What do you think will be remembered as the defining issue

[branders seine]

of the first two years of Obama's Presidency?

Bailouts?

The economy?

Medical insurance reform?

Iraq?

Afghanistan?

The Gulf Disaster?


I'm thinking the Gulf.

[Auggie]

1. His moderate administration

[Lorien]

9. Just like Reagan's "moderate" administration, eh?

That one wasn't very good for us working stiffs or the environment either. This time it feels even worse-though the previous misadministration handed us the bulk of it. We're still in desperate need of Change, not more corporate right politics.

[Auggie]

15. Not quite...

his administration has taken a more moderate tone than most of us would have believed.

[cherokeeprogressive]

2. My teenage daughter would say his failure to secure equal rights for LGBTs

She has a bias though, being gay and all...

[napi21]

3. Too soon to tell. It could be almost any you listed, but all

depends on the final outcome in each case.

[Lorien]

4. The further rise of the Corporate Elites and the death of the Gulf

along with much of the East coast. :-(

[Individualist]

12. +1

That will be the legacy of this DLC administration.

[emilyg]

16. +2

[leftstreet]

36. +3

[scarletwoman]

39. +4

[Mimosa]

48. ^ The possibility frightens me ^

But it's not too late to accomplish something BIG.

I believe the 'health care bill' may turn out to be nothing much

[JuniperLea]

5. I'll have to wait until the end of the first two years...

But I'm thinking the Gulf is just too big... it will leave a mark on the entire term, and on the Earth... for the rest of my life and beyond.

[Individualist]

10. self-delete

[glitch]

29. It was bad enough before the Gulf. Now there are no words to describe the depth

of the loss.

Unless the disgust and horror causes a total systemic re-evaluation. That could be the only saving grace of this nightmare, and it would definitely be GRACE.
Not counting on it.

[LWolf]

6. Is there just ONE defining issue?

I would say these, in no particular order:

The economy...which includes the bailouts

medical insurance reform

the never-ending war of terror

the gulf disaster

And for me, because I'm a teacher: The appointment of Arne Dunca, RTTT, union-busting, privatizing, and corporate toadying in the arena of Public education

[Catherina]

7. All of the above with the Gulf in first place, Wars second place n/t

[Liberal_in_LA]

8. Economy, then oil spill, then health care

[MannyGoldstein]

11. The Final Attack on Working Families

And the second phase of the depression.

[DJ13]

13. The abandonment of the liberal ideology that got him elected

Everything else he's done (or hasnt done) began there.

[branders seine]

19. that seems to be an accurate description

[TheCowsCameHome]

14. Bailouts and escalating debt.

[hay rick]

17. The Gulf, easy.

After all the hype, I think his health care reforms will be seen as incremental. The other issues are all holdovers shared to a greater or lesser extent with the Bush administration. The cause of the BP disaster- mostly lax regulation- stems from the Bush administration, but Obama bought into it with his ill-timed plan to expand offshore drilling. And plugging the blowout and cleaning up the mess will be put entirely on his account. Life's a bitch.

[NYC_SKP]

18. None of the above, every single one is an inherited problem he's had to face.

If I had to name one, it would be that he broke the decades old deadlock stalemate in Health Care Reform against all odds, including members in his own party.

Regarding the list of choices in the OP:

Bailouts: Bush torched the economy on his way out, Obama warned us more than a year earlier in March 2007.

The Economy: See above.

Medical Reform: A problem years, decades, in the making and Obama did the best he could do with the congress we have.

Iraq: Bush Cheney.

Afghanistan: Old war, and Obama is still working on this one.

The Gulf Disaster: Similarly a result of decades of lax regulation and bad policy.



In short, the "defining issue" of his first two years will be in the eyes of the beholder, or of those who write their opinions.

For me, I prefer to wait until the first two years are over, and then a few years later, before I try to name or list the defining issues.

It takes that long to do it fairly.

:patriot:

[depakid]

23. The Gulf is a problem that belongs to his administration- based on his ratification

of Republican drilling policies and abject failure to address the well known corruption and incompetence in his own regulatory agencies (or even acknowledge a similar oil rig disaster that occurred a mere 6 months earlier) before vouching for their safety.

President Omama on March 31, 2009 would have done well to channel Candidate Obama in June 2008:

“John McCain’s support of the moratorium on offshore drilling during his first presidential campaign was certainly laudable, but his decision to completely change his position and tell a group of Houston oil executives exactly what they wanted to hear today was the same Washington politics that has prevented us from achieving energy independence for decades,” Obama said.

Nope, the Obama administration owns this- and it will indeed be a tarnish on their legacy.

[NYC_SKP]

30. But the typical American will not understand these details.

You might know and I might know, but the lasting impression won't be based on that.

Most will grade him well or poorly based on their perception of his response, and many will blame BP, as well they should.

And, even armed with better information, you and I will grade him differently based largely on expectations and different thresholds.

Obviously, I'm more forgiving, but to be sure, I wish he'd have gone housecleaning way more thoroughly than he did at every federal agency, including DOI and it's division, the MMS.

:thumbsup:

[depakid]

33. They surely will, because with a disaster of this magnitude and length

all of this will be coming out- repeatedly. This is why my advice on damage control has been own up to it- and when the time is right, make sure most of the onus finds its way onto Salazar.

That's traditionally how these scandals work- and as environmental groups warned when his name first came up for Interior- there's more dirt on that guy than can ever be covered up.

[NYC_SKP]

35. Well, that's one possible political approach, but not the one I'd take.

Blaming Salazar would, to the public, be like blaming himself.

If I had my way about it, I'd take the "this is war" approach.

Witness Bush's numbers right after 9/11.

Obama could use this as the moment of action to call bullshit on fossil fuels and push like hell for energy independence and a new green economy.

