Obama and the harsh reality check - Mark Morford
You want the good news, or the wincingly bleak news that makes you shudder and sigh and wish you didn’t have such sad dreams? You want a bit of both? You should probably hear a bit of both.
Because here’s the thing: He did more or less what he said he was going to do – so far, anyway – which was to end Bush’s devastatingly stupid war(s), re-establish America as a respectable force in world affairs, orate in complete sentences so as not embarrass the nation on the international stage at every turn, shift the race discussion to the next level, enact at least some modest education reform, protect women’s rights, defend the middle class, slap back the GOP’s toxic plot to rule American politics for the next 75 years, and usher in an impossibly variegated, increasingly messy era of barely controlled, women-empowered, multicultural chaos in which old, fear-soaked white men no longer control every election, industry, media, cultural discussion, power source and hunk of propaganda in the nation.
And what of Obama’s signature legislation, the Affordable Care Act? So horribly mismanaged, watered down, blocked, lied about and spit upon that it’s almost impossible to tell that it’s a pretty good law overall, one that will reverberate for years and benefit millions, despite the raging lies and laughable rhetoric of the right. Word.
Oh, yes – one more thing: When Obama took office, the Dow was a desolate, gut-wrenching 8000 points and plummeting like a suicidal eagle. Every pundit from the Wall Street Journal to the Economist declared that America’s unprecedented combination of a failed war, brutal housing crisis, recession, auto industry collapse and manufacturing exodus was a perfect storm of economic cataclysm that would take at least 20 years to fix, if that. Obama said he’d do most of it in four. Maybe five.
http://blog.sfgate.com/morford/2013/12/10/obama-and-the-harsh-reality-check/
= new reply since forum marked as read
from the left. I have a feeling history will be much kinder to this president when he's gone, and the dust settles. 
show him as starting an illegal war in Iraq or creating war crimes by the numbers. History will debate if his 'Coalition of the Willing' was a legitimate fighting force or anything more than a mercenary group of free marketers with assault rifles. The neglect of the VA is the worse ever under any POTUS and that might be talked about in the future. His failure to prop up a crumbling infrastructure at home cannot really escape notice nor can his bungling in Afghanistan. However something you said about Reagan that applies right now (it can change in the future) is where our history is approved.
Reagan will be considered a saint as long as the textbooks are written in Texas and approved by Troglodytes. Dubya and Cheney too no doubt, but one day liberals will sit on that board as more and more families become secular...cue the scary music! 
