How Bad a Year Was It For President Obama?

++The Washington pundits are almost unanimous that this was Obama's worst year as President. Only E.J.Dionne dissented,saying the Fiscal Cliff negotiations in 2011 were Obama's worst moment.

++The botched Healthcare.gov website promoted the conservative refrain that this was the death knell of liberalism. Even David Brooks showed up on the Sunday talk shows to say that this challenged whether government could manage anything large. Of course, it manages the IRS,Social Security,Medicare and Medicaid with very low cost and high efficiency. Liberals ran in to say that Medicaid Part B had an atrocious beginning. But they never defended what millions of us already had through Obamacare. The whole debate centered around the individual market and the surge of enrollments looks decent to good.

++During the Government shutdown, many of us thought Obama would cave in some way to the Republicans. Obama and the Democrats held firm. The Beltway pundits claim the GOP has been chastened by its failure and with the new budget deal we will avoid this over the next two years. The finished budget doesn't really take shape until January 15 when the committees have to allocate their spoils. The budget was $200 billion less than President Obama wanted. But it is hard to say that the GOP won when they threatened to close the government down because of Obamacare. The fickle media abruptly turned around in their game of false equivalence to shift the website woes onto Obama since they knew he won the shutdown fight.

++Did any of the scandals probed by Darryl Issa turn out to be real and implicate President Obama? The IRA personnel were all Republicans,the Benghazi fiasco was incoherent and Obamacare turned out to be a bureacratic miscue. So far,the GOP has done nothing but try to drive the President's numbers down. I propose the reason for this is their desire to impeach the President. The vitriol they hold against Barack Obama has increased, not lessened over time. Karl Rove predicts the President's approval rating will continue to decline,especially if he has anything to do with it. But compare President Obama's 41 approval rating, his low, with the 7% of Congress. Rarely do you hear the comparison when Congress' will affect the next election.

++What about Syria? The President was denied approval by Congress to conduct military strikes against Assad. Left-wing Democrats claimed that they may have found new partners with the libertarian Right. I suggest the GOP has become isolationist and will not support any foreign policy initiative by President Obama. So what was the result? The destruction of the chemical weapons in Syria and the destruction of the plants that manufacture them. Not bad for not firing a shot.

++President Obama against the advice of thinkers like Paul Krugman vowed to cut the deficit in half. He has done that and it will probably be more by summer.

++President Obama with the peripatetic Secretary of State John Kerry started the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks again and will soon deliver the final security arrangements for such a deal. 

++President Obama promised the end of America's longest war in Afghanistan. If the price is 10,000 remaining troops, so be it but it looks like it is on schedule.

++The United States and its allies reached an interim agreement with Iran over its nuclear program. As I have written, the deal is several times better than I expected and may pave the way to a larger Iranian deal. This year will be a contest of whether Iran's hardliners can spoil the deal or the United States Senate by imposing more sanctions while the negotiations are on-going.

++The President represented the United States well at Nelson Mandela's memorial, being called a show-stopper.Ironically, he was the only American president who could honestly say he was influenced by the man.

++The President presided over the most rapid expansion of LGBT rights in history with the end of DOMA. His support for the ENDA resolution won passage in the Senate but stalled in the House.

++He was battered by the NSA revelations,some dating back to the last Administration. His own handpicked review panel recommended significant changes to the way the NSA collects data. It will be interesting to see his follow-up. But it was the act of a man trying to change the situation. I would argue the NSA revelations damaged his approval ratings more than the healthcare website.

++The President also outlined a new strategy on the so-called War against Terror and changing our drone policies.

++His advocacy of immigration reform led to the Senate passing an extensive change to our immigration reform system. If the bill had been allowed to be voted on in the House, it would have been passed. Some see change coming after the deadline for primary challenges to House members passes.

++The Stock market hit all-time highs and Obama's market is nearing 10,000 above W.  Jobs numbers are improving and would have improved more without the government shutdown.

++Contrary to alot of blogs, people did go to jail because of the Wall Street scandals and billions and billions were paid in fines by banks for their role in the mess. Although not as impressive as possible, there is a new Volcker Rule.

++President Obama was criticized for his lack of diversity in his administration. But most of his judicial nominees were women or people of ethnic minorities.

++After the killings at Newtown,he failed in getting any new gun control legislation through Congress,despite public opinion supporting him. However, he did enact 37 steps through executive action to ameliorate the situation.

++President Obama made mental illness and treatment coverable by health insurance.

++His EPA has made several decisions which will minimize the use of coal-burning plants in the future. His delegation to the Global Change Summit in Poland negotiated an agreement with the global community, the first since the Kyoto Accords.

++Today, he signed the Defense Bill and the Budget. The Defense bill allows him to ship prisoners from GITMO back to their home countries. Unfortunately,it does not allow him to move the remaining prisoners to Supermax prisons and close the facility. But it is a step.

++I would suggest the President OK the release of the Senate's long report on Torture used by the Bush Administration to flip the political debate a little bit. He has been hamstrung by going along with the national security community when the times have changed and the needs are different.

++So how was President Obama's year? How much stuff did you get done this year? I think he beats you. Was this year as great as the first two years of his first administration? No, but he did not have an obstructionist House at the time.