I went searching around today for a good list of President Obama's accomplishments since taking office. After coming up empty on the Google, (and by the way, you don't even want to know what the first 20 results or so for "obama accomplishments" are) I started searching around here, where I could have sworn I saw a good list the other day. Anyway, I never found it, but I pieced one together from a few different diaries, and I present to you the product of that effort. I wrote it not for the audience of this site, but mostly to educate/annoy liberal friends/ wingnut friends of mine on Facebook, so apologies if some of this is familiar territory. Take it for what it's worth, I lost TU status overnight, and figured I need to get a little more active.
There's a lot of complaining on both sides of the aisle going on right now. On the Left, a lot of hand-wringing and second-guessing, and more than a little Monday-morning quarterbacking from anyone with a keyboard and internet access. On the Right, there's a chorus of faux outrage and preening, public displays to remind you and I that the GOP still wants us to believe they're relevant, that we're to pay close attention to their ridiculous positions, even though we're less than 3 months removed from an election that was a referendum on those very beliefs.
Everybody is worried about this stimulus package, and the media is attempting to sell the idea that the current battle will dictate President Obama's success or failure for the remainder of his term. The GOP doesn't hesitate to reinforce this meme, since they'd like more than anything to hamstring Obama's Presidency in the public consciousness before it really gets moving. Here's the news: Don't buy into this crap. Your President is kicking ass and taking names.
A Brief List of President Obama's Accomplishments Since Taking Office:
(and mind you, he's only been President for THREE WEEKS, people.)
- He ordered Guantanamo Bay closed. This is going to have a positive impact not only on our relations with the Middle East, but with Cuba and by extension the rest of the Latin American community, at a time when we could use a little positive international PR. The crybabies who seem to think he's going to just swing the gate open and let everyone out are imbeciles, the inmates will be transferred to Supermax prisons stateside, and they'll eventually stand trial in compliance with the Geneva Convention. (Remember when we used to comply with that? It's back.)
- He reauthorized Federal funding for stem-cell research, allowing us to start catching up from 8 years of lost progress under Bush. This will not only yield new treatments for disease, it will drive the economy by creating high-paying biotech jobs right here in America.
- He signed into law the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay act, which goes above and beyond existing law to help ensure equal pay without regard to gender. The GOP considers giving reality TV star Caribou Barbie the nod for VP to be the height of enlightened feminism, while your President is actually doing something to close the gap between 78 cents and a dollar. (The average difference between womens' and mens' salaries.)
- He issued explicit instructions to the DEA to end raids on legal medical marijuana dispensaries. Regardless of your personal feelings on the issue, these raids were a dangerous legal and ethical conflict between State and Federal law, creating unneeded problems in an already stressed legal system, not to mention the associated costs and business losses. Hopefully this signifies a first step toward a more sensible, effective drug policy in America, one that stresses treatment and recovery over criminal penalty for relatively innocuous substances. Again, regardless of your personal feelings on this issue, it's time to acknowledge that there are drugs more dangerous and deserving of harsh penalties than pot. Marijuana has its own drawbacks and issues associated with chronic use, but it's arguably less dangerous than, for example, alcohol.
- He issued compensation limits for executives of companies receiving Government assistance. Though personally I feel that these laws should have more teeth, it's still a step in the right direction. Instead of using your tax money to give themselves bonuses and compensation upwards of $20 million in some cases, they'll be limited to "only" $500,000. I am of the opinion that many of them should face criminal charges for using your 401k as their personal stash in the grand casino that was global finance for the last 15 years, but this is at least something. If you do your job so poorly that Uncle Sam has to bail you out, you don't get paid exorbitant sums of money for being a horrible financial manager. (You just get paid ten times as much as the average American, apparently.)
- Your President reaffirmed Americas' former commitment to end the use of torture as an information-gathering tactic employed by US agencies. Bush and Cheney didn't much care for human rights (or that pesky Geneva Convention,) but President Obama has ended their little experiment and paved the way toward regaining the high ground as a Nation and international law enforcement entity.
