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Except for a few things that I address below, there's not much to challenge about your nine points, really. I'm as disappointed as you are, and should be, about them.  Obama needs, and asks even, to be held accountable by an angry public and civil society organized actions so that he has the credibility he needs to overcome the organized interests who oppose progressive policies.  (It's part of the Chicago school/Alinsky organizing method, actually, so fomenting/allowing people to get worked up about his lack of success in specific areas is a bigger part of the Obama White House strategy than we realize.  Creating "tension" around issues is the word from Alinsky that is relevent here, though I admit that the tension seems to get a bit too out of control too often.)  

However, what he hasn't yet done doesn't really say much because he has, in fact, done a lot of other things, such as:

  1. Getting out of Iraq. Obama's acceleration of withdrawal, over the objections of the key generals in charge of the policy and fierce political opposition from the right, is proving to be an extraordinary success by almost any measure.  This was a Herculean policy shift.

  2. Changing course on Polish ABM deployment.  Key move that immediately relieved the pressure on Moscow to look for ways to confront America.  Again, huge risks and lots of domestic and military opposition to the policy had to be overcome but in the end, he got the generals to buy in, resulting in ...

  3. The first major strategic arms reduction treaty in years. The ink is even dry yet, so claims that it hasn't been ratified are off base. The Senate has not rejected it, which means it is already US policy and represents a major shift in the way the US does business with Russia, repairing 8 years of Bush's damage to the relationship. Since conflict between the US and Russia still is the only one that is potentially world-ending, this is huge.  (In the US, arms control treaties can be policy without senate ratification because the policy is almost entirely dependent on the president for implementation, unlike trade and environmental treaties.  Only if the senate actually votes to reject ratification is the US commitment to the treaty really threatened, and senate ratification often takes years, so lack of ratification is not a big deal on this issue.  The key thing is that the whole military and foreign policy establishment already embraces it, due to Obama's actions.)

  4. Saved the world from ruin in the financial crisis/great recession.  As controversial as it was, here like everywhere else, TARP proved to be an unmitigated success, and Obama's commitment to the policy that was actually started by Bush saved the financial industry and prevented the developed world from falling into the episodes of deprivation and political violence that prevailed in and followed the Great Depression. While it's too early to say we're out of harm's way yet, it's clear that the vast majority of banks were able to provide loans and save deposits for people, and thus avoiding the human calamity that was the Great Depression the last time this stuff happened when the opinions of people who think like Angela Merkel carried the day and failed to deliver on fiscal stimulus and monetary expansion when the world most needed it.  This success for American leadership at a critical time to quickly extinguish the fire that was threatening to overwhelm an international economic system that is largely of America's own creation ranks Obama as a superhero in international policy accomplishments alone, if we are going to make honest comparisons of his work with other world leaders past and present.
by santiago on Thu Jun 3rd, 2010 at 05:30:12 PM EST
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