What follows was originally posted in April. Since then many of my friends, people whom I respect and whose political views are similar to mine, have expressed a growing disenchantment with President Obama.

They believe he has backed away from necessary confrontations with an unyielding Republican right, has not stood strongly enough for liberal values, and has given away too much in negotiations over budgets, deficits and taxes.

As you can read below, I disagree and believe that we must stand united behind him. Republicans have made it clear that their primary goal is defeating Barack Obama to “take back our America.” I regard this “take back” rhetoric as code for “The president is black, therefore dangerously illegitimate.”

It is also code for a belief that America belongs to big business  and to the ultra-rich. This mindset sees an administration that protects the public by restraining banks, oil and coal companies with regulations — and proposes to eliminate tax breaks that threaten their profits— as UN-American.

This mindset dismisses any attempt to increase taxes and fees on the rich as “class warfare”.  But those in the “take back our America” crowd are the true class warriors. They’ve created a false debt-ceiling crisis and used it to fulfill a decades-long goal: slash and burn the social safety net that protects the poor and enhance the net worth of the already rich.

Republicans refuse to consider any increases in government revenue to bring down the deficit, insisting instead that trillions must be cut from social programs and entitlements such as Medicare and Medicaid.

These people must be stopped and Obama is our only hope to get that done. Their strategy is clear: bog down the President by holding up his initiatives in both the House and Senate, thus discouraging his liberal base and making them less eager to work  for the shared vision of the 2008 campaign.   

This happened in 1980 when Senator Ted Kennedy challenged President Carter. The Democrats fractured at its base and liberals took a walk when Carter was re-nominated. The result was eight years of social-structure dismantling by the blustering “tear-down-this-wall” Ronald Reagan,  followed by four of George H.W. Bush.

Imagine a President Bachman, Palin, Perry or Romney. Imagine the two or three appointments that president would make to the Supreme Court.

Imagine what that president and a Republican Senate and House would do to Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and environmental and consumer protection. Imagine the repeal of what they derisively call “Obamacare” and of the financial regulations in the Dodd-Frank bill that protect consumers.

My continued support of President Obama  does not stem solely from my fear of the damage that would be done if any in the current field of Republican candidates were to be elected.  

Rather, it is built on my admiration for his principles and for what he has in fact accomplished against fierce and unprincipled opposition.

My reasoning (which is re-posted below) does not mean that I agree with everything he has done and with all of the tactics he has employed (for specific examples, see my next post, “It Is Time, Mr. President”).  It means that I believe President Obama remains the best hope for upholding the social, economic and environmental values of my America, values that ensure equal  opportunity for all— whether seeking healthcare, education, legal protection, or even access to becoming the President of the United States one day. These principles are not “special interests;” rather, they are constitutional mandates for all U.S. citizens. 

An April Post Revisited

People like me can afford to be uncompromising advocates for a particular cause or political philosophy. I am an old-fashioned liberal and am accountable only to my own principles when I speak or act in a public forum.

I have this privilege today because in 1984 I made the choice to leave government after 13 years of service in one sub-cabinet and three cabinet positions under four governors in two states. Since then I have been unrestrained by the burden of governing and free to aggressively promote my progressive views.

I would take a different tack if I were in public office. My principles would remain the same; and, my ardent belief that liberalism is the best path to an America where equality of opportunity is more than an aspiration would remain firm.

But the holder of a public leadership position has the responsibility to be pragmatic. It is the elected official’s obligation to engage the messy, democratic process of give and take, and to build consensus amidst contention. This is particularly true for those in the executive branch, those who have the responsibility of representing the whole rather than a designated constituency.

I, for example, advocated for a single-payer national health care system during the recent debate, and my position never wavered. However, if I had been sitting in the President’s chair I would have made compromises similar to those that Obama eventually accepted. His job was to get the program started, to establish the precedent, to move us forward toward a long-term goal.

President Obama understands that big issues are rarely resolved in one presidential term, let alone two years. Take President Roosevelt and Social Security: In his signing address on August 14, 1935 Roosevelt wrote, “This law… represents a cornerstone in a structure which is being built but is by no means complete. It is a structure intended to lessen the force of possible future depressions.”

