Is Barrack Obama the worst President since World War II?

Almost every day I read a letter to the editor or a post on Facebook making wild claims about who Barrack Obama is and his performance and goals as President.   He is a secret Muslim born in Kenya who is not actually the duly elected President.   He is a radical Socialist who is trying to subvert American society and turn us into a Socialist--or Communist--country.    He is a power-mad dictator who is lawless and running amok over the Constitution.   His administration is shot through with scandal after scandal.   The country is in terrible shape and it's all his fault.    He is the worst President since World War II.   His "feckless" foreign policy is allowing the forces or evil in the world to run wild in the face of U.S. recalcitrance to act.   He does not have the best interests of America at heart.   And lately, he should be impeached.    And if not impeached, then sued by the Congress for overreaching on Executive Orders and other things.

I voted for President Obama twice.   I have to say that I have been somewhat disappointed in his performance in office.   My disappointment is primarily related to how conservative he has in fact been.   The big issue in my mind is Global Warming and Climate Change and I don't think he has emphasized this problem as much as he should.   I also question the overuse of drones and the CIA overseas.   However, in general, I think that President Obama has been taking the right approach on domestic and foreign affairs.   I have seen President Obama compared to President Eisenhower and I think that is an apt comparison.   He is no more a radical socialist than Ike was.   Measured historically against other Presidents, he is actually pretty middle-of-the-road in his approach to governing.    What is see is a young man who grew up a Christian, an American through and through, who got himself educated at Columbia and Harvard Law School and married a lovely and accomplished lady and began raising a fine family.   There were no real skeletons in his closet other than maybe smoking some marijuana, which at this point is looking pretty tame.   Certainly he didn't have the rap sheet of Bill Clinton or George W. Bush as a young man.    From what I can tell, putting the Fox news and Rush Limbaugh crowd's howling aside, he is an essentially admirable man who has tried to do his best to steer the country in a better direction.

I see a President who has patiently attempted to work with the Republican opposition, who from the get go announced that denying him a second term was the primary goal of the Republican Congressional delegations in the Senate and in the House of Representatives.   Republicans have ended up opposing what were in fact their own proposals simply because the President came out in support of their legislation.   "We can't give him a win," has been the mantra repeated for over six years now, no matter how reasonable or necessary the proposed legislation.  The Filibuster has been used more in the past six years than in the previous hundred.   Virtually every proposal and every appointee has been filibustered by the Republican minority.   Republicans were recently successful in having the Supreme Court rule against some of the President's "recess appointments," made when he deemed Congress not in session.   The was called high handed by the Republican Senate delegation and the Supreme Court agreed that such appointments were not legal.   However, many people forget that the reason for the "recess appointments" was that Republicans have refused to confirm numerous Presidential appointments in the Executive Branch to the point that some agencies cannot even function.   For instance, the National Labor Relations Board has been short members for quite some time to the effect that there is not a quorum to permit the NLRB to carry out its legislatively mandated duties.    The President tried to use what authority he thought he had to get people in place to run the government.   The real villains to me are the Republican extremists who have clearly put their own personal and party interests ahead of the good of the country.   It's obvious that they are intent upon making President Obama look bad even if it harms the country in the process.   They have been way over the line since day one.

The various "scandals" so trumpeted by the right pretty much amount to peanuts when examined.   The great Benghazi investigative fiasco has so far yielded precious little to justify the time and money spent by Republicans, clearly searching for an issue to use on Hillary Clinton, expected to run for and win the Presidency in 2016.   The big scandal to me is that the Republicans cut the funding for embassy security before Benghazi and then have run around trying to find something to blame on the President and Secretary Clinton.   The more they investigate, the weaker their claims appear to be.    The rest of the scandals seem to me to be pretty thin, if not outright silly.

So if you don't agree with President Obama's agenda, that's certainly within your rights.   However, I think the constant hysterical hair pulling over perceptions of the President that are not based on reality only weakens the arguments of the Right.   Almost all of the Sarah Palin type of criticisms of the President can be easily debunked.    I will respect any criticism of President Obama that is thoughtful and realistic but the Kenya/Radical Liberal/Gun Hating/Socialist/ Muslim/America hater doesn't really exist and I am truly tired of hearing this sort of tripe and having the speakers lay this out as if it were factual criticism.

And how anybody can rate President Obama lower on the President scale that President George W. Bush is beyond imagination.   George W. Bush did more harm to this country and to the world in general than any elected official in American history.   Trillions of dollars and thousands of lives wasted on a pointless war in Iraq is enough in itself to earn G.W. Bush the "Worst Ever" title.   President Obama is not perfect but he hasn't started any new wars of choice and that for me puts him far ahead of his predecessor.