He was one of the most liberal senators in America, He is not that now so I don't know if you can say obama is who we thought he was.
Well, he's who he told us he was: a pragmatist who would seek consensus above all. If you thought he'd govern as a liberal, you were projecting your own wishes on him and ignoring his words. And those ratings of most/least liberal/conservative aren't particularly instructive, especially when it comes to liberals. There are virtually no liberals in the Senate. Kennedy was one, Bernie Sanders is one. Russ Feingold is one on very select issues. Other than that, they're pretty much all moderates.
I thought he'd be more of a leader and able to push things through. In that regards I am disappointed. He has fallen short in the Charisma department. I think he made a mistake by using his popularity on health care. Instead, he should have just focused on job creation and financial reform. Had he done that he'd have stayed popular and gained political power. Instead he made the same mistake as Clinton by going after idealism and health care reform. Nobel, but not politically smart. That's the problem with Obama - he approaches things too rationally and not with enough political perception. They way he responds to disasters is with - hey, let's actually consider each option and try the smartest thing when instead he should be opting for the right words and photo ops and just making it look like he's moving aggressively. He should have taken a page from Rudy Guilliani after 9/11. Appearances and words matter so much. Obama isn't Machiavellian enough and that is why his ratings are down. If he doesn't learn quick he's going to get chewed up and won't be re-elected.
Your points are generally well-made and not far off the mark. But there are two things you have to consider. 1. On ability to push things through: no president in the history of our nation has faced such united, stalwart opposition in Congress to every single thing he's tried to do -- an opposition, by the way, that is not above constant, consistent lies, distortions and rabble-rousing. It is truly unique in our country's history and nobody could have predicted its extremity. This was a political calculation on the part of the GOP and I'm not sure any president could have done a better job of combatting it. When the opposition party is calling a moderate (overly obsessed with bi-partisanship long after the GOP made clear they would not compromise on a single thing but would rather oppose everything -- even legislation they themselves had recently proposed) a socialist, a communist and a Nazi, well, what would you do? What would anyone? 2. Say what you want about health care; he got it done. It is both wrong and insane to suggest he is ineffectual in any way when you consider that (while Republicans excepting Nixon have entirely ignored the problem), Democratic presidents have tried and failed for decades upon decades to do what Obama did. He did it. Hard to call such an historic achievement a mistake. To the extent that it was a political miscalculation, see #1 above. Anything he tried to do would have been met with the exact same passionate and profoundly dishonest resistance, whether jobs, the economy, any sort of reform whatsoever, etc. In the face of all that, even after losing the 60th seat in the Senate, he got it done.
It's funny that considering options and doing the smartest thing is considered the bad choice, while posing for photo ops is considered the good one. I would suggest if that's the case, then it's our priorities that are wrong - not his.
I am not sure about number 1 being true. Many presidents have faced severe opposition and this kind of congress - maybe not in the past few terms but if you look at our history it's actually been much worse in the past. And for number 2 - he did push it through but you know what, he used up all his political capital on it and it's not even popular. And worst of all, it won't contain costs and politically was very dangerous for him since now rising costs will be blamed on his health plan (and costs will continue to rise no matter what plan is passed). we can debate the value of covering off on another 30 million people (until this mgiht get repealed) but unless those 30 million come out and vote in the next election he might be sunk. It's still very early in his presidency and right now it's in hopefully it's darkest hour - if that's the case then in a years time he'll have the last laugh - which I hope is the case. But right now, he's got to learn to balance his idealism with the practicalities of being a president in this political climate. He didn't get an easy hand dealt to him but the best poker players manage to win anyway.
Only in right-wing fantasy world. He was not remotely liberal in terms of actual policy in either the Illinois Senate or the US Senate. He has always - and has continued to - use liberal rhetoric as a starting point to negotiate ultimate solutions that were fairly moderate-liberal. If you were surprised by what his Presidency is, it's because you listened to his political opponents instead of looking at what he actually did.