Four years later, on August 11, 1939, he signed amendments to the bill and wrote “we must expect a great program of social legislation, such as is represented in the Social Security Act, to be improved and strengthened in the light of additional experience and understanding. These amendments to the Act represent another tremendous step forward in providing greater security for the people of this country.”

In other words, it took an additional four years to bring the program up to his standards and it has continued to expand and improve over the past 70 years. The liberal community, led by Francis Townsend, blasted the President and proclaimed the Act was “completely inadequate”. But if President Roosevelt had insisted on perfection in 1935, Social Security might never have become law.

Former New York Governor Mario Cuomo has impeccable liberal credentials. He said it well in a 1974 speech: “The real challenge to the Democratic Party is to find a better way to harmonize competing interests to serve the poor without crushing the middle class.”

This challenge’s degree of difficulty is multiplied when competing interests include the Tea Party-controlled Republican House, and when the people you have to negotiate with include leaders/panderers such House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.

The list of accomplishments in the President’s first two years is impressive, particularly when the political environment is factored in. That environment was and remains one where his Republican opposition seems to have a single purpose: to bring the President down. McConnell, in fact, said as much when he told supporters that the primary Republican goal over the next two years is defeating President Obama.

The Republican political priority of beating Obama is unequivocally more important to them than the national goals of increasing jobs, reducing the deficit, improving health care, fixing Social Security and Medicare, and rebuilding our education system.

President Obama is often criticized (by both the right and the left) for not taking firm control of critical debates. They accuse him of a lack of leadership.

But he knows that as soon as he states his position the Republicans will unite against him… even if they had previously embraced the same agenda. He therefore works behind the scenes, keeping his powder dry while working toward that elusive consensus.

While the Democrats complain that Obama compromises too much and criticizes Republicans too little, the Republicans maintain that he isn’t specific enough and doesn’t provide them enough fodder for their distort and attack strategy. Despite all the whining from Democrats and opposition from Republicans, the President’s strategy has produced measurable results that have made our nation stronger.

In fact, during the first two years of President Obama’s time in office, he and the Democratic Congress had both one of the most productive and one of the most unheralded runs in history.

These successes include passing and implementing a stimulus program that reversed the direction of our economy from plunging downward toward a depression to moving upward toward a full-scale recovery.

The financial system was on the brink of collapse, but was restored to solvency. Yes… bankers got a good deal, but that was what it took to get the bill passed, and without it many of the nation’s leading banks could have failed, and our economy would have spiraled further down with them.

The student loan program he championed opened the doors to college for many when he took the money banks were receiving for administration and added it to available loans for students.

The President removed restrictions from stem cell research, promoted and then signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and advocated and signed a bill expanding the State Children’s Health Insurance Program to cover an additional four million low-income children. He shepherded the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” through perilous waters of opposition… and, gay and lesbian people now have protection under the law to serve openly in the United States military.

Other successful initiatives expanded America’s wilderness areas, reformed the credit card industry in a way that is more consumer friendly, signed a food safety bill, completed the START treaty, pushed through a reform of the regulations governing financial institutions, renegotiated the trade treaty with South Korea, and began the withdrawal from Iraq.

President Obama appointed two outstanding women to the United States Supreme Court, closed secret detention facilities in Eastern Europe, reversed the previous administration’s policy of White House-sanctioned torture of prisoners, and overturned plans to expand the nation’s nuclear arsenal.

The President successfully brought both parties to the table to forge tax and budget compromises that prevented a government shutdown. And, for me, the capstone was pushing through the health care reform bill.

Did he get everything he wanted in each of these programs? No, of course not. But without his willingness to compromise, these and his many other successes would have been at least diminished and perhaps scuttled. You can find a much longer list of accomplishments by searching “President Obama Accomplishments” on Google.

My questions for evaluating the President thus far in his term are not: “Has a new liberal day dawned in America? Has President Obama accomplished everything that I hoped for when I voted for him?” My answer to those questions would have to be no.

Rather, my evaluation questions are “Is America better off today than it was when he took office? Is America today better off than it would be under the policies advocated by any of the Republican leaders? Has President Obama worked to move the reality of America closer to my values?” My answer to all of those questions is an unequivocal “yes”.