Obama Was Not Unworthy

There is no shortage of reasons to critique Obama in the months leading up to the presidential election in the United States.

The long journey of election obstacles is taking place right now in our neighboring country and will conclude in November. In the meantime, the president will appear before Americans with mixed results, marked by many failures.

Since Barack Obama was elected the 44th president of the United States in Nov. 2008, the unemployment rate has increased south of our border. Moreover, income inequality has been on the rise.

The public debt of the federal government rose to stratospheric heights. It amounts to $15 billion, a cap both paralyzing and unimaginable four years ago.

On another level, the U.S. president has blown hot and cold in the endless Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He also failed to adopt a new immigration law that would include regularization.

The politician has also shown some scheming and vote-catching, maybe almost as much as his Republican opponents.

Recently, he has pushed back to 2013 any decision on the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would stretch from Alberta to Texas. This was because he wanted to avoid losing the support of environmentalists several months before the general election meeting.

Reasons to criticize the Democratic president exist. But reasons for wanting his re-election surpass them even more. Barack Obama was not unworthy; on the contrary.

First of all, he is not responsible for the financial difficulties of the United States. They are linked to the cloud of financial troubles that have occurred and still occur around the world. This is common with all Western countries. The same goes for the employment crisis that is nearly everywhere.

We have yet to find, in the proposals put forward by leaders of the Republican Party, those who would reduce real and serious difficulties without creating heavy damage elsewhere. The Obama administration has presented plans that Republicans shot down for ideological reasons, denying, for example, that the richest pay a tax increase. Their extremists have regularly failed to compromise.

This administration has saved the automobile industry by making unpopular decisions. At the same time, it imposed measures to reduce fuel consumption of vehicles.

Nine years after the invasion ordered by George W. Bush, it’s Barack Obama who put an end to the war in Iraq. He did it in a certain order.

He assumed his role by giving his approval of the perilous mission that led to the elimination of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Although insufficient, his reform of health insurance is a huge step forward for the United States. Unfortunately, Republicans continue to fight it furiously.

Barack Obama has disappointed many of his supporters, who had imagined a man on the left, while now he is at the center. But he deserves numerous bonus points in terms of his assessment, and even more when taking into account the game of obstruction played out by his opponents.

Republicans have used disgraceful methods to discredit him, even forcing him, in April, to make his birth certificate public!

Today, through the adoption of restrictive laws in the states they hold, Republicans attempt to impede the voting rights of certain groups in society likely to support Obama. They are a disgrace to themselves.

And, frankly, do our neighbors really need these debates on religion, abortion and homosexuality that many Republican candidates support so obsessively?