Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Obama's low approval in spite of accomplishments

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/09/12/fineman-what-went-wrong-for-obama-and-the-dems.html

November Elections are still seven weeks from now, but some feel President Obama has failed over the past two years and now will lose some of the fifty five seats in the House that were taken from the Republicans. Howard Fineman, of Newsweek, feels Obama did not accomplish the things he set out to accomplish.

Fineman, who called Obama an “overachiever”, feels the 2008 election was one that chose Obama as president. Not his “more expansive view of the role and reach of government”, but rather him as a man. For a lot of the prior presidency, the executive branch kept the federal government from meddling in state affairs. Gray Davis was governor of California at this time, and was known for doing things like enacting a 789 billion dollar stimulus plan, making educationa a priority, relaxing anti-American tensions around the world, and winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Actually those were several of Obama’s contributions. The former state governor was recalled weeks into his second term. California is arguably the most important state of the union right next to New York. New York’s governer in 2008 was Eliot Spitzer who needed to be replaced after a prostitution ring incident by Rod Blagojevich, who needed to be replaced after dirty business dealings, by David Paterson, who is legally blind and who hasn’t committed any crimes we know of while in office. States do not make bad decisions when left to their own devices, whether the issue is immigration in Arizona, civil rights in Alabama, or voting that two people who love each other should not be able to marry in California. They make terrible decisions.

Fineman goes on to accuse President Obama of not doing enough to help the economy, specifically the middle class. While the economy is still suffering, it’s not the steaming pile left on the lawn of the Whitehouse by the previous administration that it was two years ago. The real estate business is one of the hardest hit yet experts claim that the decline in real estate is definitely over. The workers of General Motors got to keep their jobs a lot longer in part due to Obama’s insistence that GM restructure itself before receiving bailout money or additional incentive funds. President Obama allowed Medicare to hold negotiations with pharmaceutical companies in order get drugs cheaper, saving the taxpayers hundreds of millions. His American Recoveries and Re-investments Act created 2.1 million jobs in the course of one year. Enhancing manufacturing, medical, and labor fields domestically will not solve every problem, but certainly helps a lot of middle class Americans, and despite being fought too and claw by the republican party/fox news, Obama has not been the Christ incarnate some people imagined, but has accomplished a great deal in two years to undo the trouble someone else spent eight years creating.

2 comments:

  1. Sounds rather rational and levelheaded (except for the "steaming pile" phrase, which seems to step out of voice).

    The lack of sentence variety (virtually every sentence is SVO -- subject verb object) makes for a steady drumming rhythm.

    RE: the argument, it seems like it tries to tackle too many. There are so many facts but not a unifying theme to draw them all together. Your disagreement with Fineman is rather understated -- I'd like to see that put higher in the piece.

    As far as formatting, try to break up the paragraphs a bit more and integrate the hyperlink into the text.

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