If you had to give President Obama a letter grade for his overall performance so far, what would it be?
About The Author

BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
I would submit a “too early to tell” assessment. Sort of like asking “how’s the garden doing?” a few days after planting the seeds. To put it in perspective, consider the course we would have likely taken under a McCain presidency, and compare to what we have now. I’ll take the latter.
Objectively? Or compared to what we believed we were supporting?
If we’re grading on a curve he gets a C+. By any objective standard the appointments of Summers and Geithner started him off in the hole. D+ with a down arrow.
An I for incomplete.
I’ll be able to give a grade depending on how the health care bill turns out, what his plans for Afghanistan are, and if they attempt a jobs bill.
I would give him a “D” just for not being “W”, and I would bump that to a “C” for just not pushing “stupid” on RW and religious ideological grounds. The Stimulus has helped but his refusal to lead on financial reform is undercutting all else he might accomplish. Ron Paul and Alan Grayson, for their combined flaws, have done far more in that regard than he has ever dreamed. He should start by firing Giethner, Summers and Mary Shapiro and installing Simon Johnson as his chief adviser on all things political-economic. And let Johnson select the next Sec. Treasury and SEC Chair for Obama to nominate.
If, as appears probable, he delays any decisive action on financial reform until the next big break in the markets, he will have significantly damaged the brand for Democrats. Problem is the alternatives are worse. Much like the situation with New Labor in the U.K. Time for a realignment. Better to lead a populist realignment than be run over by it. Absent principled leadership, it could turn really ugly.
The winning move would be to simultaneously move quickly to dismember Goldman Sachs, JPM, Citi, BOA and WF, for starters, and aggressively investigate and prosecute executives. We also need a lower bar for financial misconduct. “Bankslaughter” as a felony has been proposed in the U.K.
What is happening now on the financial front is buying time by throwing the future into the sausage machine of the existing financial system, which is predatory and is acting in ways totally destructive of the future of the US economy.
Sorry to appear so negative, but first things first.
UHH, the other part of the “winning move” would be to enact federal campaign finance reform, (without limits on private contributions) for primaries and general elections at levels equal to the spending in the previous cycle. If that sounds expensive, the existing system has just cost us several $Trillion.
He’s been trying to get the professors in all of his other classes to give him an incomplete because he’s been bogged down in this experiment on Health Care in one class that has ballooned into a much larger project than he had expected. Even by pulling a lot of all-nighters, he may not get it wrapped up by the end of the semester, much less get the final projects (like I/P peace talks and economic recovery) turned in for his other classes.
Extrapolating from his performance to date, it would be a C at best, with a note from the teacher that he’s not living up to his potential.
It may be that little Barack has a learning disability. He keeps trying to act like a reconciler with classmates who are completely uninterested in reconciliation. His heart’s in the right place, but if he doesn’t stop daydreaming about playing a nice, friendly game with the GOP kids, he’s going to get schooled.
So far, a definite C. He’s passing, but he’s not making the honor roll.
Right now, I think I would give an overall grade of C+.
There seems to be a recent proliferation of polls which are purported to show that the American voters are developing a case of “buyer’s remorse” on Obama. That people like him personally but have developed a strong distaste for his policies. But it doesn’t take much scratching just below the surface of these polls to tell that when people are asked overarching general questions about policies like “health care” and “taxes” and “defense” the responses often fall right in line with the Village conventional wisdom, which, coincidentally matches the GOP talking points of the day.
But when they are asked specifically about policies and the options become less general, they line up behind “liberal” policies. Yet, when results of these polls have to be condensed into one headline, you get something like this, talking about this weeks Quinnipiac poll: “National poll: Voters disapprove of Dems’ health care plan”.
But when you get to the meat of the whole health care issue in this poll, which is #19, you get this:
The answer??? Support it-57%, Don’t support it-35%
Is it any wonder that it is difficult to win the messaging on this issue?
Makes me want to scream.
A 4.
I give him a B because the economy didn’t collapse and health care is making the rounds and it looks like we’ll get financial reform and a second jobs bill. I also give him a B because for all the anger among progressives like Rep. Conyers, I haven’t seen folks stepping up the microphone and demanding things be done. This is especially true in the senate where folks refuse to call each other out and if Baucus had had his chair threatened over missing the president’s deadline; a lot of heartache could have been avoided.
The President needs to get leverage over Congress and specifically the senate. Because they’re not only screwing the country; they’re going to bring the party down.
On civil liberties, a big fat F.
On health care, an Incomplete.
On Afganistan, an Incomplete.
On transparency, a C: they ended the media blackout on war casualties, but they’ve defended an expansion of Bush’s state secrets abuse.
on environment, I will go with a C, which is the best any American’s ever gonna get due to the system in which we live.
on the economy, I’ll give him a C, because he inherited Bush’s mess which isn’t his fault, but sticking with Geithner and Summers hasn’t been helpful.
