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President gets mixed reviews at election’s anniversary

It was a year ago this week that President Barack Obama made history by winning the election as the nation’s first Black president. The moment electrified a broad coalition of supporters eager for the change the president promised during his campaign.

A year later Blacks have continued to support the president by a large percentage. Overall, 47 percent of African Americans said they were pleased with Obama’s leadership. Among Black Democrats, support was even higher at 51 percent.

The Economy:

The economy remains the top issue for voters. Recent reports suggest that the recession is at an end. The gross domestic product, a primary economic indicator, rose 3 percent in the third quarter, and the stock market edged higher overall.

But, unemployment, typically a lagging indicator — meaning job recovery after other economic data has shown improvement — continues to grow.

Obama’s big economic initiative was the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or federal stimulus package. It pumped millions into the national economy and administration officials said last week that it created 640,000 jobs.

“He’s done very well,” said Hilary Shelton, director of the Washington D.C. bureau of the NAACP. “He inherited major problems, but stepped up to the plate and, in my opinion, the response with the stimulus package and a number of other incentives we’re able to move to point where we’ve seen some reversal of the recession.”

Still unemployment remains high.

“We’re better off thanks to a stimulus that has saved jobs,” said Julianne Malveaux, president of Bennett College for Women in North Carolina. “We’re better off to the extent that the federal government is attempting to help with the foreclosure situation. In terms of the labor market we’re emphatically not better off.”

A poor job market has a disproportionate effect on African Americans. The official unemployment rate is 9.8 percent. For Blacks its 13.4 percent and counting those that have fallen off the unemployment rolls that number is closer to 26.7 percent for African Americans.

Numbers like that trouble even avid Obama supporters.

“With the exception of the rebates for the car sales and first-time homebuyers, I don’t see a lot of job creation at all,” said Kali Gross, director of Africana Studies at Drexel University, a Democrat and supporter of Obama. “The biggest people who benefited from that was Wall Street.”

Republicans too gave the president only mediocre marks for the stimulus package.

“Overall I will give him a 75 on his ability to stimulate the economy,” Janice Hollis of Progressive Believers Ministries. The ability to fix many of the economic problems the country is now suffering through are simply beyond the control of one man, she said.

“There are many things beyond presidential control,” Hollis said.

Health-care reform:

Obama promised an overhaul of the health-care system when he came to office. Reform is in the works with a vote on a final package expected before the end of the year. Its final form remains uncertain. There are, at the moment, two bills in the Capitol. They will be hammered into one proposal by a joint committee of Congress, voted on and then passed to the president.

Obama has been criticized for saying too much and saying too little while the Senate and House worked out their separate proposals.

“I’m very disappointed with the way he’s handled health care,” Gross said. “I think he has left [Sen.] Harry Reid and those folks twisting in the wind.”

She added that none of the proposals being discussed went far enough in her opinion.

“I’m really angry that they took single-payer off the table,” she said. “To me we lost a huge bargaining chip right there. Let them talk us down from the public option.”

Shelton, however, gave the president kudos for simply keeping the process, which has been a historic stumbling block in Congress, moving forward.

“He has been able to keep things on the burner,” he said. “It’s not done but he has been able to keep it on the table.”

Presidents going back as far as Theodore Roosevelt have tried to push health-care reform through Congress. None has succeeded.

Just getting this far is historic.

“He has ambitiously tackled some of the … policy challenges including health-care reform,” Malveaux said. “And has had to manage the hostility of the tea party Republicans whose disrespectful and obnoxious behavior has changed the tone of civic discourse.”

Not all Republicans took such extreme views.

“I applaud him for initiating the challenge,” Hollis said. She said reforms will reduce the ability of insurance companies to arbitrarily raise premiums or lower levels of care.

She didn’t agree with everything being discussed.

“What I have a problem with is that he’s made a provision for abortion,” she said, adding that all the talk of death panels, though incorrect, has opened a discussion about euthanasia that she could not support. “That’s God’s decision.”

Finance Reform:

When Obama came to office the country was in the middle of one of its greatest economic meltdowns. The Bush administration had put in place a bailout program that was inherited by Obama. While talking about the importance of reform, Obama largely administered the plan set forth by Bush.

