Rating Obama's First Year: Patrick Dresslar

Obama's first year has come and gone in the blink of an eye.  Swearing in amidst the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression and two wars in the Middle East, Obama certainly had a full plate from day one.  Having to navigate through such turbulent times is a tall order, and due to the magnitude of this, I'll give President Obama a letter grade of B- for his first year performance. 

Obama was always going to be a divisive political figure, despite his naive campaign rhetoric of unifying the nation.  His domestic agenda has been extremely liberal for our center-right nation, so it does not surprise me that he ends his first year with the worst popularity ratings for a president's first year in office.  When you bail out banks and sign trillion dollar stimulus packages and send 30,000 more troops to a foreign land you are bound to piss some people off.  But a president's popularity is not a fair assessment of his effectiveness in office.  We all know that.

Pushing through your agenda is a good measurement on a President's effectiveness.  I haven't seen too many major accomplishments here.  Certainly, passage of Obamacare will be a historic victory and could push his grade up to a B+, but that hasn't quite happened yet.  In foreign policy, he has carelessly set a timetable for Afghanistan withdrawal, but his sending the additional troops cancels that out, so we'll give him a C for that policy.  And his administration has already seen a near-disastrous intelligence failure.  He is ultimately responsible for that, as he admitted a week later.  It seems he might finally be getting that we are actually at war, so that is good news. 

For his domestic agenda and campaign promises, he has backed away from his ridiculous promises he made along the trail.  But that is not surprising.  I'm not going to judge his presidency quite yet, but with 2010 being a pivotal year for the war in Afghanistan and with health care reform on the door step, Obama has a golden chance to make this year an A+.

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