View Single Post
Old 01-12-2010, 09:39 PM   #5 (permalink)
robot_parade
Junkie
 
Location: San Antonio, TX
Off the top of my head:

o Better transparency/open government - not perfect, with some major holes, like the house/senate merging of the healthcare bill, but *worlds* better than before. Technically the openness (or lack thereof) of congressional deliberations isn't even under his purview, I don't think.

o The healthcare bill. Better late and weak than never. There really is a lot of good in the bill, but it is far less than what progressives wanted.

o At least moving in the direction of getting us out if Iraq and Afghanistan, and closing gitmo, albeit much more slowly than progressives would like.

o A decently-managed recovery from the Great Recession. He did enough to avert disaster.

o The consumer credit protection stuff.

o A whole host of more minor regulatory improvements, too long a list for me to remember atm.

o Not freaking George W. Bush or John McCain.

The bad, from the progressive side:

o Stil upholding the horrible abuses and expansion of executive power. This is probably by far the worst aspect of his presidency. Truly disheartening, although we had hints of his authoritarian bent before.

o All of the 'not fast enough/not progressive enough' stuff from the first list.

So...on the whole, I'd give him a C+. He really shines in comparison to Bush, but that's a pretty low bar.
robot_parade is offline  
 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43