Defining a Successful Presidency

After the presidential elections back in 2008, Rush Limbaugh said that he hoped Obama would fail.  Of course this brought lots of negative comments that the legacy and new age media were happy to replay, reprint, misstate and all with their own special brand of opinion attached.  Mr. Limbaugh's comments were in response to President-elect Obama's promise to "fundamentally change America".

OK, so what would exemplify a successful or a failed administration?  It depends on your political or ideological reference. Let's look


Conservative on what a successful or failed presidency would entail

If you are a rank and file conservative, you would define a 'failed presidency' as one where ...
- we created more enemies around the world while giving them the impression that we can't or won't defend ourselves
- many Americans can no longer find gainful employment
- government must step in and "care" for more and more Americans
- government treats people unequally under the law
- illegal aliens are given a free pass with benefits
- our people are murdered in foreign countries with no subsequent response from us
- we go out of our way to illegally return 5 terrorists in leadership positions to fight against us
-  religion is removed from the public arena
- the Federal Reserve does not hand over hundreds of billions of unfunded taxpayer dollars to large, too big to fail, financial institutions and tacking the amounts to the national debt

While a successful presidency might be one where ...
- other nations and groups respected the USA, or at least were hesitant to launch attacks against us
- the leader of the free world built confidence among the people and gave them high hopes for the future.
- one where the proven strategies, traditions and common sense ruled over change for the sake of change and political expediency.
- people and groups were not persecuted for having opposing views.
- the economy didn't suffer due to ever more regulations and higher taxes.
-  the people didn't suffer because we were not being treated equally under the law.
-  government stayed out of individual lives as much as possible.
- and the church and private charities, rather than the government, were the charitable organization.


Progressive on what a successful or failed presidency would entail

A progressive might believe that the administration had failed if ...
- there are more wealthy Americans, an expanding middle class, and higher wages
- there are fewer countries appeared to be friendly towards us and our allies were unsure that we had their back
- there will be no universal healthcare
- he did not stop the use of fossil fuels
- we had to spend money on our military
- he did not make conservatives and religion irrelevant
- and if he does not turn all unused land and temporary bodies of water (puddles and ditches) into environmentally protected zones

On the other hand they might conclude that the presidency was successful if the president's administration ...
- did reduce the number of "rich" people and increase the number of governmentally dependent
- enacted a "living wage" requirement
- spend much more money on the "poor" and poor illegal aliens
- drastically reduced the size and budget of the military
- where more countries pretended to like us
- removed personal responsibility from everyone and made life one happy day after another with the benevolent government taking care of everything.

My Rating of the Obama administration's 6 years in office

I would grade the Obama administration as a failure due to their record of...
- the slowest job growth in the history of the country
- for encouraging twelve million adult Americans to give up on finding a job
- for touting millions of jobs created where almost half are part time jobs and many being entry level wage jobs with no benefits
- for leading from behind
- for constantly blaming others for the problems they cannot solve
- for losing the peace in the Middle East
- for bowing to foreign heads of state
- for adding more to the national debt than all the other 43 preceding presidents combined
- for increasing by half the number of families on government assistance
- for transferring trillions of dollars directly to the banks that caused the economic strife in 2008 while leaving the middle class hanging with lot jobs, homes and savings/equity - giving that to the banks as well (we wouldn't Wall Street to lose their bonuses)
- and for believing that they have to lie and hide what they are doing from the American people.