President Barack Obama spent his first year in office struggling to fulfill campaign promises of hope and change; however to many Americans and USD students, trying isn’t good enough.
Registered Democrat and USD senior history major Nathan Dobney said the president misled voters in order to get elected.
‘I really bought into him during the election,’ he said. ‘He promised to reverse the Patriot Act. He didn’t. He promised to close Gitmo. He didn’t. He walked away from a lot of things that got people excited about him.’
Obama did attempt to close the terrorist detainee camp in Cuba through an executive order and also fix the economy by signing the $787
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, also known as the bail out, however his efforts didn’t bear the fruits of success, Dobney said.
‘There are still prisoners being tortured in Cuba and the economy is still tanking,’ he said. ‘Obama hasn’t done anything yet.’
Junior Matt Blake, College Democrats member, said Obama has done as good of a job as could be expected, given the nature of the partisan political climate and the bold agenda he has pursued.
‘I think he has done reasonably well. It takes time and patience to get bills passed,’ Blake said. ‘As a letter grade I would give him a B-minus overall.’
Political science faculty at USD aren’t sure a proper analyses can be made because a year isn’t a long enough time period to judge Obama’s moves.
‘Not that we’re here to assign grades, but I’d have to give him an incomplete at this point,’ said Eric Jepsen, assistant political science professor. ‘The year might be over, but he still hasn’t turned in all of his papers.’
Former president of the USD Black Student Union senior Marque Snow, registered Democrat, said he still supports Obama and his policy ambitions but said he understands some concerns people have.
‘People are justifiably impatient right now,’ Snow said. ‘Unemployment is still at 10 percent, 14 percent in Detroit. Nobody wants that.’
Policies have been formulated but nothing major has been passed and implemented, he said. The things Obama did get done, Jepsen said, can’t be called ‘accomplishments.’
‘The Obama administration says the stimulus package kept the economy from being worse than it is now, while others disagree with that,’ Jepsen said. ‘To call that an accomplishment depends on what you think about what he did.’
Law student and registered Repubican Joseph Kippley said Obama mistakenly tried to do too much too quickly.
‘I think Obama started out a bit na’iuml;ve to the extent of some of his large electoral mandates,’ Kippley said. ‘He overextended himself on a lot of issues like healthcare. He basically bit off more than he can chew.’
People want and expected big changes in large-scale policy issues because of some of Obama’s campaign promises but probably shouldn’t have, said William Anderson, Government Research Bureau director and USD assistant professor. They haven’t seen it yet, he said, although it might be too early to give him a grade.
‘The American public is notoriously fickle,’ he said. ‘The public wants quick answers to large problems and that’s just unreal.’
Jepsen said the ambitions Obama had of passing health care reform, cap and trade and multiple other aggressive policy changes by 2010 faded as the 2009 went on without any real progress in these areas.
Despite not being able to fulfill some his higher profile campaign promises, Obama may have laid the groundwork for future successes in his first year as president, referencing the president’s trip to the Middle East, Jepsen said.
‘The speech in Cairo was a heck of speech,’ he said. ‘Maybe it will pay dividends down the road with regards to fostering change in the Arab world.’
Anderson said Obama also helped to better the image of America throughout the world.
‘With his trip to Cairo and the Mideast, he did a tremendous amount of coalition building,’ he said.
Typical Washington partisanship is also to blame Obama’s inability to fulfill some of his campaign promises, Jepsen said.
‘Politics is politics. I don’t think the Republicans have worked with him on certain things,’ he said. ‘With health care, I think (Republicans) dragged their feet. They never really wanted to engage.’
Obama’s first year as commander in chief did produce some definite policy changes although they were not central to his campaign platform, Anderson said.
In June, he signed a bill putting the tobacco industry under the control of the Food and Drug Administration. Companies like Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds will now have to adhere to guidelines dictating the amount of nicotine that can be put in tobacco products and also mandate what types of warning labels are on the product packages.
Hurdles placed in front of Obama or any president by an opposing party aren’t necessarily a negative thing however, Jepsen said.
‘The republicans are an opposition party for a reason. They ran a campaign against certain reforms so why would they work (across the aisle)?’ he said.
Jepsen said in order for Obama to be considered a successful president, the bottom line for the American public is going to be the economy.
‘It all depends on the economy,’ he said. ‘At the end of the day, that’s what Americans are going to be focused on.’
The national unemployment rate, despite signs of improvement in November, increased again in December, according to the U.S. Labor Department’s monthly report. South Dakota, however, saw its unemployment rate drop .02 percent. It was the only state in the country to see a decrease in its unemployment rate. All 50 states have an unemployment rate that is worse today than it was one year ago.
Obama continues to face an enormous economic challenge due in part to factors that are external to government control, Jepsen said.
‘There are things that can be done but a lot of this is going to have to be wait and see,’ he said.
Reach reporter Joe Sneve at Joe.Sneve@usd.edu.
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