MEEP MEEP– December 23rd, 2009:
I will freely admit that I am in the tank for Barack Obama. I believe his combination of pragmatism, measured cool, intelligence, and willingness to find the common ground–were exactly what this country needed after eight years of the Bush administration’s feckless policies, and unilateral bullishness. I am not in the lot of folks who believe that 2009 has been a terrible first year for the new president. This piece by Andrew Sullivan validates my thinking. If you delve deeply into the muck and mire of combative partisan politics, you can extract some very important victories achieved by this administration. One such example:
The substantive record is clear enough. Torture is ended, if Gitmo remains enormously difficult to close and rendition extremely hard to police. The unitary executive, claiming vast, dictatorial powers over American citizens, has been unwound. The legal inquiries that may well convict former Bush officials for war crimes are underway, and the trial of KSM will reveal the lawless sadism of the Cheney regime that did so much to sabotage our war on Jihadism. Military force against al Qaeda in Pakistan has been ratcheted up considerably, even at a civilian cost that remains morally troubling. The US has given notice that it intends to leave Afghanistan with a bang – a big surge, a shift in tactics, and a heavy batch of new troops. Iraq remains dodgy in the extreme, but at least March elections have been finally nailed down.
Example two:
Domestically, the new president has rescued the banks in a bail-out that has come in at $200 billion under budget; the economy has shifted from a tailspin to stablilization and some prospect of job growth next year; the Dow is at 10,500 a level no one would have predicted this time last year. A stimulus package has helped undergird infrastructure and probably did more to advance non-carbon energy than anything that might have emerged from Copenhagen. Universal health insurance (with promised deficit reduction!) is imminent – a goal sought by Democrats (and Nixon) for decades, impossible under the centrist Clinton, but won finally by a black liberal president…
Folks, we are on the precipice of MAJOR health care reform This has NEVER been accomplished before. Whether you agree or not with the president’s agenda, you must not discount what he has already achieved in his first year in office.
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