Barack Obama: A Promise-Breaker Up For Re-Election

Published in The Catalyst 

When evaluating President Obama’s dismally unpopular first term in office, historians and political scientists alike will undoubtedly cite the same issues. We have heard it all before. Time after time, Obama has failed America with a far more aggressive than promised, Bush-esk military budget and a seemingly endless inability to close America’s detention camp in Guantanamo Bay. Many will continue to bring up his Post-Katrina-like, historically delayed and vacation-filled removal from the catastrophic BP oil spill. The right will continue to shell the president with charges of wasteful spending and never-ending mentions that Obama has out-spent Bush with earmark and pork-laden bailouts and ineffective stimulus bills.

Still our debts, our wars and of course, our lack of Universal Health Care, will not be the issues most likely to hurt Obama in his re-election attempts. For the U.S.A, as it has been for half a decade now it’s jobs, jobs and jobs. People will bring this mindset with them to the ballot box.

The unemployment rate, while disturbingly high is deeply misleading. It does not account for those who have given up looking for work, a total that, every month, far exceeds the amount of people who gain jobs. It also does not include the homeless or those who have been without a job for more than 27 months- a number now over 7 million.

So, with Gallup’s “real” unemployment rate of 19.3% as of June 2011, we must ask ourselves the big question- why such a dramatic spike? America's jobless rate has been soaring for the last 3 years. 

Well, liberal economists will tell you it's because the stimulus packages were too small and job creation has yet to be prioritized in practice as it has been in rhetoric. Conservatives will argues that taxes are still too high on small businesses and corporations that remain America's central job engines. Moderates have argued that the enormous bank and auto bailouts devalued the dollar so dramatically that the American public simply can't afford to live on their minimum wages with the price for gas and groceries on the rise. Most economists advocate for greater regulation of the financial institutions that created our recession. 

Well, there may be truth to each one of these arguments. I'm no expert and certainly no Harvard economist. But, lets look at the facts here. Grades are improving and a college degree is more necessary than ever to get a job. There is no greater key to employment than education. This simply cannot be denied. The year I was born 46% of Americans graduated college. The number in 2011 is 27%. This figure continues to decline rapidly.

So, excuse me for having a theory, but it appears that if college is not made cheaper by way of a federal mandate, jobless rates will continue to spike dramatically.

Well, minor tax credits and lots of fancy speeches on the matter have solved nothing. The president won’t step up and deliver on the price of college. At this point, there is no surprise to this.

Barack Obama’s record of disappointment, or as Jon Stewart likes to call it, “lack of audacity”, is defined by his curiously dull inability to step up and support ‘morally righteous’ policy. He does not have Clinton-like fire, Carter-like compassion or Reagan-like popularity. He is a great speaker. But when actions speak louder than words, can rhetoric win a re-election campaign built around a record of broken promises?

Obama’s lack of support of ‘morally righteous’ policies extends far beyond the price of college issue. The president has yet to show the support he promised for the construction of emission-reducing and job-creating high-speed rail, leaving America dependent on cars and planes as the rest of the developed world zips across borders with public transit. The president promised corporate accountability, big-time finance reform, a repeal of the Patriot Act and an end to illegal wiretapping and domestic spying. The president promised gays would not be treated like second-class citizens by a federal government that continue to deny them employment or marriage equality. The president  promised to allow workers to claim more in unpaid wages and benefits in bankruptcy court. The president promised to form international group to help Iraqi refugees. The president promised to change federal rules so small businesses owned by people with disabilities could get preferential treatment for federal contracts. The president promised to direct the Secretary of Health and Human Services to conduct a comprehensive study of federal cancer initiatives. The president promised to mandate insurance coverage of autism treatment. The president promised to sign the Employee Free Choice Act, making it easier for workers to unionize. The president has broken too many promises to count.

Maybe it’s about time we stopped asking the president to fulfill his promises and started demanding he stop making so many promises in the first place.

Thanks to the President’s wretched economic policies that continue to prioritize Wall Street bonuses and tax cuts for millionaires, our country’s scarily tanking economy continues to produce more and more jobless Americans While its hard to fathom a way the GOP would ever do a better job running the country, it seems we are faced with a problem typical of nations throughout the world- the lesser of two evils. An article as small and meaningless as this simply cannot inspire a strong third party. It just can’t.

Hopelessness has taken over.