Obama Hasn’t Proven Unworthy

Months before the presidential elections in the United States, there is no shortage of reasons to criticize Obama.

The long electoral obstacle course is underway in the U.S., our neighbor to the South. It will come to an end in November. During the intervening period, the incumbent president will go before the American public with a lukewarm assessment — filled, of course, with failures and disappointments

Since Barack Obama was elected the 44th president of the United States in November 2008, unemployment has increased considerably and income gaps have widened as well.

The federal government’s debt has reached stratospheric heights. At $15 trillion, this peak is just as paralyzing as it was unimaginable four years ago.

The American president has blown hot and cold on the eternal Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Elsewhere, he failed to pass an immigration bill that would have included the legalization of some illegal immigrants.

The politician sometimes came across as a calculating vote seeker — almost as much as his Republican adversaries.

He recently pushed back any decision to be made on the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline — that would stretch from Alberta to Texas — until 2013. This way, he would avoid losing environmentalist support months before the big election.

There are indeed reasons to criticize the Democratic president. But the reasons to hope for his re-election outweigh them. Barack Obama has not proven unworthy. To the contrary.

First of all, he is not responsible for the financial difficulties of the United States. They are related to the storm which always blew and still blows throughout the planet. They are common to all Western countries. The same goes for the employment crisis everywhere.

In the proposals launched by Republican Party heavyweights, there is yet to be found a solution to these real and serious problems without creating serious damage elsewhere. The Obama administration presented plans that Republicans cut into pieces for ideological reasons — refusing, for example, that the richest pay higher taxes. Their extremists have regularly blockaded compromise.

This administration saved the car industry by making unpopular decisions, and imposed measures to reduce vehicle fuel consumption at the same time.

Nine years after the invasion ordered by George W. Bush, it was Barack Obama who put an end to the war in Iraq. He did it in an orderly fashion.

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

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

Barack Obama has disappointed many partisans who had imagined him a left-wing politician, while he’s actually a centrist. But, in assessing him, he has many good points, and even more when considering the obstructionist games of his adversaries.

Republicans have used unworthy methods to discredit him — even obliging him to make his birth certificate public in April!

Today, through the adoption of restrictive laws, certain states are attempting to hinder the voting rights of groups inclined to support Obama. They are a disgrace.

And, frankly, do our neighbors really need all the debates on religion, abortion and homosexuality that Republicans always obsessively return to?