An admission and apology. I have been thinking recently about President Obama and came to the realization that I was wrong in my consideration that he’s done little or nothing.
No, I don’t think the Health Care Legislation is the best we could have had. I wanted a “Public Option.” And I don’t think that Financial Regulatory Reform is the best we could have had, but it was a start.
I thought back to a time, 1964 I think, when I was a Summer Intern in the U.S. Senate. At the time Medicare was being fought out vigorously on the Senate floor. In fact, one of my duties was was to monitor the filibuster on the Senate floor; mostly between midnight and 5 AM. It wasn’t the greatest bill we could have had, but it was a start of legislation from which I benefit today; perhaps the best healthcare I’ve ever had (and I’ve had some great health insurance packages from major companies).
He’s passed the Economic Stimulus, a subject of great debate, but without it, the so-called “conventional wisdom” is that we would have seen a major depression.
There are many other accomplishments:
- Ordering the closing of Guantanamo Bay military detention facility and abolishing “enhanced interrogation techniques.”
- Setting a fixed timetable for withdrawing U.S. combat forces from Iraq.
- Ordering 21,000 additional troops to Afghanistan and enlisting, with modest new assistance, European allies in a new multi-layered strategy there and in Pakistan, and setting a timetable for a drawdown of our troops.
- “Returning science to its rightful place” by lifting the Bush restrictions on federally funded embryonic stem cell research.
- Signing laws to expand children’s health insurance (financed by a 61-cent per pack increase in the federal cigarette tax the adviser did not tout).
- Signing a law meant to improve the ability of women who allege pay discrimination to sue their employer.
- Lifting travel and remittance restrictions for Cuban Americans who seek to travel more frequently to the island and send more US currency to their immediate family.
- Appointed the first Latina to the US Supreme Court
- signed a law supporting increased financial aid to severely injured war veterans, and their caretakers.
- Banned offshore drilling until parameters for deep well safety procedures are clarified.
- Put a hold on Artic oil exploratory digging until environmental impacts are clear.
- Passed health care reform.
- Signed a hate crime bill .
These are real, palpable, tangible accomplishments; ones made, notwithstanding a fractured Democratic party, with the most partisan Congress I can recall.
Sure, President Obama may be a bit too cerebral for some; and the target certainly of racists in this nation. He is a thoughtful man would considers, in my view, not only what is in the best interests of you and me, but the nation as a whole and the unintended consequences of his decisions, weighing carefully the, to use the vernacular, “risks and rewards.”
Moreover, he’s an engaging fellow, with a wit and a thick skin, who won the Presidency following a man who was arguably the worst President in our history leaving detritus behind that will probably take more years that President Obama, even with re-election, has time to sort out and resolve.
