BREAKING: Black man can’t get a little credit
Here’s Barack Obama’s problem: He makes it look too easy.
His is a presidency that is flooded with accomplishments and astoundingly lacking in gaffes and scandals. He has returned this economy to just about where it was before the Great Recession hit, reversing a tide of attrition that lasted nearly a decade. He ended systematic discrimination of gays and lesbians by our military and passed the first system of near universal health care in American history.
This all follows his ascent to become the first African-American president defeating the most entrenched and qualified opponent in generations.
And, apparently, to many Americans this looks easy.
Even lists of his accomplishments don’t seem to help much: 50 here, 218 here. No perfection here but a wealth of incredible achievements. I won’t argue that there isn’t room for improvement in areas that are political tightropes, particularly in civil liberties. (Literally, I won’t. Don’t try.) But the sure mass of this success should be undeniable to any objective observer.
How do I know he’s making it look too easy? Listen to the critics.
They know exactly what this President should have done.
They know what he should have done instead of health care reform, the exact day he should have extended the debt ceiling forever. They forget he was denied 60 votes in the Senate for months by a GOP lawsuit in Minnesota and always fail to remember that when he had 60 votes one of them was Joe Lieberman.The critics could have done everything this President did plus a public option and an Arab Spring that came with free military bases. And they would have gotten bin Laden WITH Pakistan’s permission.
Apparently becoming the first black President less than after the end of segregation is something that hadn’t been done before because no one knew how easy it would be. No one except this President’s critics.
And the critics are on both sides.
Take the withdrawal from Iraq. People forget that this President ran against this war. He opposed it as a state legislator and called it a dumb war throughout his campaign, using Hilary Clinton’s vote for the war against her. So when the President completed the withdrawal of Iraq ahead of schedule you got complaints on both sides. From the left: he was just following Bush’s schedule and we’re still there in our giant embassy! From the right: we should still be there!
To most this would suggest the President threaded the needle perfectly. But to his critics the noise just justified more noise.
And I blame the President. He makes this look TOO easy.
I mean look at him introducing one of his law professors in 1990.
In 1990, this man was more charming, more together, more at ease than Mitt Romney will ever be in his entire life.
So how dare he make look navigating the wake of the worst presidency in modern history so easy? For this, his critics will never forgive him.
I’ve said it before: if a Republican president had done half of what this President did in one term, he’d be on the dime, Mt. Rushmore and the top of the Washington Monument telling the world where they can put their critics. But this President just smiles and makes it look easy. And slowly, far too slowly, people are getting it.
