I thought I’d take the temperature of this board with regard to Obama’s presidency so far. He was a rock star there for a while, but I suppose it was inevitable that realpolitik would eventually set in, and his ratings would go down.
So, what has he (or the current administration) done well? Not so well?
How do you feel about his leadership? Domestic policy? Foreign policy?
I think he’s doing about as well as can be expected given that he inherited a tanking economy, and a double-fronted war. He hasn’t moved as quickly as a lot of people hoped on some things like emptying Gitmo and rescinding DADT, but those things aren’t all that easy to do. I like that he’s at least TRYING on health care, he’s sticking to his promise to get out of Iraq and he hasn’t had any genuine scandals yet (when the best his opponents can do is stuff like Mustard-Gate, Date-Gate and “stupidly”-Gate, you know he’s in good shape).
He did a bang up job with those pirates.
Right now, I give him about a B. I’m not somebody who was expecting miracles anyway. I think the fact that he kept Sarah Palin from being old man’s heartbeat away from the White House is tantamount to saving the universe already.
It’s still been less than a year. It’s not really enough to judge. Bill Clinton was a little shaky in his first year, then once he learned what he was doing, he was one of the most effective and successful Presidents of the 20th Century, really undoing a lot of the damage that Reagan had done. Dick and Bush trashed the joint even worse than Reagan, though, so Obama has a lot of work to do.
The answer to this and every other similar thread already posted or that will be posted in the next year is: too early to tell. Guy has been in office less than six months, has managed to avoid nuking Canada when ordering lunch, but that’s about it.
So far fine.
I predict that the answers will be, for the most part:
Voted for Obama: “Doing okay, so far. He’s done some things that I think he could’ve done better, but he’s doing pretty well.”
Voted against Obama: “Worst. President. Evar.”
I didn’t vote for him but I won’t say he is the worst ever.
The real disappointment to me is Pelosi, Reed and all the other dead weight that isn’t helping his cause one bit. Key-Rist! With the power of his party, he should be able to make good on the “Change” or whatever it was he was foisting, and really mix shit up!
I just see “more of the same”. And where the hell is my damn free healthcare? 
Great answer-if the title of this thread was “IYHO-Predict how others will say Obama is doing”.
Care to respond to the poll?
Looking at him as a Brit, it’s far too early to form a judgement. Get back to me in a year or so.
So far so good - I think it is a wise idea to try to accomplish as much as possible, as soon as possible. If he can get even half of what he is trying to do completed by the end of the year, we will be in a far better place.
Taking on health care, immigration, Guantanamo, Iraq, economy and a few other huge issues was never going to be easy. However, by trying to accomplish a lot - fast - he will be in a far better position to tweak these and fine tune them by the next election - and by then I think people will start to see, and reap, the benefits.
The strategy might seem to be all over the map right now, but by jumping head-first into several projects at the same time, he has a better chance to get a few in place, a few more in-line, and a few more in deeper negotiations.
As someone who voted for “change”, I think Obama is doing his damnedest to accomplish what he promised to do.
I’m not terribly happy with him. That he hasn’t “nuked Canada” is certainly in his favor, but there’s not much else positive to say about him.
The congressional and senatorial Democrats seem to be running all over him, and both him and the legislative branches seem to be blissfully unaware of the CBO.
Outside of financial issues, certainly he’s kept on significantly more of Bush’s Iraq/Anti-terrorism stuff than one would have thought, but personally I don’t mind that. I’d just rather that if he changed his position after getting new data that he’d said, “Alright, now that I’m in the big chair and getting all the Top Secret info I didn’t used to have, it seems that I am better to not be so hasty on a lot of these things which seemed unnecessary before.” Ain’t nothing wrong with changing your mind, and you just look flimsy when you don’t admit it.
And after that, I’m not really aware of anything that he has done.
He’s doing about as well as can be expected. I voted for him, but I don’t think America is going to be able to recover to anywhere near our former level of influence and prosperity. I want a president who is going to help America make a soft landing.
Sorry, I meant to add:
I voted for him. I think he’s doing an okay job.
You say that like it is a good thing… 
Put me in the too soon to tell crowd.
Even though I don’t agree with much of his politics I think he’s doing ok, but he’s fairly naive. He flip-flops on a lot of things. Bad judgement to weigh in on the Gates arrest, especially without all the facts. His administration wants to be very “open”, but it’s also very image-conscious, maybe too much. I think he stands a good chance of getting something done on the healthcare issue, for better or worse, probably better in the long run.
You know I didn’t vote for him, right?
Like:
Dislike:
His unending sense of urgency. Someone told me that this is how politics are done in Chicago, but I find his constant demand to rush through things without due consideration to be very off-putting. Every damn thing is a crisis, and we can only advert it by doing whatever he wants right now! He acts like someone who expects to be assassinated or impeached halfway through their first term, so they need to do everything as quickly as possible for his legacy, consequences be damned. It really belies people trying to pass him off as thoughtful when no one even has time to read the bills or give due consideration to the appointments he wants to force through on the back of yet another crisis.
I’m pro-life and oppose fetal stem cell research (other stem cell research is fine, though. I’d love to see a campaign to encourage new mothers to donate their newborns’ cord blood to researchers, because those stem cells have a lot of promise) so he hasn’t won any points with me on his new policies in those arenas.
In short, I don’t like him. But you knew that.
Not the worst ever, but not doing much positive, and too much negative.
Too early to tell. But, so far, he’s doing about as well as I had expected, and I’m pretty happy with him. I think he could be more aggressive on issues I care about (which tend to be left-leaning, like gay marriage, universal health care, and the like), but he’s pretty much been the centrist (from my perspective, at any rate, I understand others will see him as leftist, and I have other friends who see him only nominally to the left of Bush) I expected him to be.
It seems like he’s doing as well as possible given the circumstances.
I voted for him.
The good stuff: talking intelligently to the people, admitting mistakes, and the very sense of urgency that elfkin477 doesn’t like. As time goes on there will be this problem and that problem - the time to do the big stuff is early with a blank slate. People will criticize either the government for not doing anything or moving too quickly - given the state of things, I prefer the latter. This stuff takes a while to get moving, and it is a good thing for us to be able to see the impact before Nov. 2010.
I think he deserves credit for putting some backbone into the Pakistanis. The tide even turned a bit.
Two negatives. I wish more stimulus would have gone directly to the states, because their cuts are working against the recovery. I’m glad he didn’t bail out California, but more would have been good.
I wish he puts more effort into dividing the Republicans. Asking for input at the beginning was fine, since their rejecting compromise shows who is to blame, but now there should be more ignoring the trogs and working with the few moderates left. Maybe this is happening in the background.
if the economy keeps improving, he might look like a genius by the beginning of next year - well in time for the next Congressional elections.
I worked for his campaign for a month, and am a bit disappointed that there hasn’t been more, and quicker, movement on issues I care about. But as Mike Huckabee said “Obama is more likely to disappoint his friends on the Left than annoy his enemies on the Right”.
The highlight so far was seeing an American President give a speech in Egypt and having people in the audience yelling out "We love you!’ Gave me goosebumps.