A Far Too Confident Year

How would you describe President Obama's first year in office?

I kept trying to find a word that summed it up without sounding overly negative or overly naive.

Has it been a good year? No, not really.
Has it been Obama's fault? I don't think so. I do think a lot of the trouble was inherited.

That being said, Obama ran on a ticket of promises.

Even though I voted for him, I was always more of a Hillary guy. I felt like her campaign was based more on pragmatism and less on rhetoric.

So I guess the question would be, did Obama live up to the rhetoric?

Honestly, no. I don't feel he did.

Then again, he has three years left to do it. Many people will mention that Clinton didn't get a lot accomplished in his first year either, and Bush didn't really have a chance to get anything done before 9/11 changed the game forever.

So how do you sum up a first year?

When it ends with a Senate seat that has been held for nearly half a century by a Democrat being turned over to a Republican, I'd say you have to qualify that year as "overly confident."

Obama won by a large margin, and Democrats swept Congress. They did so on a promise of change. The trouble is, as soon as you say 'change,' people tend to hear the word 'instant' before it.

The President and the Democrats seemed confident in thinking that people would give them the full four years to enact change.

They gave them less than four months.

Now the polls show that people are upset over Healthcare reform being pushed onto the country and the rising unemployment rate.

I think what the President and Congress are attempting to do with Healthcare is admirable. It is a shameful thing that we are living in a country where sick people (oh hell, let's just tug the heartstrings--sick children) are going without treatment because they can't afford it. Shameful. No other word for it--and no matter what anyone says, the only solution is universal Healthcare. Obama always said that would be on his agenda, so why people are getting up in arms about it now is clearly an indication that the Healthcare lobbyists have gotten to the general populace.

That meant that the President and his Administration should have fought back--and hard. Instead, they tried the Polite Policy. Bipartisanship. Friendly conversation.

Bad move.

It was great in theory, but you can't make people play ball--especially bitter people who just had their clocks cleaned in an election. I wrote that six months after the election I actually felt like I'd lost, because the Republicans seemed to still be dictating policy while the Democrats tried to play nice. The Democrats seemed confident that eventually the Republicans would come around. By the time they realized that confidence was in vain, they already wasted a lot of time.

So how to turn a bad year around? The answer lies in the second thing people are unhappy with--unemployment.

My Dad would vote for whichever guy gave him a job, and would vote against anybody who was in office while he was on unemployment, and I think a lot of people feel the same way.

Obama needs to put unemployment on the forefront. He needs to get tough with businesses that are sending jobs elsewhere. He needs to think about America's future in the world job market in terms of education and skills.

There can't be any progress in a country that's worried about whether or not it'll be able to put food on the table.

President Obama seems to feel confident that people will wait for him to deliver on his promises.

I think today we learned that people in this country aren't confident--not in their job security, not in their homes, and not in their leaders.

Maybe the President needs to lose a little confidence, and gain a little perspective.