3 Cs, 2 Incompletes, and a F. that’s the kind of GPA that sends kids to summer school, with comments from teachers like “Barack is so smart, if only he’d apply himself”.
from experience. that’s what all my teachers used to say about me.
You are far from alone. Bruce’s one liner in No Surrender.. “We learned more from a three minute record than we ever learned in school” … comes to mind.
For me, a “C” grade is too high. And, please note:
I’m afraid what we’ve seen is Mr. Obama “applying himself”.
If he failed to accurately assess the importance of health care reform (HCR), can we really then say that “Barack is so smart”? If he did accurately assess its importance, then it appears that his strategy, from start to present, has been grievously flawed for what it has given us is a situation in which HCR’s opponents have deftly maneuvered their Democratic party proponents into a corner where they’re faced with either removing the centerpiece of their desires or seeing the whole project go down to defeat —with themselves taking the greater part of the blame for that in the eyes of the public.
Reid was bamboozled, true. But what else should he have expected? And Obama saw nothing coming, nothing. They [Reid, Pelosi and Obama] went strolling down the middle of the tracks and never heard or saw the train which ran over them. At this late date that’s a scandalous failure of responsibility. And that is the result of “applying himself.”
Maybe our “student” is over-rated. That’s what I come up with.
“D” all around.
Republicans, for their hypocritical gamesmanship in making the best of a pseudo-minority position and using the U.S. Senate, an institution of minority-rule, to the best advantage, get a “B+” from me.
In the long-run he earns an “A”. He doesn’t operate in a short-run mentality. I believe he is thinking in two-year increments; this is year one, and in year two he plans to move on to three interrelated problems with economic overtones: global warming, jobs, and putting some serious regulation on Wall Street and Banking. Had he done things out of order, I think he believes, there was a giant risk of failing with all of them.
You can’t overestimate the magnitude of two things: one, the problems everywhere in sight that he inherited the day he set foot in the White House, and two, the amount of energetic resistance he is receiving from Republicans, Corporations and the Military Industrial Complex. In my opinion, to grade him now on anything other than his short-term political performance–which is not his primary concern–is to fail to understand what he’s about.
B
The readers of this blog would have given Lincoln a B-.
Only Jefferson and the two Roosevelts get an A.
That’s curious: So the practitioner and defender of slavery, creator of a system ruled exclusively by white property-owning males gets an A? A president who lied us into war and vigorously practiced American exceptionalism gets an A? A president to threw away the Constitution to imprison Japanese-Americans, and who founded the industrial-security state gets an A?
Point is, if we are to judge on the basis of some kind of perfection instead of historic achievements accompanied by blatant compromise and wrong-headedness, there isn’t a single president who deserves more than a D.
You don’t have to get a 100% to get an A. You only have to beat 90%.
We should give Lincoln an “A”? The nation lay in ruins at the end of his terms of office.
If Americans weren’t so abysmally ignorant of history, they’d deplore Lincoln’s presidency rather than lauding it.
He took the nation into a war of choice, and that, not because he was determined to put an efficient end to slavery or to free all people then in bondage in the U.S. or anything else so noble.
The Civil War was a fight over the manner in which the nation’s economic order would be arranged; it pitted agricultural interests against heavy-industrial and banking interests. It was over this split that nations aligned in the Confederacy chose to secede from the union. To prevent that, and arguing, as his avowed purpose, that his duty was to “preserve the union”, Lincoln took the nation into a war which ripped it apart and caused a still-unsurpassed number of deaths and injuries. For what? In effect, it was so that industrial corporate interests could prevail over rival agricultural ones.
And, on the question of secession, tell me:
May a member state legally secede from the United States if its people in a clear majority wish to do so? After all the death and destruction through Lincoln’s terms, the only honest answer is, “We (still) don’t know ” —as the question has never been given the legal or legislative attention it required.
Oh, and, in case you’ve forgotten, the United States continue in what is the gravest Constitutional dilemma since Lincoln’s day. And, about that situation, just as the pre-Civil War executives and federal courts did in that day, in our own, this Constitutional crisis ios being left ignored by those charged with the responsibility to deal with such matters.
C Minus.
He campaigned for so much change and he has been timid in his execution of change.
Foreign Policy:
Restoring American image – A
Setting table for denuclearization – A
Iran and North Korea – B
Russia, China, Pakistan, Japan, Europe – A
Ending two wars: Iraq C+; Afghanistan mid-term C-, final is incomplete
Domestic Policy:
GM and Chrysler – B-
Education – incomplete
Healthcare – C-
Labor – C+
Budget – C
Climate change – C-
Financial bailout – C-
Stimulus Package – B+
Jobs – D
Tax reform – F
Political
Isolating GOP – A
Exerting Congressional power – D
Special election coattails – C
Media – C+
Popularity – A
You left out LGBT civil rights: C
Progress on hate crimes, possible movement on ENDA, DADT, maybe …. timid and doesn’t pay attention
A.
We have never gotten this far with health care before.
