Obama had numerous accomplishments in his first year: In the weeks approaching President Obama’s first State of the Union address (Last Night), some in the media have claimed that Obama has lacked accomplishments in his first year as president and thus, in the words of Washington Times editor emeritus Wesley Pruden, Obama has “little to show for ’09.” In fact, Obama’s first year in office has been marked by a series of significant achievements, including creating jobs as a result of the economic stimulus, eliminating wasteful spending, increasing government transparency, and expanding federal health insurance programs to cover millions more children. [ READ MORE ]

In Obama’s first year, successes outweigh missteps — Fred Hiatt of WAPO writes: “….I’d like to interrupt the anniversary-bash-Obama-fest with a simple proposition: Obama has done a good job so far.

I’ve had my share of complaints. I harbor my share of misgivings. But on the issues that mattered most in his first year, Obama got things right.

Begin with something that didn’t happen: financial collapse and great depression.

It’s easy to forget, but Obama came into office facing a frightening situation. He assembled in short order an extremely competent economic team and took — or, in many cases, continued — the drastic measures needed to stave off disaster. And those measures succeeded.

White House political aides knew that, no matter what they did, the economy would still be reeling one year later and that Obama would be unfairly blamed. They knew that little credit would be awarded for jobs that weren’t lost or bankruptcies that were averted, and little credit has been. But credit is due”. [ READ MORE ]

Tough lessons from Obama’s first year — Eugene Robinson of WAPO Writes: President Obama begins his second year in the White House with such anemic approval ratings, you’d think he was another Ronald Reagan: Among recent presidents, only the Gipper had fallen so low in the esteem of voters at this stage of his presidency. In the end, things worked out rather well for Reagan — a landslide reelection, success in changing the course of the nation and the world, canonization by the Republican Party. In this context, the serenity of Obama’s political advisers is understandable. It has been a tough year, and the president has had to make a host of decisions that he knew would be politically unpopular. If history is any guide, these early approval numbers say little about where Obama will stand politically in 2012, much less how he will rate at the end of his presidency. The White House is right not to panic. [ READ MORE ]

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A Year Of Opposition: Fox News’ War On The White House

FAT Dick Morris fudges budget numbers while grading Obama’s first year

President Obama’s State of The Union Speech — 01/27/2010

The Problem With Obama

New York Times Editorial: The Democrats had an exceptionally weak candidate in Massachusetts, but the result calls into question the party’s tactical political competence.

Mr. Obama has done many important things on the environment, and in foreign affairs, and in preventing the nation’s banking system from collapsing in the face of a financial crisis he inherited. But he seems to have lost touch with two core issues for Americans: their jobs and their homes.

Mr. Obama was right to press for health care reform. But he spent too much time talking to reluctant Democrats and Republicans who never had the slightest intention of supporting him. He sat on the sidelines while the Republicans bombarded Americans with false but effective talk of death panels and a government takeover of their doctors’ offices.

There are many theories about the import of Scott Brown’s upset victory in the race for Edward Kennedy’s former Senate seat. To our minds, it is not remotely a verdict on Mr. Obama’s presidency, nor does it amount to a national referendum on health care reform ? even though it has upended the effort to pass a reform bill, which Mr. Obama made. [ READ MORE ]

Professor Drew Westen, Psychologist and Neuroscientist at Emory University writes:

Obama Finally Gets His Victory For Bipartisanship: The President’s steadfast refusal to acknowledge that we have a two-party system, his insistence on making destructive concessions to the same party voters he had sent packing twice in a row in the name of “bipartisanship,” and his refusal ever to utter the words “I am a Democrat” and to articulate what that means, are not among his virtues. We have competing ideas in a democracy — and hence competing parties — for a reason. To paper them over and pretend they do not exist, particularly when the ideology of one of the parties has proven so devastating to the lives of everyday Americans, is not a virtue. It is an abdication of responsibility.

What happens if you refuse to lay the blame for the destruction of our economy on anyone — particularly the party, leaders, and ideology that were in power for the last 8 years and were responsible for it? What happens if you fail to “brand” what has happened as the Bush Depression or the Republican Depression or the natural result of the ideology of unregulated greed, the way FDR branded the Great Depression as Hoover’s Depression and created a Democratic majority for 50 years and a new vision of what effective government can do? What happens when you fail to offer and continually reinforce a narrative about what has happened, who caused it, and how you’re going to fix it that Americans understand, that makes them angry, that makes them hopeful, and that makes them committed to you and your policies during the tough times that will inevitably lie ahead? [READ MORE]

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

References:

1.   Test Your Understanding of American Politics
2.   Lessons From the Massachusetts Defeat — The Massachusetts Senate race is a watershed event that has enormous implications for this political year. The media is intent on making it a referendum on President Obama and his health care reform plan. But that interpretation of the results is just flat wrong.

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