Capping executive pay had remained an elusive goal and foreclosures continue to rise. In the year since Obama’s election, foreclosure rates rose 23 percent to one in every 136 homes in foreclosure.

Hollis credited Obama with good intentions.

“I believe deeply that he wants to bring a platform where there is fair process,” she said, though she criticized some of his appointments and said he might not have done enough to help small businesses.

More of the same was not at all what Gross had in mind when she voted for Obama.

“I don’t understand why no one is in jail,” she said. “These men and women on Wall Street, a lot of them literally defrauded the country, tanked the economy, and who is in jail? Where is the change?”

Malveaux credited the administration for its efforts thus far, saying they laid the foundation for real change.

“We are better off for the possibility of credit and banking reform,” she said. “We are better off to the extent that the federal government is attempting to help with the foreclosure situation.”

“We haven’t done enough yet to save Americans’ homes,” Shelton said, adding that the president has shown “unprecedented involvement” setting a new tone.

“Reform is under way,” he said. “He’s created a new financial services consumer protection agency. We see that as a monumental step forward.”

Foreign Policy:

One area where Obama has drawn a lot of positive feeling is foreign policy. Those feelings come even though there are few achievements to point to. The violence continues in Iraq. American involvement in Afghanistan is escalating. Peace in the Middle East is as elusive as ever and Iran continues to rattle its nuclear saber.

But, unarguably, Obama has changed the world’s perception of the United States.

“He almost single handedly began changing the perspective on foreign policy,” Shelton said.

Whether that will be enough is an open question.

“I don’t like the fact that we still have Guatanamo Bay, although they are making slow progress,” Gross said. “Iraq is still a mess and Afghanistan is evolving into some sort of nightmarish fiasco.”

It was one area where Hollis and Gross agreed.

“I think he’s failing there,” Hollis said. “There are a lot of things that have not been articulated.”

In addition, she was offended that Obama sat down with the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran.

“He has the responsibility of raising the bar, not apologizing to the world. There is no other country in the world like America. That alone is a banner worth flying and he should fly it higher. It is because of this country that his story is possible.”

Anniversaries often bring attention, but political historian G. Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin & Marshall College, warned 10 months in office was hardly enough to judge Obama.

“We need longer than 10 months,” he said. “This is like asking someone to give someone a grade while the coursework is being developed and being presented.”

Race Relations:

In being the first African-American president, Obama has had his fair share of racial conflicts: from the professor Henry Louis Gates controversy to being called a racist by a popular news channel show host. However, the racial component of his time in office came to a head when a former president spoke on his behalf and stated that race was indeed a part of the scrutiny he faced over health-care reform.

Local radio personality E. Stephen Collins said America’s first African-American president is experiencing the reality of being Black in America. Collins also said that there is a segment of the population who simply can’t and won’t accept a Black commander-in-chief.

“I totally think that is President Obama were Italian American, Irish American or Jewish American, no one would be raising these issues,” Collins said. “There is a flat out denial by a segment of the population of this nation to accept the fact that Obama is our commander-in-chief. Take a look at who voted for him or John McCain and then at those who simply did not vote. There is a segment out there that can’t accept a Black president.”

Former president Jimmy Carter drew fire earlier this year from critics for saying that racial politics played a role in South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson's outburst during Obama's speech to Congress.

During an interview with NBC’s Brian Wilson, Carter further elaborated that in his opinion racism is also apparent in some of the opposition the president has faced since taking office nine months ago, especially regarding the debate on health-care reform.

He said that Wilson’s remark was reflective of the thinking of some Americans; Southerners in particular, that African Americans “are not qualified to lead this great country.”

During many of the so-called tea party protests opposing national health care in cities across the nation people have been seen carrying posters stating “Obama’s Plan — White Slavery,” others have depicted the president as a witch doctor and Adolf Hitler.

“I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a Black man,” Carter said. “There is an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African-American should not be president. Those kind of things are not just casual outcomes of a sincere debate on whether we should have a national program on health care. It’s deeper than that.”

Carter reiterated his statements, during an address at a town hall meeting at Emory University, saying that he believes racism is an issue for Obama in trying to lead the country.

