Obama Deserves Liberal/Progressive Support!

[I started this post to respond to a wretched article in the Washington Post, but I got carried away. I will follow this with my response to that article.]

As though everyone has joined the tea-party and drank tea mixed with some very odd herbs, it has become popular to characterize Obama’s first year as a failure. As a die-hard liberal, I have three words for other liberals and progressives. “Cut it out!”

As I pointed out in yesterday’s post, President Obama won a four-year (not a one-year) term and has a solid record of accomplishments for which he is being given little credit. He has re-established the United State’s place in the world, strengthening our relations both with allies and with adversaries. (His success negotiating with adversaries such as Iran has been limited, but no other approach is apt to have been more successful with these difficult nations).

President Obama has had good success managing the Troubled Assets Relief Program (the TARP bailout) begun under President Bush, and much of the bailout money is being repaid with interest. A combination of the TARP program and President Obama’s Stimulus bill kept the country from sliding into another great depression, saved or created in excess of two million jobs, and kept us from seeing more breadlines in our towns. As detailed in yesterday’s post he has fulfilled 91 of the 503 promises made during his campaign and has mode substantial progress on 275 more (much of this work must actually be done either through or in conjunction with congress, so Obama is not in complete control.)

Sure, we liberals can spend our time and energy grousing about the things Obama hasn’t done that we wanted him to do. He hasn’t prosecuted torturers or the officials that implemented out torture program. He hasn’t been the fierce advocate for the homosexual community that he promised. He hasn’t brought all of our troops home and let Iraq and Afghanistan go to hell in a handbag. He doesn’t fart flowers. But (with the exception of largely ignoring his commitment to the gays) he never really campaigned on those things. (And we can continue to press him for more movement as his term progresses or during the second term that I for one want him to have.)

He did campaign on the premise of being a bipartisan leader, but as I also pointed out in an earlier post, he expected mutual self-interest would lead the Republicans in congress to cooperate somewhat. He didn’t expect that Republicans would be perfectly content to watch the country sink into misery rather than allow Obama an easy path to governance. They would rather let 45,000 Americans per year die for lack of health care than work constructively with the Democrats on Health Care Reform. (The Republican’s would rather rail against mythical “Death Panels” than deal with the actual cause of Americans dying.) Who would guess the Republicans would be so depraved?

Given President Obama’s record of accomplishment, much of it in acting the progressive agenda, and the plate of snakes he inherited as part of his job, liberals and progressives should be cutting the man some slack and working to energize the base and the less engaged Democratic and independent voters. Do we really think things will get better with more Republicans in Congress?