During his trek through Iowa, Republican candidate Mitt Romney repeatedly needled President Obama for failing to keep his campaignPresident Obama promises. Now, the Obama campaign has responded with a video outlining the promises candidate Obama made and the ones President Obama kept.
On the issue of promises kept, Obama is both right and wrong. He’s kept his promises to some while simultaneously betraying his commitment to others.
At the behest of gay rights activists, Obama repealed DADT. And at the encouragement of public opinion, President Obama is reducing our footprint in Iraq, even though some of our U.S. troops are being replaced by paid mercenaries.
The key question, though, isn’t whether President Obama has worked to keep his promises, but whether he’s been effective. Yes, President Obama worked to overhaul health care, but he wasted an entire year and the bulk of his political capital on a tepid health care bill. And in recent months, the Obama administration has been repealing parts of the very same health care law it passed. For example, the long term health insurance plan was dropped from the health care law back in October.
In his Iowa win speech, candidate Obama said, “I’ll be a President who finally makes health care affordable and available to every single American”.  We’ll see. But thus far, it doesn’t appear as if Obamacare is the law to make that happen. It may be a bill that another, much bolder, Democratic President can use as a stepping stone to make health care affordable, but it’s certainly not the end game.
And Obama did give middle class and working people a tax cut, but he gave even more in the way of bailouts to special interest groups and bankers. So, there’s also the question of proportionality.  It’s not just a question of whether Obama worked to fulfill some of his promises, but whether or not he was effective and whether or not he made the people who voted for him a priority over the corporations and lobbyists. Judged by that criterion, I believe President Obama’s first term has been an epic failure.
Enhanced by Zemanta