The Year In Review Part I

If there might be one thing that democrats and republicans would agree on, it is that the last year has been a busy year in Washington. Our current president was voted into office a year ago with a wave of optimism and hope that had not been seen since the Kennedy era. The country was reeling from what everyone feared (and soon to be officially confirmed) was the worst recession since the Great Depression. There was an undercurrent of hope that a new leader would somehow bring us out of this national funk that had existed for the past several years.

How would you grade the president’s performance as a leader since taking office in January 2009? What has he done and what is still left to do for him to be considered a mediocre, good or even a great president? What events could take place that would have him as one of the more forgettable leaders of our time? Would he quiet his critics who said that he had little or no executive experience? Could he begin to make a case for a second term?

It is fair to say that leaders do not succeed or fail in a vacuum. They have help. We have had average presidents who have surrounded themselves with great people and therefore became great. We have had very intelligent chief executives who have been pounded by the opposition and by circumstances largely not of their own making and been forgotten.

Pounded by the opposition is a fair way to describe what happened to Obama in the weeks after he took office. The Republican Party reeling from a defeat where they lost both the Executive Branch in 2008 and both houses of Congress in 2006, began their attack of the new president as soon as he and his family moved into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. His detractors on the right were many. But the most vocal in the early days was conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh who simply said that he wished the President “would fail.” Conservatives branded him a socialist and even some democrats questioned the amount of money lent to the financial sector and others under the guise of a stimulus. To many it looked like a big giveaway to the biggest and greediest banks in the country who some accused of starting this financial crisis.

But these are unusual times. There were few similarities in the first six months between our former president and Barack Obama. George W. Bush inherited a relatively healthy America. Though peaked by 2000, Bush had been voted into office in the most robust economic climate in a generation. Our country’s economy was stable with a balanced federal budget and a deficit dating back to the Reagan administration that had been erased. Some of the administrative oversight seen in the previous democratic administration was relaxed in favor of a self regulation. Bush in the early days of his administration laid out a conservative agenda that included a stem cell research ban and announced it as a priority to crackdown on pornography in the United States headed by his newly confirmed Attorney General John Ashcroft. Some said that he would be a “caretaker president” who simply presided over a calm and self-sustaining American economy. Though the President of the United State never really gets a full vacation, within the first eight months George Bush took 96 days of vacation. The only president with more vacation time under his belt was his father George H.W. Bush. Of course the Bush agenda changed with 911.


Contrast this with Barack Obama’s first six months in office. The president, from the moment he took office was under siege by an economic meltdown. Our stock market was dropping like a rock. The auto industry was failing. Our real estate market, long the bell weather for our economy was in an unprecedented slump not seen since the great depression and our banking system was in a shambles. This was just the beginning. Unemployment was rising at an unchecked rate. Small business and Main Street were badly wounded with consumer spending and confidence down dramatically. AIG, among the largest insurers in the world was in need of a government bailout because of bad investments by just a few unchecked employees. Our national debt was exploding to levels never seen before. This and we were fighting wars on two fronts one of which we were mired in with no defined mission or exit strategy. Our economic problems interconnected with European and Asian economies. Their economies were following ours with rising unemployment and an economic downturn. It was a perfect storm of devastatingly bad news worldwide. While candidate for President John McCain called the “fundamentals of our economy essentially strong,” few could look at the glass as half full.

In the past we had sectors of poor performance in the economy while others did well. But our country had seen nothing approaching an assault of our economy of this scale in our generation. Muslim extremists went as far as saying that it was the crumbling of the Infidels’ Western Civilization built around capitalism.

These were the conditions that existed in the US economy in January, 2009. If you had money, it was a great time to buy. But few had any wealth to speak of. Stock values and personal portfolios dropped. Home equity evaporated. Manufacturing had disintegrated. New orders for goods and capital expenditures came to a halt. The real estate industry which had been flying high just a year and a half before was laying off agents and brokerages were closing. Foreclosures were at levels not seen since the Great Depression. Mortgage brokers and departments were being eliminated. You counted yourself lucky if you had a job.

In the next week, we will examine the steps taken to turn around the faltering economy. How far have we come in the past year and what is left to accomplish to turn around the faltering American economy? How has America rebounded in the past year? What is left to do and how well would you grade the existing administration in attempting to fix our economy? What about the President's agenda to move our country forward? The answers in part II.