Why Can't We Just Admit President Obama's First Term Has Been a Success?

What will it take for the president to get credit for his success? Despite being handed an economy in tatters, having the "loyal" opposition do everything in their power to sabotage our economic recovery he has succeeded far more than the Republicans will ever give him credit for.

The day his first term started the Dow was at 8,200, it is now over 13,000. By comparison when Bush took office the Dow was at 10,700. It took him eight years but he did manage to oversee an economic decline that depressed the Dow 2,500 points.

President Obama has cut taxes on the small businesses that the "job creator" Republicans are so fond of. He also cut taxes on us middle class folks.

President Obama has done more for making America energy independent than any other president of the last 50 years. Every candidate running for the Oval Office since Nixon has promised they will make us energy independent. Barack Obama is the only one that has made significant progress. In fact, the U.S. is now the second biggest producer of oil in the world behind Saudi Arabia. Stick that in your gas tank and burn it.

His stimulus which is hypocritically derided by Republicans, even as they benefit from it, has kept unemployment from being worse than it is. Lately there have been several news reports of CEOs of large corporations threatening their employees with dire consequences when the president is re-elected. This is going on despite the fact that these same corporations are enjoying record profits. In fact some of these companies have even used stimulus money to further their businesses.

Government employment has even shrunk in the last four years. Unfortunately this is mostly due to cutbacks of teachers, police and firefighters. But as all Republicans know; government doesn't provide jobs. So when viewed from the perspective of the right, this is a good thing.

When we step back and look at the whole of Obama's first term we can see that his efforts to get money into the economy, to limit unemployment, reduce taxes and generally keep the ship of state afloat have been successful. Even the Republicans should be encouraged at where we are headed; that is as long as they want to see America pull out of this depression.