“When a radical fringe element of demonstrators and others begin to attack the president of the United States as an animal or as a reincarnation of Adolf Hitler or when they wave signs in the air that said we should have buried Obama with Kennedy, those kinds of things are beyond the bounds,” Carter said. “I think people who are guilty of that kind of personal attack against Obama have been influenced to a major degree by a belief that he should not be president because he happens to be African-American. It's a racist attitude, and my hope is and my expectation is that in the future both Democratic and Republican leaders will take the initiative in condemning that kind of unprecedented attack on the president of the United States.”

The former president’s statements followed a remark made by Rep. Joe Wilson, R-South Carolina, who during Obama’s speech on the health-care debate shouted “You lie!”

The U.S. House of Representatives voted on Sept. 15 to formally disapprove of Wilson’s remarks and Wilson has publicly apologized. Even still, the reaction on both sides of the political aisle and among American citizens continues to proliferate.

The White House reacted swiftly to Carter’s remarks, saying that Obama doesn’t feel that the opposition to his proposals are based on race.

“Well, let's take a look at what former President Carter said. The answer that I'm going to give is the same answer that I gave on Sunday, when I was asked this question,” said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs during a press conference on Sept.16. “The president does not believe that that criticism comes based on the color of his skin. We understand that people have disagreements with some of the decisions that we've made and some of the extraordinary actions that had to be undertaken by both this administration and previous administrations to stabilize our financial system, to ensure viability of our domestic auto industry. I don't think that — like I said, the president does not believe that it's based on the color of his skin.”

Also, Michael Steele, the first African-American to chair the Republican National Committee, denied that race is behind the protests surrounding the national health-care debate. Steele said it’s about policy.

“President Carter is flat-out wrong,” Steele said in a prepared statement, adding on a Sept. 16 broadcast edition of Fox News’ “On the Record” that Carter’s remarks were wrongheaded. “This isn't about race. It is about policy. Now we have the former president, Jimmy Carter, elevating this to a point where, you know, he's sort of saying, ‘Well, all these people who disagree with President Obama actually have some sinister view of the president based on race.’ And I think that that is disingenuous and it's just wrongheaded. We cannot go to a point in this country — we will not have progressed — in fact, I believe we will hurt President Obama if every time we find ourselves in disagreement with him, his sycophants and others out there are running to his side and rushing in with charges of racism.”

But the White House’s position and Steele’s remarks doesn’t seem to reflect the thinking of other Americans. The United States, they say has had a long history of racial discrimination and racist perceptions of Blacks continue in the minds of some white Americans.

Ben Jealous, executive director of the NAACP, speaking at a panel discussion at the Enoch Pratt Library in Baltimore, Md., said that Carter was right. Jealous said the former president’s remarks were common sense.

“Throughout the rest of the country we saw great progress as far as Obama being able to garnish large portions of the white vote, but in the deep south it was just the opposite,” Jealous said in a published report. “Carter coming out and saying we have a real problem in the country and people need to realize it's time to move forward not backward is just injecting common sense.”

Actor and comedian Bill Cosby also said in a written statement that he is in agreement with Carter.

“During President Obama's speech on the status of health-care reform, some members of Congress engaged in a public display of disrespect,” he said. “While one representative hurled the now infamous 'you lie' insult at the president, others made their lack of interest known by exhibiting rude behavior such as deliberately yawning and sending text messages.”

Collins also said that the nation has never really come to terms with its history of racism.

“The fact is that it exists and has always been a part of what happens in this nation,” Collins said. “Barack is no different from those who were lynched or raped or murdered in the Deep South. He’s no different from Martin Luther King or Malcolm X. He’s no different from the fathers and mothers who faced discrimination in trying to get employment. What Barack Obama is experiencing is the reality of being Black in America.”

Columnist and Temple University journalism professor Linn Washington said he agrees with Carter’s statement.

“Once again Jimmy Carter has been perceptive in getting to the heart of the issue,” Washington said. “He was accurate in his assessment of apartheid in the Middle East in reference to Israel and he’s accurate regarding this issue. This is about America’s age old inability to come to grips with racism.”

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