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 two cabinet positions under three 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.

I assume by this he means that the Republican political priority of beating Obama is more important than the national goals of increasing jobs, reducing the deficit, improving health care, fixing Social Security and Medicare, rebuilding our education system and ensuring our nation’s security.

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 and working toward that elusive consensus.

While the Democrats complain that he 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. The President’s strategy, however, has produced 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.

The successes include passing and implementing a stimulus program that reversed the direction of our economy from plunging downward toward a depression 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 downward with them.

The student loan program he championed opened the doors to college for many when he took 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.

Other successful initiatives expanded America’s wilderness areas, reformed the credit card industry in a way that is more consumer friendly, ushered through the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, 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 the reality of America moved closer to my values in the last two years?” My answer to all of those questions is an unequivocal “yes”.