Why does anyone like obama

The politics were pretty disastrous. According to Ballotpedia , more Democratic state legislative seats were lost under Obama than under any president in modern history. Yet even with such political fallout, the overall tone of the book is surprisingly wistful.

Or perhaps it is unsurprising when you notice that it was written shortly after the election. As such, the book frequently makes excuses for Obama. This sort of benefit-of-the-doubt thinking, however, does not produce very insightful history. True, playing golf and drinking bourbon would not alone have changed the composition of the Republican caucus, but it would have given the president a better idea of what he was up against.

Moreover, it caricatures what really happened: Obama was not just distant from the Republicans in Congress—he was distant from the Democrats as well. His reluctance to engage members of Congress cut across the aisle, with many Democrats just as furious as Republicans. This would only occasionally break out into the press, but it was well known on the Hill. So while it is true that Obama faced an extremely oppositional Republican Party, historians must not ignore the fact that Obama was a distant politician.

But Obama built his majority among first-time voters who surged to the polls in , many of them young or African American. In the Electoral College, Obama prevailed by a margin of to Election night inspired gracious oratory by both candidates. We both realize that we have come a long way from the injustices that once stained our nation's reputation.

Politically, the strategy bore fruit in the midterm elections. And it says: 'Continued on the next bumper sticker. Looking at the stubbornly high unemployment rate Obama inherited on taking office, many voters refused to accept the president's argument that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act had kept joblessness from rising even higher.

The new grassroots conservative Tea Party movement fueled a surge in turnout among Republican voters in even as participation among Obama's core constituencies in —young and African American voters—declined.

On election day, the Republicans gained 6 seats in the Senate, reducing the Democrats' majority in that chamber from 18 59 to 41 to 6 53 to The GOP added 63 seats in the House of Representatives, enough to gain control of the House by a to majority in the th Congress.

With George W. In return, the GOP accepted President Obama's proposal to extend unemployment benefits for jobless workers for a longer period, and both parties embraced a one-year reduction in social security taxes for everyone who pays them. Republicans feared that federal courts were about to order immediate integration of homosexuals into the armed services.

General Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, persuaded them that the military was prepared to accept the change if allowed to implement it gradually.

President Obama entered the election year with job approval ratings that were dangerously low roughly 40 percent and an unemployment rate that was dangerously high more than 8 percent for an incumbent seeking reelection. But, like Bill Clinton in and George W. Bush in , Obama benefited enormously from not having to fight for his party's nomination.

Gerald Ford in , Jimmy Carter in , and George Bush in had to wage such battles, and each of them was defeated by his general election opponent in November. In contrast, Obama was able to use the first eight months of to raise money, rebuild his campaign organization, develop lines of attack on his likely Republican opponents, and launch his general election campaign from a united, enthusiastic Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Caroline, in September Following the pattern of reelection-seeking presidents since the s, Obama chose Vice President Biden to run with him for a second term.

While Obama was uniting his party for the fall, the Republicans were waging a fierce intraparty battle to choose their nominee. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney won the nomination, but was subjected to severe attacks by his Republican rivals.

Romney won the nomination and placated conservatives by choosing the chair of the House Budget Committee, Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, as his vice presidential running mate in advance of the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida. But only then was he able to focus on raising money for the general election, move toward the more popular political center, and direct his campaign toward defeating Obama.

The Supreme Court's decision in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission opened the floodgates to corporations, unions, and wealthy individuals to spend massive amounts of money in an effort to elect either Obama or Romney, as well as in the congressional elections.

Another error was in encouraging demonstrations in Maidan Square in Ukraine contrary to an agreement for a peaceful transition that had just been negotiated. Most distressing, for a Nobel laureate, was not merely the continuation but the acceleration of the policy of drone warfare and targeted assassination described in the best-selling book Dirty Wars. Despite being the first president since and the first Democrat since to win a popular majority twice, President Obama had shortcomings as a political leader.

He abandoned grass roots programs for building the party nationally and shifted the focus to Organizing for America an organization established to promote Obama himself. Instead of highlighting job creation and the financial crisis without which he would not have won and using his majority to push through an aggressive stimulus program he compromised and got half a loaf. In the Republicans appeared bankrupt as a governing party having embarked on one of the major foreign policy fiascos in American history the Iraq War and the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Instead of focusing on jobs and pocketbook issues and hammering home for the voters the many failures of the Republican program, within just two years the Republicans won back both Houses of Congress. Further, instead of taking strong action to address the causes of the financial crisis Obama turned around and appointed people from the Clinton administration who had played some early role in setting the stage for the crisis in opposing regulation of derivatives.

It is not hard to understand the popular discontent that this engendered. As a result, during the Obama years the Democratic Party lost 1, elected positions across the country down to the state level as well as majorities in Congress. The election of Donald Trump as his successor was the final blow.

The nation's first Black president was living proof that the nation could transcend its original sin of racism, that its citizens could find common ground. It was Obama who said in arguably his greatest speech that "America is not some fragile thing" that can't tolerate citizens demanding change.

An Obama supporter holds up a sign reading "Yes we can" as President-elect Barack Obama gives his election night victory speech on November 4, , in Chicago's Grant Park.

But what happens when a large segment of White America stops pretending it even cares about democracy? What happens when these Americans refuse to accept the results of a presidential election, praise foreign dictators and pass a new wave of voter restriction laws? These are the nagging questions that lurk in the background of all the recent nostalgia surrounding Obama. It's common for pundits invoking Obama's "tattered idealism" to say the former President has changed since But American voters may have changed as well.

Obama may be the political version of the Last of the Mohicans -- a charismatic leader whose soaring rhetoric about transcending our differences now seems as outdated as a Blockbuster video store. The multiracial elation we saw in Grant Park may be the last time in many of our lifetimes we witness such unified joy.

Our politics will get even uglier. That's a brutal thought to contemplate. But consider some of the events of this past year -- even this past month. The country still hasn't come to terms with a violent insurrection that saw a member of a mob brandish a Confederate flag during an attack on the Capitol while others hung a noose and scaffold outside on the grounds. A major political party is passing a wave of laws across the country that may restrict voting by racial minorities and other groups that don't tend to vote for them.

Trump supporters clash with police and security forces as they try to storm the US Capitol on January 6, in Washington. Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson, a hero of the right, traveled to Hungary the same week of Obama's 60th birthday to conduct a fawning interview with the country's leader, Viktor Orban, who once said : " We must defend Hungary as it is now.