He has prevented more hostility toward the US and started mending the fences Bush smashed.
Think about the economy, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, and then think about President McCain.
This isn’t a recession, it’s a near collapse of the financial system by the crooks. This country has been sold out since Raygun and include Clinton in the presidents who have done everything to benefit themselves.
B+. My only real disappointment is in the civil liberties area and in the quality of some of his appointments. Considering the disaster he inherited and the obstructionism of windbags in both parties, he probably deserves an A+ for emergency care. Once things are stable and on the road to recovery we’ll see what kind of grade he deserves. I predict it will be outstanding.
Foreign Policy (except Iraq and Afg): A
Iraq and Afghanistan: C+
Financial Crisis: D
Health Care: B
Energy Issues: Incomplete
General Messaging: B-
Civil Liberties: C-
Did I miss anything?
Foreign policy: B+, because of Afghanistan. Still, our world standing has obviously improved, by virtue of not having a rich frat boy wanker as POTUS.
Iraq and Afghanistan: C-. Should be more out.
Financial Crisis: D. I’m so sick and tired of money flowing upwards he should get an F, but I think he’s trying. Just with the wrong people. Elizabeth Warren, please.
Health Care: B+. Nobody has ever moved it this far along before. I’m a single-payer guy, but politics is messy business, and progress moves slowly.
Energy: C. Doing what he can, I believe, and not enough, I also believe.
General Messaging: A. He comes across as so decent and thoughtful to me I have to be the Russian judge on this one. This is a tough country of which to be the leader.
Civil liberties: D. Power NEVER gives up trying to take away civil liberties–too much of a threat, real or imagined–and again, as much as I think he personally “gets it,” as well as found out things as POTUS that the rest of us don’t have access to, I’m bummed out about it.
Intangibles/Vision: A. I am in the awkward position of wishing he had unlimited authority, for a limited period of time. I know, I know…
B-
Good on thoughtfulness, deliberation, intentions.
Good on being a responsible member of the international community.
Not good on state secrets and civil liberties. Okay on civil liberties not involving Muslims or “state secrets.”
Okay on the overall economy, not good on Wall Street.
On the one hand, he’s been wretched on civil liberties, on torture, on accountability, on financial systems, on the wars and gay rights. He’s been marginally better on healthcare and defense.
He has been like a nuclear bomb to party building so when he’s done our infrastructure will be worse than when he came into office. He seems to believe republicans can be good faith actors but this is genetically impossible.
But the Republicans are insane and the institutional hurdles are high and the congress has clearly shown that its only use in this era is that of a rubber stamp.
So….
C.
I think we would all give him higher grades if we felt that he was fighting for the things he campaigned on and for which we voted for him. But I get the feeling that there isn’t anything he won’t compromise on and anyone he won’t compromise with. Sometimes you need to crack heads and demand what you want. People respect that in a leader. He needs to lead in an outspoken, principled way. He has created a vacuum and it is being filled by people like Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson, Glenn Beck and Sarah effin Palin. He needs to hire Reich, Warren, and Dean and fire Brennan, Geithner and Sebelius.
However, I’m much more interested in #2 than anything else, so I would weight that higher.
Of course, grading Bush on those 3 … he wouldn’t even get a report card – he’d be expelled, arrested, tried for treason and executed.
F
What bullshit.
He’s about one round into a 12 round fight against a big, strong, dirtier-tha- hell opponent (12 rounds if he doesn’t get knocked out first, either de-(s)elected in 2012 or taken out like Nixon, JFK and Clinton. There’s more than one way to skin a cat, y’know.), and you’re asking for a grade?
What grade would Muhammad Ali have had after his early rounds with George Foreman?
Please.
Most of the referees, judges and commentators have been bought off by his opponent and he is way outweighed. Only his slick boxing has taken him this far.I give him an A just for surviving and getting a few punches in. He’s been fading towards the end of this round, but it’s gonna be a long fight.
Watch.
AG
This is getting scary, Mr. Gilroy — I completely agree with you on something. I keep wanting to hear who else is in the class where Obama’s getting Cs and Ds. Some people seem to forget what country we’re talking about here. Maybe the standard should be how well this country has kept its campaign promises (aka the Constitution and the Declaration).
I grade on a curve, which is the only way you can handle this kind of thing. An on a curve, he gets an A.
The problem is not Obama. It’s Reid and the leadership in the Senate. Obama did what he said he would do – give Congress the lead in the health care. Obama has laid out the roadmap.
Reid, Durbin and Schumer have failed to control the Repukeliscum. I have called Durbin, and will call Reid and Schumer. They should drop the Nuclear Bomb but with a time limit – put a one-week limit on filibusters. None for judges. Remove anonymous holds. Limit filibusters to 1 per session per senator.
After 1 week, restore the current order, but leave the threat of going nuclear in place. If you can’t control them using the current rules, change the FUCKING RULES.
And how would you like that when the Republicans are back in control?