- President Obama extended the SCHIP program to include millions of children who were formerly without healthcare. Before you start crying "Socialism," remember that you were paying for their healthcare anyway, by way of the increased insurance premiums (if you're lucky enough to have health insurance) you're paying now. In a fine example of how "trickle-down" economics actually works, unpaid hospital bills are taken care of by the hospitals' own insurance, the debt is passed to "reinsurance companies" (they insure insurance debt) and since the ultimate pool for all that money is the same, your insurance companies' premium goes up, and they pass the expense on to you. Think about it; market economics doesn't apply to insurance, otherwise, as the number of insured people (demand) goes down, the cost of insurance (supply) SHOULD go down proportionally. The fact that it's rising just means the system is broken, and by extension of that logic, covering more people will bring down the cost of healthcare for everyone.
- The President put into action his plan for a timely withdrawal from Iraq. I don't think this needs any further explanation, Iraq is a money pit, and we've done enough damage there through poorly managing the reconstruction efforts. The Iraqi people need to be allowed to stand on their own and govern, with international humanitarian support and financial pressure helping them along as they take the reins.
- As of later today, he'll have passed the biggest job creation and economic recovery bill in history, and he'll have done it in a bipartisan fashion, at least to the extent that the GOP has been willing to cooperate. (Which is not much.) For some historical perspective, consider that in 1993, Bill Clinton was widely panned for failing to pass a similar bill with a price tag of only $16 billion, or roughly 1/20 of the current package. It's a truly monumental accomplishment.
The list actually goes on, but I'll leave it at that, and a parting thought. As I said earlier, the GOP would like nothing better than to see the President fail. You have to really internalize that notion, the idea that the opposition party is so attached to their positions of power that they are actively trying to prevent economic recovery, since if President Obama succeeds, they stand to lose big in '10 and '12. Your average rank-and-file Republican, many friends of mine included, have been arguing with me for a while about this concept, and I finally realized the difference between them and GOP lawmakers:
Average Republicans on the street have no personal stake in Lawmakers' careers, only an ideological one. They believe in the alleged principles of the Republican Party, in fiscal conservatism and smaller government, and in the power of the market, as well as a healthy dose of Ayn Rand-style selfish isolationism. They believe that the Minority Party leaders are honestly acting in the best interests of the country, not playing politics, and that's the problem. The Republicans in power are currently in survival mode. They realize that if President Obama manages to lift the country out of the current crisis, they will lose what little credibility and relevance they have, at least in the short term, and they'll lose their jobs. These are men (and I'd say men and women, but this is the GOP, so...) who are accustomed to being in positions of power, have sought meaning and motivation in their careers through the constant acquisition of more and more power, to the point where they are arguably among the most powerful people on Earth. It is not in their character to give up without a fight, and if the President succeeds, they will have their own Lyndon Johnson moment, except that instead of just the South, they'll have lost the whole country for a generation. They are willing, ironically, to leverage the well-being and financial future of their constituency against their own desire to remain powerful. This is not necessarily an unbelievable characteristic, and it's not just GOP lawmakers, it's Democrats, and everyone in a position of Authority. Once you get there, you don't want to give it up, and will go to great lengths to retain your stature. Indeed, one could even argue it's a biologically motivated impulse, something hard-coded into our DNA. Just understand that it's no longer about Republicanism, Conservatism, or any other set of beliefs. It's now simply about remaining in power for 2, 4, or 6 more years, for the sake of power alone.
It is the wrong moment, the wrong battle for Republicans to fight. They need to take a long look at what their motivations are, and consider what's best for America. If they want to keep their jobs, they should make an honest attempt to reciprocate the truly bipartisan overtures the Obama administration is making, and keep in mind that we're not acting bipartisan out of necessity. We've got the votes to pass any legislation we want in the House, and once (if not before) the Minnesota debacle is settled, the Senate. Democrats aren't reaching across the aisle because they have to, they are doing so because Barack Obama said he would do so in the course of his campaign, and he's making good on that promise. If Republicans don't care to participate in the process, they will quickly learn exactly how unnecessary their input is at this point.