(click picture for story)

See, here's the thing. Though his first year has not been without error, I think President Obama is still trying to accomplish exactly what he said he'd do. Evidence to me is the fact that he has both the far left and the far right either disappointed or apoplectic right now. If you listened to what he actually said during the campaign and what he wrote in the books he's published, the guy is a centrist and pragmatist, with vaguely liberal tendencies. It seems however, that his charisma allowed or encouraged people to project their own hopes and fears upon him. Because the left was so excited that he is decidedly not George Bush, they seem to have believed that he would use the new majorities in Congress to ram through a leftist agenda. The far right, now particularly embodied by the Tea Party movement, have convinced themselves largely the same thing.

Because the economy was in free fall when he took the oath of office, Obama did push through an enormous stimulus bill. This certainly got the right charged up on their fears, and I suppose it also got the left to believe in a particular trajectory as well. Meanwhile, within that context, he's tried to move forward on the agenda he was advocating prior to the economic collapse. It's sort of funny to me that Obama is simultaneously criticized for doing nothing and trying to do too much at once, depending on the narrative of the week. Nonetheless, economic conditions will ultimately limit how much of his original agenda can be achieved. Likewise, the continued highly partisan divide makes it very difficult for a centrist to bring opposing sides together around pragmatic responses to current conditions.

Putting Congress in the driver's seat for the healthcare bill was actually part of Obama not being George Bush and therefore recognizing Congress as a coequal branch of government. Unfortunately, partisan rancor made a mess of that, so that ended up as a mistake. I think the President's current approach of taking on the Republicans directly by calling their bluff and asking them to lay their cards on the table may end up being transformative. If he is able to break the Republicans' unity and move a few moderates off of 'no,' he'll actually be able to implement some of his centrist agenda over the next year. That won't make either extreme happy, but centrist action is actually what the true majority in this country wants.

To sum, the notion that President Obama isn't accomplishing anything is a myth. Really it's just that he's not accomplishing what partisan advocates wanted. Ultimately, I think his legacy may hinge on whether he is successful at diffusing all this partisan nonsense that's gripped the country for too long. If he can re-awaken the majority at the center, that's what will put this president in the history books.