Ask #1 Muchacho - How is Obama Doing so far?

Ask #1 Muchacho is a weekly column which features real questions from real readers, and answers by LGT's own #1 Muchacho. If you would like to submit a question to be featured in this column, Contact Us Here.

Dear #1 Muchacho,

With a few months under his belt, what would you give Obama for a grade on his performance thus far?

George, in
Texas

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George,

Not many people would disagree that Obama had his hands full coming into office. A mortgage crisis, plummeting stock market, 2 dragging wars; man don't you miss the good ole' days of Clinton getting blown in the oval office?

Obama says everything will be fineTo give an accurate answer lets look at what Obama has done.

1.) He's been extremely accessible. A huge criticism of the Bush administration was that GW and his team were never available for questioning, press conferences, etc. They lead their initiatives basically by keeping people in the dark, or until something had already happened. Obama seems to be dead set on being the opposite of this. Weekly updates, youtube addresses, press conferences, etc. Obama has been in the public eye; some people would argue too much.

2.) He issued the shut down of Guantanamo Bay. Now this is more of a message than anything. Some people would say this doesn't change anything or that it's just an empty gesture. I would argue this is very big of him. Mainly because he campaigned against torture and the practices occurring at Gitmo. He could have easily just swept everything under the rug and moved on. With the 2 wars being last page material at this point, he didn't have to do anything. However, he did; which is big in my book. Many politicians wouldn't have stuck their neck out simply because of the attention it would have attracted.

3.) He increased troop numbers in Afghanistan. It's never popular to increase troop numbers no matter who does it. However, going back to what Obama campaigned on, which was that Afghanistan was the war to win, and we were losing because of Iraq being a distraction. This meant we'd have to increase troop levels to win in Afghanistan. Love it or hate it, this was something he ran on, and he followed through.

My only real gripe with Obama is that he backed down on some of the wire tapping stuff which was a big issue for me. Overall I'd give Obama a B+ for his efforts. We'll have much more to evaluate when we see the state of the country in a year.

-#1

Ask #1 Muchacho is a weekly column which features real questions from real readers, and answers by LGT's own #1 Muchacho. If you would like to submit a question to be featured in this column, Contact Us Here.