Barack Obama's First Two Years as President
There is an innumerable amount of ways someone can measure Obama’s first two years in office to try to define whether his presidency has been a success or failure. Issues relating the economy, domestic policy, and national security and foreign policy are the major topics in which many of those controversial issues lie. The easiest ways to determine whether or not Obama has been successful, is to look at his accomplishments as President, look at the principle promises he made regarding those issues prior to and during his time in office, and lastly the public’s overall rating of his presidency. After looking at all of those factors, I have determined that Obama has failed as President after the first two years being in office. The first aspects of Obama’s presidency that will be assessed are the principle promises he made, to the public, prior to/or after being sworn into office. There are, roughly, around 5 main topics that Obama addressed and said he was going to take a certain action on. The first of them was the Economic Stimulus Bill, where Obama said, “if we did not pass his Economic Stimulus bill, unemployment would rise over 8 percent. That unemployment statistic is currently 9.6 percent. But the actual unemployment rate (including people who have given up on finding jobs) is 16 percent = double the tragedy that Obama threatened us with”(Americanbuilt.us, 2010). Obama stated that the unemployment rate would go up if the Economic Stimulus bill did not pass, however, the unemployment rate increased dramatically after the bill took effect and, thus, totally contradicting the President and his word. The stimulus bill was supposed to be a “bill meant to pump money into the economy via tax cuts and a wide range of spending plans to make up for the sudden, sharp contraction of spending by consumers and businesses”(NYTimes, 2010). Many economists believe that the bill actually helped out the economy, however it became one of the main issues that Republicans
Cited: Barack Obama’s First Year: Success or Failure? guardian.co.uk, 19 Jan. 2010. Web. 15 Nov. 2010. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/jan/19/barack-obama-first-year>. Daily Presidential Tracking Poll. Rasmussen Reports, 15 Nov. 2010. Web. 15 Nov. 2010. <http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/daily_presidential_tracking_poll>. Nagourney, Adam. Obama Elected President as Racial Barrier Falls. New York Times, 4 Nov. 2008. Web. 15 Nov. 2010. <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/05/us/politics/05elect.html?_r=1&ref=barack_obama>. Presidency of Barack Obama. New York Times, 1 Sept. 2010. Web. 15 Nov. 2010. <http://www.nytimes.com/info/presidency-of-barack-obama/ >. Weblog post. Barack Hussein Obama II. AmericanBuilt.us, n.d. Web. 15 Nov. 2010. <http://americanbuilt.us/videos/barack-hussein-obama.shtml>.