President Obama's First Year in Office and Why Liberals Need to Get Grounded

Are you a progressive that voted for President Barack Obama in last year's presidential election? Like me, you may find yourself full of disappointment when considering the new administration's first year in office. Furthermore, you may be facing trepidation about what the coming year will hold. Many of us on the left side of the political spectrum are in a far different state of mind than we were this time last year. In January of 2009 we were full of hope. Things were going to change, we said. The incompetency of the previous eight years was over. Corporate greed would be stamped out. The wars would end. We would finally focus on the important things like universal health care.

For so many of us 2009 did so little to meet our expectations. Here are just a few of the many things still remain unchanged. Wall street still remains unregulated. More of our young men and women have been sent to die in an idiotic and useless war. The public option, our best chance for sweeping healthcare reform has been abandoned by its most ardent champions. Maybe you feel saddened that the momentum we had during the election campaign seems to have dissipated, and you are often confused about where our President really stands. I, too, have had this underlying feeling or uneasiness during the last few months until I finally realized something. President Obama's base needs to take a reality pill.

We often accuse those on the opposite end of the political spectrum of operating outside the scope of reality. They live with the assumption that supply side economics is the key to health and wealth of our system when history has clearly shown this to be false. They contend that we are actually diminishing the threat of terrorism by waging wars against other countries when we are actually exacerbating that threat. Many of them are in complete denial of the catastrophic state of our healthcare system. You could make quite a long list of assumptions that show a tendency to let emotions obscure rational thinking. However, our friends on the right are not the only ones who fall into this trap. Let's examine our own departure from reality in the past year.

Many of us seem to have fallen for some of the assertions made by extreme conservatives. They have painted President Obama as a liberal and a socialist. Our president is no such thing. He may have been more sympathetic to leftist ideas than his Republican opponent, but he is much closer to the center in both philosophy and policy. There is nothing that defines him as a liberal, and the idea that he is a socialist is, of course, completely ridiculous. Think about it. If we look realistically at the political demographics of our country, it would be impossible to elect a true liberal. We knew this when we elected President Obama. We did not vote for him because he was a liberal but because he was significantly better than they other guy. We put him in office knowing full well that he would govern, for the most part, from a centrist point of view. So while I continue to believe that liberal ideas are the best ideas, I am not sure why we are so disappointed with the results of the last year. Perhaps we were so starry-eyed at the prospect of being relieved of the worst presidential leadership in modern history that we couldn't see straight down the road ahead.

Consider the war in Afghanistan, for instance. For those of us on the left, the war couldn't be over soon enough. For us it is a completely purposeless waist of lives and resources. During his run for the presidency President Obama told us what his policy would be. He would shift the focus from Iraq to Afghanistan. Deep down we hoped that he would not send more troops there. We elected him with the full knowledge that this is exactly what he would do, yet when it came to pass, we felt bitter and betrayed.

Could it be that we have also jumped the gun when it comes to our expectations about the healthcare bill? Many of us know that a medicare style, single-payer system would be the ideal way to operate healthcare. However, we were realistic enough to know that politics would not allow it to happen. So what did we do? We latched on to the idea of the public option as the next best thing. President Obama floated the idea, and we drank it up with great relish. Think about its likelihood, though, while trying to set aside the fact that it is an extremely good idea. Think about past defeats of healthcare legislation in the United States. If we are honest with ourselves, we knew that the chances that Republicans would block a public option were extremely high.

Am I arguing that liberals should give up hope and stop being vocal about their ideas? Certainly not. Hope is what keeps us all going, and we should continue to do whatever it takes to further our cause. What I am proposing is that we stop grumbling and forge on. While holding our leadership to high standards, we need to recognize that President Obama is not a bad leader simply because he has not accomplished everything we wanted in a year's time.

In so many ways the Obama style of leadership is exactly what this country needed. Due to the severe beating we received because of the knee-jerk, reactionary policies of the previous administration, we were sorely in need of grounding and pragmatism. We have already seen evidence that the current president thinks before he acts. We may not agree with every decision, but we can clearly see that he takes the right approach by considering every option. We may be left with a bitter taste in our mouths when we hear about some of the political wrangling that goes on behind the scenes, but let's be honest with ourselves. Every president has had to play politics to pass legislation.

Yes, we have a really long road ahead, but let's not forget to look at the strides we have made. The war in Iraq is finally coming to a close. We might not achieve real healthcare reform just yet, but insurance reform is a step in the right direction. Eliminating pre-existing conditions is a positive move toward reigning in the insurance industry. Our economy, while still grim, is also making slow improvements. We are in the midst of a real progress on that front. Leading Chicago school economists are changing their tune about what leads to economic health. Realistically, we know that it is going to take years to recover from a situation that was caused by bad economic policy first put into place some thirty years ago.

It is time for liberals to face the facts. The President we elected is not divine nor does he possess a magic wand. Most change will only come through several years of progressive thinking, hard work, and baby steps.