The president will surely boast of his accomplishments during tonight’s State of the Union address. So what exactly are they? Paul Brandus tells us:
5. Getting out of Iraq
Keeping one’s promise is good currency for any politician, and this was a big one that Obama delivered on. The numbers: 4,484 Americans killed, 32,200 wounded, $806 billion spent (with an estimated $1 trillion needed for future medical care for war veterans through 2050, says a Brown University study) — all for a war that began under a pretext (finding weapons of mass destruction) that never panned out. Instead, it evolved into a costly, 105-month grind that damaged America’s image in the world and, it could be argued, strengthened Iran’s standing in the region. On top of all this, the war wasn’t paid for. Yes, it toppled Saddam Hussein. But other Mideast dictators have been overthrown pretty much on their own during the Arab Spring; historians can only ponder how Saddam might have fared. Obama opposed the war all the way back in 2002 — and promised repeatedly on the campaign trail in 2008 that he’d end the conflict. Mission accomplished.
4. Improving America’s image abroad
America was showered with goodwill after the September 11 attacks. A few years and a couple of wars later, that goodwill had largely vanished. The war in Iraq led to brutal coverage around the world that screamed of secret U.S. prisons, torture, and images from Abu Ghraib. Fair or not, the Bush administration was perceived in some quarters of the globe as a unilateralist, my-way-or-the-highway bully. By 2008, America’s standing in the world had fallen, sometimes sharply. Even staunch American allies were unhappy: Just 53 percent of Britons had a favorable opinion of the U.S., along with 46 percent of Australians, and just 31 percent of Germans. Today, those numbers are up in every region of the world — thanks in no small part to President Obama’s effort to treat our allies as true partners. There is one important and ironic exception to this uptrend, however: The Muslim world. Just 12 percent of Pakistanis, 20 percent of Egyptians, and 13 percent of Jordanians had a favorable opinion of us last year — all down in the Obama years, despite opponents who accuse him of tilting toward the Muslim world (if not actually being a secret Muslim).
3. Passing health-care reform
“I will sign a universal health-care bill into law by the end of my first term as president,” candidate Obama said in 2008. He certainly made good on that pledge — at considerable political cost to himself and his party. In some ways, the true success of this accomplishment is hard to judge, since most major provisions of the president’s Affordable Care Act don’t go into effect until 2014. Plus, the constitutionality of the law’s central provision — a government mandate that all Americans have health insurance — will be debated by the Supreme Court this spring, with a decision coming as early as June. Until then, though: Promise made, promise kept. This is one of the most consequential pieces of legislation since LBJ’s Great Society. Among the provisions of this piece of legislation already in place is a rule prohibiting insurance companies from rescinding coverage based on the flimsiest of pretexts, and lifetime limits on insurance coverage — which have sent many a citizen to the poorhouse — have been eliminated.