He's not, not yet, and I'm disappointed that he's not.

:hi:

[depakid]

41. Nothing precludes doing both

I suppose we'll see in the Presidential address what tack he'll take with respect to the 9-11, this is war bit.

[mix]

46. What a cop out.

Imagine if FDR or his supporters had given the same excuse about the Depression and Nazism?

Your personality based politics is a dead end, my friend.

[Chulanowa]

20. The defining issue?

Staggering ignorance in the body politic, combined with the Augean Stables that Bush left behind for obama to clean up

[Urban Prairie]

21. The Gulf Catastrophe

Has already dwarfed everything else, IMO, and looks like it may soon become the defining issue for the entire country in the 21st century, and if it is not resolved, maybe eventually on a global scale as well.

[marions ghost]

25. The Gulf already

I have to second that, unfortunately.

[UTUSN]

22. K&R big #5 for, oh-I-don't-know, something like Shrub-CHEENEE's DE-REGULATION of FATCATS?!1 Could

THAT be it?!1

[branders seine]

26. Obama definitely inherited a toxic mess.

The question was not who is to blame, but what will Obama be remembered for.

Goddamned rapublican supply-side, deregulating free marketers. Well, Obama is himself a free marketer, so maybe blame is a little part of it...

[UTUSN]

32. Fine. Let's start with the BLAME. Let's DWELL on the f***king BLAME, O.K.?!1 n/t

[AngryAmish]

24. Giving 100% to Goldman on the AIG bond insurance

LArgest transfer of funds in history from the have-nots (us) to the haves (Goldman). It makes the Spanish looting of the New World look live ping-pong.


Epic crime.

[Angry Dragon]

27. Gulf

[tekisui]

28. Timidity. Even with so much support and Dems in control of the House

and Senate.

His first two years will be remembered for his lack of boldness. And, I am not talking about his emotions or personality. His politics. He passed up a golden, once-in-a-generation opportunity to be a great leader and enact real change. Instead he has chosen the middle way. Capitulation and triangulation. He didn't take bold stands for the people who elected him. He took 'safe' positions. He has been badly misguided politically. He lost the great political capital he had, and has little to show for it.

[sendero]

45. That's exactly ...

... how I see it. Obama is a "go along to get along" president, unwilling to stick his neck out for anything. He tries to please everyone and why? It's easy to see that the right is never going to respect him no matter what he does, so why does he compromise so much?

Oh well, after several false starts I no longer expect much of anything from Obama. He is a more bitter disappointment to me than even Bush, because I had no good expectations of Bush. I had really high hopes for this administration, they have failed to deliver on a single important promise.

And now that it is obvious that Afghanistan is coming apart, how will he handle that? More troops, move lives, more money. More bullshit.

[mix]

47. I have to admit Obama's politics did not or do not surprise me,

but his timidity and weakness as a leader have been a shock.

[Stinky The Clown]

31. Disdain for the liberals in his party

[branders seine]

43. and for other traditional Democratic blocs

unions, environmentalists, civil libertarians...

[William Z. Foster]

34. the Wall Street global apocalypse

Unfortunately, the administration took office just as we crossed a threshold, passed a point of no return. The bailouts, the economy, insurance reform, the wars, the Gulf disaster, and many other catastrophes that will be revealed and that are yet to come, are all symptoms of a much larger problem. Wall Street is in a final predatory feeding frenzy. Boosting and maintaining stock values must be done at all costs. It will cost us everything.

[scarletwoman]

38. +1000

I hope the defining legacy of this administration will be that it finally woke up the Left and got it off its collective ass and out into the streets organizing against predatory capitalism and its handmaidens in DC.

sw

[William Z. Foster]

40. they are trapped

I was listening to a financial big shot from London being interviewed on the BBC last night. The interviewer asked a lot of pointed questions, and the expert kept coming back with the usual "stabilizing markets" and "austerity measures" bs. The interviewer kept pointing out that none of that had, nor likely would work and asked if there was nothing else that could be done to head off global catastrophe. Finally the expert said "well short of re-thinking the whole market driven financial services economy, no." OK. So let's re-think the whole market driven financial services economy.

The administration is in a trap. It will be very difficult to shift gears now. At the time of the bail outs, there was an opportunity to "re-think the whole market driven financial services economy." But they had already bought into all of the belief system about the "free market" economy, were already too far down the path of "working with our corporate partners" and finding common ground and reaching across the aisle.

So they forked over everything to the predators, not realizing perhaps that when you throw gasoline on a fire it is not going to put it out, it is going to expand it. The more money you put into Wall Street, the more resources will be depleted, the more corners will be cut on safety, the more environmental damage there will be, the more regulatory agencies will be corrupted, the more job and wage loss there will be, the more there will be assaults on the already crumbling public infrastructure. All of that then erodes and destroys the platform upon which business stands, and it weakens "consumer demand" - people are broke - further weakening business. That then will lead to more and more desperate attempts to find ways to boost up stock prices by showing transient short-term improved profits which will inevitably lead to more resources depleted, more corners cut on safety, more environmental damage, more regulatory agencies corrupted, more job and wage loss, and more assaults on the already crumbling public infrastructure.

[scarletwoman]

42. That first bit is hilarious. OMG, rethink the whole market driven financial services economy!?!?!

Inconceivable!!

It doesn't appear that the administration has any interest in shifting gears, anyway. Live by the free market, die by the free market.

The only tears I'll shed will be for all the regular people who are going to be hurt.

sw

[mmonk]

37. Obviously another DLC run presidency.

The most obvious is the most simplest and transparent issue and most accurate most of the time.

[mix]

44. It won't be a single issue, but a narrative about several crises...

and how the Obama administration, much like its predecessors, failed to find answers.