Face of the nation

The president of the United States is not a dictator. Because of this fact, there is a lot that is out of his control. Despite this reality, many people base their opinions of a president's performance off of the country's performance during that time. This is because the president is essentially the face of the nation.


I'm going to bring up the economy as an example of the point I'm trying to make. Our economy is prone to good times and bad regardless of who we put in the White House, and the president has limited say on the economy. People are still quick to praise or blame the president based off of the nation's economic performance. For example, people blame Bush for our recent recession because he was in office when it started. I have yet to see any evidence that his actions actually contributed to the recession.

This put Obama in a terrific position. He could do nothing, and he would have been praised for saving the economy. After all, the odds of the recession continuing for another four years were pretty much zero. There were even estimates for when the recession would end.

We missed the estimates. Obama blamed economists and insisted that the recession was worse than everyone had been saying. He threw trillions of dollars at the economy, and we had one of our worst recoveries ever. With that kind of spending, we really needed to know that we benefited. Instead, people fixate on the fact that we recovered under his watch.

Obama should have also had some luck with the division in this country. Bush made a number of bone-headed moves during his presidency. I can't blame democrats for hating him. At the end of his eight years, I had never seen this country more divided. If Obama did nothing, he would be praised for the decrease in division.

Like we saw with the economy, Obama didn't do nothing. He went out of his way to tick off republicans. We saw numerous my-way-or-the-highway speeches, and he turned "I will not negotiate" into a catch phrase. In the latest threat of a government shutdown, the republicans gave him exactly what he wanted. How did he respond? He used it as an opportunity to criticize the republicans.

Obama has not just fueled tensions between political parties. He has gone overboard on race. Every altercation between a black person and a white person must be due to racism against blacks. He doesn't even wait for the facts. This environment has helped with the rise of Black Lives Matter, one of the most influential hate groups to emerge in recent years. Obama has been pandering to this hate group.

Division in this country would be less severe in this country if Obama had done nothing, and he would have received credit for it. Instead, I have to say the same thing I did eight years ago. I have never seen this country more divided.