We are only a few days off from President Obama's six month anniversary in office. We are getting well enough into this administration that most of the complex problems of this planet are increasingly becoming his responsibility and not that of past administrations....fair or not. So how has the President performed over the last six months? With the exception of a few areas I will address at the end of this posting, I believe the president has had an outstanding first six months.
No one should confuse my strongly voiced concerns over his failure to provide leadership on LGBT rights as making me anti-Obama on everything. I refuse to be painted into the corner that if he is seriously wrong on one issue, he is wrong on every issue. That is nonsense. Here is very quick summary of some of the key areas that we all care about and how I feel he has done. In each we can find areas that need improvement or on which we disagree. The following is simply more of an overview of the President's performance on a few key issues.
The Economy:
There is no question in my mind that this nation came very close to a full-fledged depression. Obama's economic policies, while needing to be tweaked, helped this nation end its slide and we are slowly working our way back to economic solvency. In a very short time span, he has restored confidence in our government's ability to govern and helped us begin recovery from the crash of last September. While we still need to see better oversight on stimulus projects, the markets have risen, the housing slide has almost stopped, businesses that were prepared to close are now surviving and in a month or two I believe we will hit the crest of unemployment. There has been a huge economic readjustment in a historically short period of time. What was critical was to avoid a depression while such an adjustment took place. President Obama has created the tough policies needed and the calm leadership to see us through it. In recent weeks, even in the Turkey Hollow area we have started to see people go back to work on construction projects from the stimulus money. Where there was nothing but despair last September up here, people are now believing it will slowly get better. The president should get high grades for stopping the slide, overseeing a major economic adjustment and putting us back on track. We still face a major hurdle with states on the verge of going under financially, such as California. Overall, though, he done an amazing job when an amazing job was urgently needed.
Foreign Policy:
In another remarkable turnabout, President Obama has restored America's reputation to the world. This is no small achievement. By the end of the Bush years, it was almost impossible for us to even have a foreign policy because we were so disliked even by longtime allies. With his aggressive personal diplomacy and trips, he has gone a long way to restoring our image enabling us once again to become part of the world community. For me, there have been two outstanding achievements: The first is the recent agreement in Russia to continue to dramatically reduce nuclear weapons - a feat which can't be underestimated in its historic significance. The second is that the president is keeping his word and has met the deadline to withdraw from Iraq's cities and to start bringing our troops home. These are major victories. By appointing Secretary Clinton, he has elevated foreign policy to a new level in America not seen in recent years. Progress had been made on climate change, in the Muslim world and Iran. However, there is one real area of concern that it is important to question and that is Afghanistan and Pakistan. All of us have a responsibility to be very vigilant in regards to America's efforts in these troubled nations.
Healthcare:
Healthcare seems to be the quicksand of American politics. Every time we attempt true reform we keep sinking in lower and lower. The failure of healthcare reform so far has led to a true national health crisis. Even people who believe they have full and adequate coverage are discovering that the insurance companies will use any loophole to avoid their contractual obligations. President Obama dove into this complex mess and is attempting to surface with some significant reform. He seems to be doing better than any other president so far but it all is still very much in a perilous position. He really must save the public option in order for this to be real reform. Obama gets big points for keeping his promise to make this a priority issue and tackling it head on. The results at this moment are still very unclear. The president also deserves praise for responding to the Swine Flu epidemic so quickly and decisively. Increasingly these type of health scares are going to become more prevalent and Obama has set a new level of excellence.
LGBT Rights:
Without a doubt this is one of the biggest disappointments in his administration. The sadness comes from not only his failure to act on key issues such as DADT and DOMA, but also from a general lack of vision, leadership and understanding of what is needed to help end oppression against the LGBT community. So far, the actions have been hesitant, somewhat fumbling and tiny steps. This is the great civil rights movement of this generation and the president so far has failed to understand that fact. What he has shown us is that leadership is not innately going to come from him. This administration, friendly as it claims to be, appears to respond only to pressure so it is essential that the movement removes any options that would give the president reasons not to act. To me, this is one of the great failures of his first six months.
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