Obama Can't Close The Deal? Yeah... RIght.

You can argue over whether Obama’s achievements are good or bad on the merits. But especially after Thursday’s vote you can’t argue that Obama is not getting things done. To the contrary, he has, as promised, covered the uninsured, tightened regulations, started to wind down the war in Iraq and shifted focus and resources to Afghanistan, injected more competition into the education system and edged closer to a big energy bill.

This quote from Politico's John F. Harris & Jim Vandehei continues the pushback to Eric Alterman's diatribe the other day about how President Obama's current tenure is so disappointing,  "significant accomplishments notwithstanding." And really, if any of our accomplishments are to be cast aside in a futile, report card type of exercise, wouldn't we all be lacking?

Here again, is President Obama's "disappointing" record in just 18 months.

So Much For The "Do Nothing" Congress

A great point was made this morning by Bob Cesca about the unprecedented amount of obstructionism that has occurred since Democrats took over the majority in Congress in 2007 and the "dig your heels into the ground" GOP mentality since President Obama took office. And yet, the President's success rate in Congress on roll call votes is higher than any in presidential history since the stat has been taken, while facing the highest obstruction in history.

The new CQ study gives Obama a higher mark than any other president since it began scoring presidential success rates in Congress more than five decades ago. And that was in a year where Obama tackled how to deal with Afghanistan, Iraq, an expanding terrorist threat, the economic crisis and battles over health care.

...A major reason for Obama's record high score this year: Democrats took away a significant number of seats from Republicans in the 2006 and 2008 elections, resulting in big majorities in the House and Senate for the president's party.

But Sarah Binder, a congressional analyst at the Brookings Institution, says there's another key reason he scored so well. She says he only took an official position on issues that were really important to him — those that he knew he had a very good chance of winning.[*] He picked his battles carefully.

"He can do that because he's been in the Senate, his staff has been in the House and he understands the process here. They are consummate congressional insiders in understanding how this works," Binder says.

Now that's not to say I believe that the President shouldn't push harder for what he wants and hold his hand out in the interest of "bipartisanship" less, but just to point out that the mainstream media meme claiming the President can't close the deal (which started while campaigning against Hillary Clinton) or wingnuts who claim "we need more than a charismatic guy with a teleprompter" is just plain bullshit.

Also, when looking at overall job approval ratings for President Obama, which currently stands at 53%, there's been an uptick in February since he started fighting back and being more vocal about what he wants and calling out Republicans who are blocking every move with filibusters, holds and in most cases, just flat out stupidity.  So when you hear "the American people have spoken" and they don't want this or that as proven by polls, I think the more telling sign is the frustration with the President not because the don't believe in his policies, but because the think he should fight back harder for his agenda.

*Sarah Binder contradicts herself - does Obama take sides when he knows it's an easy win or when it's an important piece of legislation? I personally believe it's the latter.

Adding... My point here wasn't to suggest that the Congress is doing a bang up job (clearly they can be doing much better) but only to point out the Democrats are not doing as horribly as we're led to believe by most reports. There has been some major, positive legislation passed in President Obama's first year in office, despite the Party of No.