Dr. Errington Thompson

We’ve all heard the rhetoric that President Barack Obama really hasn’t done anything during his 18 months as president. There seems to be an overwhelming outcry asking, “What have you done for us lately—and what will you do for us soon?” If you listen to the media, President Obama has been a failure—just as Albert Einstein was a moron who needed remedial education.

Look at the environment that we are in. It is a given that conservatives will never say anything positive about the president, and progressives will always want a more liberal policy “other-than” whatever comes out of Washington. It’s therefore also a given that the President will continue to be criticized from all sides (which is often the surest proof that one is doing something right).

Instead of bashing him for doing too little or too much, the right things imperfectly or the wrong things too often, we should take a moment to review President Obama’s legislative accomplishments. First, of course, he had to tackle the collapsing economy bequeathed to him by the previous administration.

Economic Recovery Act of 2009

The president and his fellow Democrats have been taking a beating from Congressional Republicans and talking heads about the stimulus package. But a recent analysis by two very conservative economists, Mark Zandi (John McCain’s chief economist and an economist for Moody’s) and Alan Blinder (a Princeton professor who served as vice-chairman of the board of governors of the Federal Reserve), found that intervention by this Congress and President Obama caused our Gross Domestic Product to be 11.5% higher and saved over 8.5 million jobs. The stimulus worked to avoid the Great Depression 2.0.

Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009

All I can do is smile when I see this piece of legislation. The credit card industry spent millions of dollars trying to lobby Congress to kill this legislation. In spite of their efforts, some decent legislation came out. This law ended retroactive rate increases. It made it mandatory to give us, the consumers, 45 days’ notice before rate hikes. It limits the amount of fees that can be charged, and what they can be charged for. There is also language in this legislation to make our credit card bills easier to read and easier to understand. This was a huge consumer victory.

Financial Reform

Big financial institutions are now governed by more stringent regulations, which should decrease their ability to make risky investments that destabilize our economy. The government now has the ability to regulate derivatives—the unregulated instruments that helped cause the Great Recession—and tighten requirements for capital reserves. A new federal watchdog agency has been created to help protect consumers against a variety of financial shenanigans.

President Obama did not expect economic collapse when he began his quest for the Oval Office in 2007; a central part of his platform was his promise to reform our healthcare delivery system. So in addition to dealing with the greatest financial reversal since the Great Depression, the president was determined to tackle a variety of health issues.

Stem Cell Research

Almost immediately after taking office, President Obama signed an executive order that ended the ban on stem cell research. What does that mean for us? Stem cells are a sort of ”building block” cell with the ability, when stimulated correctly, to develop into any other type of cell in the body.

Imagine one day being able to inject stem cells into the pancreas of a diabetic and those cells becoming healthy pancreatic cells: no more insulin shots. Imagine a 21-year-old who was in a devastating car crash and is unable to walk because of damage to his spinal cord, and being able to inject specially treated stem cells directly into the spinal cord to heal the damaged segment. This is the promise of stem cells.

Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act

This piece of legislation gives the Food and Drug Administration the authority to regulate tobacco products.

Healthcare Reform

The more than year-long drive to reform our healthcare delivery system was exhausting, but in the end, a success. Americans are no longer beholden to insurance companies.

Over 20 million Americans who do not have health insurance will be covered under this sweeping initiative. Insurance companies will no longer be able to retroactively set limits on coverage, or deny coverage to those who have policies, or refuse to issue policies to people with pre-existing conditions.

Adult children up to age 27 will be able to stay on their parents’ policies while they finish college, take advanced training, start their careers, begin to establish their “grown-up” lives. The healthcare act is not perfect, but it is a step forward that has been dreamed of since Harry Truman was president—and it came to pass under Barack Obama’s administration.

In addition to these huge accomplishments, the president has been determined to help regular people live better lives:

Hate Crimes Prevention Act
This long-awaited bill extends hate crimes legislation to cover gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability.

Universal National Service Act
This law sets aside billions of dollars to help students and seniors earn money through volunteer service. This can help students earn money for college—an essential path for countless thousands, since previous administrations and congresses slashed money for Pell Grants and other financial aid and directed a huge proportion of student loans through for-profit banks.

Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009
This law, one of the president’s first legislative initiatives, restored worker protections against pay discrimination in reaction to a Supreme Court decision that ignored, and then rewrote, the clear will of Congress in its original Equal Pay law. One would think that this restorative bill would not be a big deal—after all, it’s the right wing that has claimed to abhor “activist courts”—but it faced almost universal Republican opposition.

Steering the Titanic
No president in our modern era has faced such an uphill battle as Barack Obama. At the recent Net Nation conference, ousted administration official Van Jones described the 44th presidency by saying, “Barack Obama volunteered to steer the Titanic after it hit the iceberg.”

In spite of his clear accomplishments, this president has faced overwhelmingly negative media, a fractious Democratic majority, a stoically resistant Republican minority, all the while fighting wars both economic and military. And yet, he perseveres.

As he stated at his address to the Urban League in late July, “I didn’t take this job to do the popular thing, I took it to do the right things.” For that, he has earned my admiration and continued support. I look forward to the future he is attempting to steer the nation towards.