulson, the very people who have created the mess we are in for their opposite beliefs.
2) In stead of replacing all of Bush's foreign policy advisers and generals with people who believe in peace and who wish to end these endless and illegal wars of aggression, he kept most of them on in his admin, people like McChrystal, Petreaus, and Robert Gates. He hires Hillary Clinton, one of the most militaristic people that I've ever heard who lost against Obama for that very reason.
3) Obama, and his "Alberto Gonzales," Eric Holder, have gone out of their way in preventing the proper investigation and prosecution of the Bush admin for their war crimes.
I would like to add more here, but I'm running out of space. Obama is as guilty as Pelosi and Reid in this ma
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Most of my friends who supported, voted, and had Obama bumperstickers and posters are disgusted. In his defense, Reid and Pelosi are the bigger problems, but a President who cannot control his own party is not a leader. And, yes, he has been in office long enough for a report card, or at least a progress report. Hopefully, he's listening. He has three years to turn it around, but only one before the mid-term elections.
Unfortunately, I don't believe he has the support in his own party, or of the American people, to do what needs to be done to reverse a course that is destined for abject failure.
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An almost impossible task, but he is getting things done, with no help from the party of NO. I just hate to think of what state we would have been in with McCain and Airhead Palin. McCain chose her [which he now wishes he hadn't] but that just tells us what crazy choices he would have made. President Obama is making all the right choices, he is thinking every thing through before acting, this is because he has a brain and cares,
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How can you be disappointed when your lowest expectations weren't low enough?
He's done exactly as predicted with two exceptions. We didn't mess with Iran over their internal nightmares and he's backing off the medical marijuana clinics. Though nice, they sure don't counter balance the endless economic and political nightmares he's ran up since January.
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If you were to check all of his appointments in almost all categories, foreign policy, economic and financial policy, the intelligence community, national security, national parks and wilderness areas (Ken Salazar - primarily an oil man), you will find conflicts of these kinds everywhere. Virtually every appointment that he has made of any criticality and importance, with some few and rare exceptions, do not reflect the change he promised us, but pretty much the same policies of George W. Bush. Obama is continuing George W. Bush's policies of extraordinary rendition, indefinite detentions of prisoners without trial or due process, be they innocent or guilty, even torture has not stopped. I always knew where I stood with George Bush. I trusted Bush to always do the bad thing because he didn't really hide his intentions very much, but Obama cannot be trusted at all. What he says publicly and what he has done publicly (and privately, underneath the table), and continues to do, seems to conflict a lot. Be assured that he has already made up his mind to expand the war in Afghanistan, a long time ago.
Obama is deceiving the American people about Afghanistan. Copy and paste the following URL onto the address line of a browser window and read the article:
http://www.truthout.org/1106091
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Evelyn B., well written, researched and said. He had the ability to appoint people that he wanted to appoint and chose to appoint the exact opposite of what he campaigned to do. What I don't get, is why?
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I certainly wouldn't expect quick national changes on very large issues by any one person, even a President. What bothers me is something he has complete control over, which are his appointments. He continues to appoint people that are in direct contradiction to his promises.
These are the presidents’ words of promise: "We’ll tell ConAgra that it’s not the Department of Agribusiness. It’s the Department of Agriculture. We’re going to put the people’s interests ahead of the special interests." Now, as president it is shocking how many of his appointments into the USDA and FDA are from the Chemical Agribusiness and Biotech Agribusiness. It is more and more obvious that the Obama Administration is happy to assist agribusiness against our wishes, against our well -being, and contrary to his own promises. Examples- Michael R. Taylor FDA Obama appointed July 7th, previous VP for Public Policy at Monsanto Corp. from 1998-2001. Roger Beachy as Chief in USDA new National Institute of Food and Agriculture was a long-time president of the Danforth Plant Science Center (Monsanto’s nonprofit arm). NIFA has power to award USDA dollars to external research, (guess where those dollars will likely go), Beachy’s vested interests in biotechnology. Islam Siddiqui has been nominated as the Chief Agricultural Negotiator for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. If Congress confirms him, he will use the post to continue
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the lobbying he has done for CropLife (a front group for chemical agriculture), promoting chemical-intensive, genetically modified products that undermine local food security in developing countries. Yes the same people that chastised Michelle Obama, Croplife America’s regional partner, Mid America CropLife Association, “shuddered” at Michelle Obama’s organic garden and launched a letter writing campaign in protest. Tom Vilsack, Obama appointed as USDA Head is another Monsanto man. Vilsack leads in support of: genetically engineered pharmaceutical crops, especially pharmaceutical corn, his first poster child of economic development potential was Trans Ova and their pursuit of cloning dairy cows, the origin of the seed pre-emption bill in 2005, which many people in Iowa fought because it took away local government's possibility of ever having a regulation on seeds- where GE would be grown, having GE-free buffers, banning pharma corn locally, etc. Representative Sandy Greiner, the Republican sponsor of the bill, bragged on the House Floor that Vilsack put her up to it right after his state of the state address, and an ardent support of corn and soy based biofuels, which uses as much or more fossil energy to produce them as they generate, while driving up world food prices and literally starving the poor. Vilsack has a glowing reputation as being a shill for agribusiness biotech giants like Monsanto.
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If the state of affairs at USDA weren't depressing enough, many biotech, GMO promoters and pesticide promoters have been appointed to other agencies dealing with food and farming, as well.
President Obama’s actions are direct contradiction to his own words. Lobbyists "think they own this government, but we're here today to take it back," Obama announced at the outset of his campaign in 2007. He later boasted that he didn't "take a dime of [lobbyists'] money, and when I am president, they won't find a job in my White House."
Indeed, a National Journal look at 267 Obama nominees and appointees found that at least 30 -- or about 11 percent -- have been registered lobbyists at some point during the past five years. This is web address for that list. Article title is “Obama’s Lobbyists.” http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/sl_20090321_4967.php
So my big disappointment is not the lack of big changes, I think that is actually a good thing. My disappointment and questions arise from President Obama’s action that not only do not support his words but are in direct contradiction to his own words. These appointments are made by the President, supposedly his own personal choice and then approved by Congress, supposedly not the other way around. How can any one trust someone that says one thing and then does the opposite? These actions are not compromises they are direct conflicts.
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