Presidentin' Is Hard Work

When I talk to Democrats around the country, I tell them, "Guys, wake up here. We have accomplished an incredible amount in the most adverse circumstances imaginable." I came in and had to prevent a Great Depression, restore the financial system so that it functions, and manage two wars.

[...]

I keep in my pocket a checklist of the promises I made during the campaign, and here I am, halfway through my first term, and we've probably accomplished 70 percent of the things that we said we were going to do — and by the way, I've got two years left to finish the rest of the list, at minimum.

  Rolling Stone

He had to prevent the depression and restore the financial system and manage two wars.

When you look at what we've been able to do internationally — resetting our relations with Russia and potentially having a new START treaty by the end of the year, reinvigorating the Middle East peace talks, ending the combat mission in Iraq, promoting a G-20 structure that has drained away a lot of the sense of north versus south, east versus west, so that now the whole world looks to America for leadership, and changing world opinion in terms of how we operate on issues like human rights and torture around the world — all those things have had an impact as well.

Indeed. It’s no lie that we changed world opinion in terms of how we operate, especially on human rights and torture.

I just made the announcement about Elizabeth Warren setting up our Consumer Finance Protection Bureau out in the Rose Garden, right before you came in. Here's an agency that has the potential to save consumers billions of dollars over the next 20 to 30 years — simple stuff like making sure that folks don't jack up your credit cards without you knowing about it, making sure that mortgage companies don't steer you to higher-rate mortgages because they're getting a kickback, making sure that payday loans aren't preying on poor people in ways that these folks don't understand. [...]If we can't take pleasure and satisfaction in concretely helping middle-class families and working-class families save money, get a college education, get health care — if that's not what we're about, then we shouldn't be in the business of politics.

And if we can’t take the tax dollars of these poor people who don’t understand and bail out the companies that already did all that to them, why then, we wouldn’t be in the business of politics.

One of the things that you realize when you're in my seat is that, typically, the issues that come to my desk — there are no simple answers to them. Usually what I'm doing is operating on the basis of a bunch of probabilities: I'm looking at the best options available based on the fact that there are no easy choices. If there were easy choices, somebody else would have solved it, and it wouldn't have come to my desk.

The average American out there [...] is my primary concern and is making 60 grand a year and paying taxes on all that income and trying to send their kids through school, and partly as a consequence of bad decisions on Wall Street, feels that their job is insecure and has seen their 401(k) decline by 30 percent, and has seen the value of their home decline.

The average American is not making “60 grand a year,” (and even if he were, that’s not a lot of money these days – especially for anyone with a family). Sixty grand is the average income. That's farily meaningless. The median household income is closer to $45,000, which means that half of the households in America are surviving on less than that. And that includes households with two people working!

When I was campaigning, I was very specific. I said, "We are going to end the war in Iraq, that was a mistake," and I have done that.

Really?? Tell that to the tens of thousands of soldiers still over there and still getting shot at.

I also said [...]that we need to plus up what we're doing in Afghanistan, because that was where the original terrorist threat emanated, and we need to finish the job. That's what we're doing.

[...]

Now, I think that a lot of progressive supporters thought that maybe it would be easier than it has proven to be to try to bring Afghanistan to a place where we can see an end in sight.

I don’t know about you other progressives, but I never thought it would be easier than it actually is being to do anything in Afghanistan. But, the end is always in sight if you're not looking in the wrong direction. The end is however long it takes to pull out all our troops. And if we’re talking about the original threat that led to the attack on 9/11, we probably ought to “plus up” in Saudi Arabia.

Nobody wants more than me to be able to bring that war to a close in a way that makes sure that region is not used as a base for terrorist attacks against the United States.

To make sure of that, you’d have to blast it off the face of the earth. Leaving it in rubble still gives them land to use. It’s ridiculous. It’s impossible.

On social issues, something like "don't ask, don't tell." Here, I've got the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff both committed to changing the policy. That's a big deal.

Over the past two years, what I probably anticipated but you don't fully appreciate until you're in the job, is something I said earlier, which is if a problem is easy, it doesn't hit my desk. If there's an obvious solution, it never arrives here — somebody else has solved it a long time ago. The issues that cross my desk are hard and complicated.

[...]

Bringing about change is hard.

Presidentin’ is hard. George should have told him that. Oh, wait. He did.