President Obama, in a recent interview with Diane Sawyer was asked what he would give himself as a grade for his first year in office, without missing A beat Obama replied, “ solid B+”.
Now, dismissing the fact that most Presidents wouldn’t even fall into the trap of answering this question, especially when unemployment is continuing to rise every month, “Arrogant Obama” just couldn’t refuse.
Let’s take a look at his first year and try to figure out how Obama’s grading system works and why I couldn’t get a college professor to be as easy grading me as the grade he gave himself.
Obama’s first act of closing Guantanamo Bay has failed miserably. In fact, Obama who signed the Executive Order closing G-BAY on his 2nd day in office, has had so much trouble with this topic that the Democratic Controlled Senate has refused his request for additional funds to upgrade existing prisons within the US, to meet the maximum- security standards which are applied at G-BAY. As of now, the 2010 budget is closed and the prisoners will not be moved until 2011 at the earliest.
Staying on the issue of terrorism, Obama again fumbled the ball along with his Attorney General Eric Holder, who decided to reverse Bush Administration policies and place Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) on trial as a civilian in NYC, instead of using Military Trials.
Obama and Holder allowed their liberal out-look to cloud their judgment and after the Mayor and Gov. of NY publicly spoke out against this awful decision and the cost it would incur on the city in both overtime and tourism dollars, the administration retreated from their original positions and are now in the process of trying to figure out how to escape this predicament.
Obama also wouldn’t come out and admit that the Fort Hood shooting, where Nidal was heard yelling “Allay Akbar” was not a terrorist attack. Wrong.
He also decided to allow the Christmas day bomber to lawyer up after his failed attempt to ignite an underwear bomb over Detroit. It has been reported that he was singing like a canary until informed that he had “the right to an attorney” which prompted him to immediately stop talking. On Homeland Security alone, he should have deducted at least a point.
Last February, Obama insisted on a “nation saving” $787 billion stimulus package in which he vowed would stop unemployment (was at 8.6%) from rising past 10%. Now, we have watched it rise almost every month as it hit a high of 10.8%, worried American’s are still waiting for the “millions” of jobs he promised Main St., as Wall St was rewarded with billions in bailout dollars.
Instead of pursuing an aggressive job creation plan, the President decided to use his majorities in both chambers to push unpopular legislation such as Cap-and Trade and Health Care, which were heavily, influenced by Unions and big money Liberals.
Obama decided to tackle huge problems such as HC and Global Warming instead of creating jobs, which may have avoided losses in VA and NJ’s Governors races, states that heavily favored and supported Obama in the election. Not to mention the embarrassing loss of Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat to a Republican.
Obama still has time to turn around his Presidency if he decides to slow the government spending down and focus on jobs. However, this seems unlikely. After his State of the Union, Obama made it clear that his agenda will not be swayed to the middle, which will hurt his party in the 2010 mid-term elections.
This will make passing any major bills even harder and lead to the gridlock which Bush suffered during his last 4 years.
While Obama spent his first year bowing to foreign leaders, making a failed bid to hold the Olympics in Chicago, and blaming Bush on anything and everything, He needs to start getting people jobs and slowing down foreclosures because if not, his first year B+, will lead to a first term president.
No comments:
Post a Comment