Name one opposition Congress that was remotely like this one - at any point in our history. That was always going to be the case. The point of having political capital is to use it - and he did so to make a historic change that people had been fighting for for decades. You seem obsessed with the politics of it. Leadership is about doing what is necessary, not what is politically popular. The bottom line is the health care bill improves the lives of millions of people and does, in fact, bend the cost curve (how much, we're not really sure). The fact that it made him personally less popular is secondary to the equation - he was elected to do stuff, not just to be popular. He's won at everything he's tried so far - health care, financial reform, stimulus, etc. He'll lose eventually (climate change, probably) - but his track record of actual accomplishments is substantially better than any Democrat in recent history.
Like I said, it's about managing perception without making it obvious you are managing perception. It's more important that people THINK he's doing everything that can be done rather than the REALITY. Reagan was a master of this, so was Clinton. They understood this. Bush has more leniency because he was charming and his values were more in tune with a relatively conservative nation. There is nothing Obama can do about this oil spill. Nothing. Not at least now. At first, he took a logical approach. And it blew up in his face. Now he's trying to catch-up with the photo ops and such. But too late, he missed it. What he should do now is come up with some hair brain scheme that he can claim saved the day. Like sending in the whole navy to set up some oil trap to save Florida or whatever. Some kind of mass project that can at least look like it's doing some good and that the public will love. Like a hollywood script ya know? Obama should have taken Jindhal's ideas and than expanded it further and acted immediately upon them. It doesn't matter if they were great ideas or actually worked or not. People don't care. They just want to see someone taking charge and trying 50 things. That's how it works.
I disagree - I think that's what makes a President popular, but not what makes a President good. Lincoln certainly didn't go for popularity when he stood up against the South - but it was nevertheless the right thing to do. If a President manages to fix our Social Security / Medicare / Budget problem, they are probably going to be one of the least popular Presidents, but they will have been very important and very successful in their role as a leader of a country. I'd much rather have a President that addresses important problems and risks get booted out of office than one that just manages his approval ratings by not actually sticking his neck out to do stuff.
To be fair, the Obama campaign did its dead-level best to keep the campaign about generalities, and succeeded more than I've ever seen before. So when he campaigned on "Hope", or "fixing healthcare", or "promoting a more equitable society", or "making the rich pay their fair share", or "changing the way Washington does business", most of the public projected what they thought it meant onto it. Liberals projected that it meant that he would promote liberal policies for those ideas, moderates projected that it meant that he would promote moderate policies for those ideas, and even some conservatives projected that it meant he would promote conservative policies for those ideas.
I understand what you are saying, and I am not saying OBama shouldn't do anything of substance. What I am saying is that if a prez doesn't take care of the public perception aspect of it he'll never get anything important done either. In order to be a Lincoln you have to be a master of perception. This is why Lincoln could succeed despite being so hated that half the country literally split itself away from him when he was elected. And it's why Jimmy Carter failed. Right now, Obama is more similar to Carter than Lincoln.
This was true to an extent in his large stump speeches - but the level of specific policy detail he articulated in the campaign as a whole was far greater than McCain, and also more so than most recent candidates. Here's an article on the white-paper gap between Obama and McCain: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0708/12215.html As noted in the article, a lot of it was forced due to the primaries when it was basically a policy wonk debate between him, Hillary, and John Edwards. But it continued on through the general election where he really very specifically laid out the details of his agenda.
That may be true - but again, Obama has accomplished a lot of important things already. In fact, I'd say the stimulus, the health care reform, and the upcoming financial regulation are each a bigger and more significant piece of legislation than anything any of his recent predecessors pulled off. So, while it seems like his popularity would be holding him back, it doesn't appear to be once you look at the actual record. If either of immigration reform or climate change pass in the next 2 years, he'll have 4 major policy accomplishments that surpass even the single biggest policy accomplishment of the last few Presidents.
It was also true in his interviews, and even his hour-long commercials that he ran. He certainly put his actual views out there for those who cared enough, but he also did a fantastic job of keeping the details out of the public conversation.
