Obama’s good start

Sitting in on a few IU College Democrats meetings, I have seen plenty of reminders that, since President Obama was elected one year ago today, many things haven’t changed.

Campus Democrats are preparing for a debate on health care against the IU College Republicans scheduled for Nov. 11 – months after Obama made his big summer push for reform.

Two weeks ago, the group had a lengthy discussion about global warming.

The group’s president, senior AnnElyse Gibbons, highlighted an old Paul Krugman column suggesting the conservative pushback against a cap-and-trade legislation was likely to be as fierce as the one against health care.

That cap-and-trade legislation, which cleared the floor of the House of Representatives last June, still faces an uncertain future in the Senate.

Obama made some big promises, and the man knew how to make a promise. If the students who packed into Assembly Hall two years ago to see Obama before the Indiana presidential primary were really as excited as they looked, I can only imagine how down some liberals are feeling now.

Not to mention how conservatives, who have unfairly attacked Obama as a wide-eyed radical, feel about the man.

Any sort of judgment about Obama’s presidency so far has to come with the understanding that the machinery of American government is cumbersome and slow. On the most important issue facing our country – stabilizing the economy – this president has done fairly well.

The government just announced that our economy grew for the first time in nearly a year, evidence that this recession is probably over.

Obama deserves plenty of credit for this turnaround. He stuck with the politically unpopular bank-bailouts started under his predecessor and he helped push through a stimulus about as fast as $787 billion has ever been spent.

A recent tariff on Chinese tires was disappointing, but a quick trip across the border to assure Canadians about the North American Free Trade Agreement and pressure from Obama on Democrats to keep the crudest forms of protectionism out of the stimulus helped avoid a slump in world trade.

There have been some mistakes.

Obama should have put even more pressure on congressional Democrats to prevent the stimulus from turning into the grab bag for personal projects that much of the bill was. Trying to rescue GM and Chrysler has, predictably, led to a situation where political pressure is making it harder for both companies to restructure.

Still, Obama has done more to help an economic turnaround than hurt it.

Now he will have to take a tougher stand on the many issues he has put off.

There was a lengthy discussion about “don’t ask, don’t tell” during the last IU College Democrats meeting. On a white board at the front of the room the numbers of those discharged simply for being openly gay were listed year by year. This continues to happen because of a policy most Americans, even self-identified conservatives, oppose.

Obama is off to a good start, but he still has a lot of work to do.