Monday, December 14, 2009

Obama's Self-Awarded B+: How Steep Was the Curve?

...because that's a high grade to give to someone who, as chief executive of the United States, has overseen the following:

-Another 3 to 4 million jobs lost, and the unemployment rate rising from 7.6 percent to 10 percent.
-In ten months, the national debt has risen from $10.6 trillion to $12 trillion.
-We're not sure the housing market has hit bottom;
loan-modification programs aren't working.
-Trade disputes with
China, Canada, South Korea, Mexico, Panama and Colombia . .
-Iran ignoring our efforts to reach out, and bloodily smashing a pro-democracy movement.
-Israel furious, and the Palestinians as stubborn and unyielding as ever.
-Khalid Sheikh Mohammed coming back to the Big Apple.

-Average retail price of gasoline rising from $1.86/gallon to $2.61/gallon. (and this one drives me crazy, incidentally. When Bush was president, every time the price of gas moved up a nickel there was a hue and cry from the media on how painful it was for the average working schlub. This increase here costs the same schlub approximately $800/year over 2008. And this is before cap and trade...)
-A stellar cabinet of Tom Daschle, Bill Richardson, Nancy Killifer, Van Jones, Kevin Jennings..

Can I add deteriorating race relations and frozen job markets (due to concern about what wacky scheme Obama will pull on us next) to the list?

The nation is still standing; for that I guess he gets a passing grade. But it stands as a nation that is much poorer, not just today but for the next 20 years, and a nation that is about to become much less free, should Obama's prized health care reform and "cap & trade" environmentalism pass into law. It is a nation who is having is envied economic engine pulled out from underneath it by a dispassionate president, a president who would rather quit than fight, who would rather give away his people's wealth than defend its very existence, as well as the morality that made it possible.

A B+? Well, only if he looks at the above, and still feels he hasn't quite finished the job he has so clearly set out to do....

2 comments:

Publius said...

There must have been extra credit for the Nobel Peace prize. And, probably some partial credit for all the stuff he is going to do. You know, the stuff he got the peace prize for.

Jim - PRS said...

He gets a big, fat F, unless his goal is to completely destroy the country, in which case he goes to the head of the class.