WEEK TWO - The Predecessor
Barack Obama was a historic President. He was also divisive, and remains so to this day. From 2009 - 2017, this Democrat President faced a number of crises and opponents that often threatened to derail his regime.
However, since he left office, the verdict on Obama's presidency has been very mixed. Research and explore online different opinions about Obama's successes and failures.
These links will provide you with a starting point:
PRO Obama:
Neutral:
ANTI Obama:
Barack Obama:
ReplyDeletePRO Obama…
• He saw the country through the Great Recession, got the USA out of Iraq, passed health care reform, and is aggressively moving to address climate change.
• Upon taking office, Obama quickly passed a large stimulus bill to mitigate the effects of the recession. Since the economy finally reached its bottom at the beginning of 2010, the USA has seen the creation of 14 million private sector jobs.
• Obama followed through on his promise to remove American troops and end George W. Bush's catastrophic war.
• On health care, by passing comprehensive reform, Obama did what Bill Clinton failed to do and what Democrats had spent decades trying to accomplish.
• And on climate change, Obama got something of a late start, but he has moved aggressively, with new regulations on auto efficiency and power plant emissions, along with an historic agreement just signed in Paris which committed virtually every nation on earth to a common effort to reduce carbon emissions.
• Other accomplishments include the nuclear agreement with Iran, the normalization of relations with Cuba, new Wall Street regulations, saving the American auto industry, ordering the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, ending discrimination against gays in the military and pushing for the legalization of same-sex marriage, and avoiding the kind of major scandal that plagued so many of his predecessors.
ANTI Obama…
• “Securing the historic Paris climate agreement.” - The accord was never submitted to Congress as a treaty. It will be ignored by President-elect Donald Trump.
• “Achieving the Iran nuclear deal.” - That “deal” was another effort to circumvent the treaty-ratifying authority of Congress. It has green-lighted Iranian aggression, and it probably ensured nuclear proliferation. Iran’s violations will cause the new Trump administration to either scrap the accord or send it to Congress for certain rejection.
• “Destroying ISIL” and “dismantling al Qaeda.” – We are at last making some progress against some of these “jayvee” teams, as Mr. Obama once described the Islamic State. Neither group has been dismantled or destroyed. Despite the death of Osama bin Laden, the widespread reach of radical Islam into Europe and the United States remains largely unchecked.
• “Ending combat missions in Afghanistan and Iraq.” - The Afghan war rages on. The precipitous withdrawal of all U.S. peacekeepers in 2011 from a quiet Iraq helped sow chaos in the rest of the Middle East. We are now sending more troops back into Iraq.
• “Closing Guantanamo Bay.” - This was an eight-year broken promise. The detention centre still houses dangerous terrorists.
Neutral…
ReplyDelete• Over the course of Obama's presidency, one basic trend was clear across a variety of economic indicators: After he took office, things got worse before they got better. That's not his fault, of course; President Obama took office in the middle of a devastating recession, and he introduced a stimulus bill that helped pull the country out of its plunge. Since then, many areas of the economy have (slowly but surely) recovered nicely. However, many Americans remain permanently scarred by the recession. In addition, many structural problems (inequality, better incomes for men, whites and Asians than for other Americans) remain.
• One big way that politics has changed under President Obama: His party has lost major ground. A majority in both houses of Congress helped him pass major legislation early in his first term, like the Affordable Care Act and the Dodd-Frank financial regulation reform law. But after that, Republicans gained ground, taking away Democrats' hold on power. Democrats are now at their lowest point of power than at any time in nearly a century.
• Following an existing trend, violence in the U.S. continued to fall off during Obama's presidency. However, there are some hints of trouble. There was a slight uptick in violent crime in 2016, especially in some cities, which may or may not simply be a statistical blip. There has also been a recent uptick in the shooting deaths of police officers, though levels are still lower than they were in the 1990s.
• The big health policy story of Obama's years was Obamacare, which helped drive the uninsured rate down to historic lows. Not only that, but the rate of cost growth has slowed down. Still, costs of premiums continue to grow, and to keep costs controlled for customers, companies put a lot more emphasis on high-deductible plans.