MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Andrei Fedyashin) - Barack Obama finishes his first year as president on January 20. The results are not too bad, but not too brilliant, either.
They could be described as modest and satisfactory which is still positive, considering geopolitical events (two wars - in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a threat of two more - Iran and Yemen) and the economic downturn.
Obama's biggest achievement is that the rest of the world no longer sees America as a vestige of Ronald Reagan's times. Some credit George W. Bush's departure for this, but still Obama can take honors.
Obama's life will not get any easier. After January 20, the president will be fully responsible for the conduct of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; positive results from stabilization measures will be expected after the crisis, his words must turn into actions...
When rating their presidents, Americans are accustomed to calendar milepost markers (a hundred days, six months, a year since the election or inauguration, etc.) and compare these ratings with those of their predecessors. Regrettably, more often than not, the ratings are judged superficially without considering the background against which a president operates. After bad presidents the standards for their successors are usually set high. No doubt, Bush was a bad president.
By January 20 Obama's ratings fell to 46%-49%. A level below 50% is considered critical for the first year, although in this particular case nobody can explain sensibly why an unusual president should be judged by a usual yardstick. Obama came to power at a very difficult time and has to treat the ailments contracted from his predecessor with very bitter pills.
All this prompted the Fox News television network (which has long become a political institution of the far-right and conservative forces) to declare that never before had the ratings of a U.S. president fallen so low by the end of the first year. This is not quite right. Gallup started measuring the public's presidential ratings not with George Washington but with Harry Truman, that is, the end of WWII.
Furthermore, Reagan, who was one of the most popular presidents in postwar history and is still the idol of American conservatives, had exactly the same ratings as Obama. By the end of the first year he was favored by only 41%-49% of those surveyed.
Reagan and Obama, or their times, are so similar as if the second period was created as a mirror image of the first. Like Obama, Reagan came to power after unpopular Jimmy Carter (with the lowest approval rating of 28%); Republicans had an overwhelming majority in Congress under Reagan, like Democrats now have under Obama; when Reagan came to the White House, America had the worst economic troubles since the Great Depression, and the same applies to Obama.
It is unreasonable to expect that the advent of the 44th president to the White House will produce instant economic recovery (the economy is recovering but very slowly), that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will be crowned with victory and the love of the indigenous population, that Israel will immediately stop the construction of new settlements and will fraternize with the Palestinians, that Tehran will immediately shake the hand extended by Obama (and already removed), that there will be no global warming, and that the world will immediately start destroying nuclear weapons.
Obama was not likely, in his first year, to achieve what none of his predecessors have managed to do since Theodor Roosevelt - to establish a basic, universal and accessible system of public health, something which has long existed in the rest of the civilized world.
Even a statement on "resetting" relations with Russia has not been buttressed by acts. A new treaty on strategic offensive arms was supposed to replace START, which expired on December 5 last year, but its drafting has not yet been completed. U.S. Under Secretary for Arms Control, Ellen Tauscher, the main U.S. negotiator, said that this work is nearing completion. The Russian and American delegations will meet this week in Moscow for the first time after the New Year's break. On January 25 they will meet again for regular discussions in Geneva. Tauscher maintains that the new treaty will be drafted and signed before May 3 when New York hosts a regular meeting to review the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which takes place once every 10 years.
Obama could be criticized for promising too much. But his failure to fulfill many of his promises will not so much be his fault because it is programmed into the system. The American system is designed to smooth out radical anomalies, whether this benefits the country or not. In their time, the founding fathers took care of that.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
