"Why Do People Like President Obama?"

I'm reproducing here in full a reply on quora.com to the question: "Why do people like President Obama?" It's by Larry Hill, who says he is a retired engineer:

I'm a moderately liberal person and will be the first to admit how deeply distressed I have been by this President. Even in his seventh year, wizened and chastened by his unremitting Congress, Obama can't be trusted to do what I and most liberals would like to see him do.

On the other hand, I am convinced that in any situation requiring integrity and gravitas, this president will deeply examine issues and construct what he believes is the most right and the most correct response for America. Because he believes that once sworn in he's the president elected by the people, not by the party, and judges accordingly.

In the fall of 2008 I had listened to the investment siren song of the right's anti-Fed, anti-dollar, anti-debt, pro-resource investment philosophy and shunned all debt while holding strong on resource stocks. In six months we saw the spectacle of a Treasury secretary begging Congress to save the world, a presidency that floundered and collapsed in its waning days while credit freeze and market panic intensified. And spurning virtually the only investment - Treasuries - that would weather that storm, I watched three-quarters of my net worth and income evaporate even as I needed it desperately in retirement.

Obama's singular success at reviving the national economy to the point of almost universal optimism (among human beings, if not the political right), when March 2009 looked an awful lot like a replay of March, 1932, deserves our utmost respect. It took a half century for markets to recover their levels after 1929. It took Obama five years. Europe still hasn't figured out how to do it. (Nor has Kansas.)

Then in 2009, as my wife's job and all health insurance evaporated, we watched Congress tangle over a health plan that might make her insurable again with a cancer history - only to see the new President rebuffed at every turn, his every attempt at conciliation with the Right made a mockery and a fool's errand. The thing that eventually emerged from that made nobody happy, which probably means it was good law. That law got my wife insured.

In 2010, of course, the Right struck back [after sweeping Republican gains in Congress]. Public employment at all levels was cut wholesale and state economies deliberately sabotaged to try to force the country onto an austerity footing. Between 2011 and 2013 the red state austerity programs shaved between 1% and 2% off of GDP. Congressionally-mandated federal government austerity coupled with the government shutdown of 2013 nearly reversed the economy in the first two quarters of last year. But the oil collapse righted that ship.

Throughout this, the president took every penny at his disposal and every possible avenue to shore up what he could, to encourage infrastructure development and get money into the hands of people. Faced in 2013 and this year with ever more hostile REDMAP-generated right wing majorities, the austerity experiment is still running, and showing failure after failure, overseas and in various states. Kansas may never recover.

In 2011 Obama was excoriated for high energy costs throughout the country. Yet one constancy of his presidency has been support of energy development across the country - fracking, alternates and offshore development. Today, wholesale and retail energy costs have been cut in half - highly stimulative - and I am still waiting for that enthusiastic chorus of "Thanks, Barack!" from the right that he so richly deserves.

Do liberals hate fracking? You betcha. Poisons the Oglallah.

During the ACA fight and even this year, Obama has signaled his willingness to sign legislation trimming Social Security and Medicare. Nothing gives you quicker pariahhood in liberal circles.

Yes, he should have closed Guantanamo when he had the opportunity, before Congress changed in 2011. Since then, Congress has thrice-damned itself with its stranglehold on Cuba, our national embarrassment.

The 2011 National Defense authorization included draconian provisions to enable the midnight arrest and disappearance of people suspected of terror thought crime. Obama signed this, claiming he had no choice if he was to pay the military. Shame, shame on all.

The chaos triggered by the Bush invasion of Iraq reverberates ever more strongly across Africa and parts of Asia. Bush's failure to impede in any way Soviet adventurism in Georgia has led directly to the situation in Ukraine, and what happens there will determine the fate of the Baltics. But the fact is that Bush could not intervene, he had already squandered America's troops, money and influence in the Afghan and Iraqi morass. (Yes, Russia is technically not soviet, but Putin is.)

In contrast, Obama's presidency has dealt as well as any could with the toppling of regimes across Africa and Syria. At any number of points a misstep could have quickly exploded into all-out mobilization to fight wars of conquest and suppression in a dozen countries. OK, I'm not going to say reverence, but certainly awe that we are still able to buy milk and butter, and travel as freely as we wish. Under McCain/Palin today we would be drafting seventeen year olds for pending combat in Iran and Russia, in the developing global conflict and accompanying religious scourge. Cities across the globe would be smoking. Your city.

I suspect the fact that Europe, America and most of the globe are not involved in this conflict will come to be the definition of the Obama presidency. We have stood at the brink of the most perilous times since 1939, and have not stepped off. The world is remarkably peaceful. And for that, Obama deserves his Prize.

Yes, I want single-payer health care. It works fantastically well. Yes, I want a forceful stand on women's rights, particular those involving family planning: the less government, the better. No government is best.

Yes, I want food stamps expanded, not diminished. Recent studies show that strong welfare systems actually encourage the work ethic, not diminish as the right wing would have it. And local efforts to supply food to needy as SNAP money evaporates are woefully limited, and insufficient.

Yes, I want the twin voices of religion and money stilled in politics. Shut off the dark money flows, and tax religion like any other business if they insist in meddling with politics.

Yes, I want a tiny transaction tax to put a collar on high-frequency trading, which is killing markets worldwide. And, yes I want an end to HF front running of customer transactions at Schwab and other brokerages. Yes, jail sentences for the criminal activity at HSBC, Morgan et al.

And yes, I want a totally free Internet, not just in America but globally - because for some reason I still believe that the free exchange of ideas is what will save and extend humanity. Instead, you can't even say "global warming" in Florida - or discuss pollution in China.

But all in all, Obama is doing most often what is right, and sometimes good, and many times brilliant. He will be remembered as one of the truly outstanding presidents for what he fixed and what he avoided, with the opposition he faced doing it. And the calm moral courage he projects to the nation. He won't be remembered like the gilded propaganda icon of a Reagan, as reverenced in the breech by Republicans, but as a true transformative giant.

I wish he'd concentrate on some things the liberals might want.

[Update:] Since I wrote this a year ago, few things have changed. The economy is still performing very well and is at full employment, though some speed bumps remain as the Fed tries to normalize its books. Guantanamo is still open but maybe Obama will force a fait accompli on Congress. Congress is still obstreperous, and the Trump candidacy all but establishes the liberal claim that McConnell's opposition is born of pure racial hatred. We are still not in a ground war with anyone even as the true cost of Bush adventurism comes calling in cities around the world. The low price on hydrocarbons is reducing oil output. But since the effect is concentrated in one sector while the price benefits are widespread, the stimulus effect is being felt far and wide.Kansas since 2014 has billed itself as the proving ground of Republican governance and economic practice. It is failing badly in every important respect, and in its failure points out how effectively the Obama administration has handled the economy. Most damning is Kansas' willingness to harm its people while grunting and struggling to release the perfect Republican trickle.

Obama's Court nominee (Merrick Garland) seems to be the perfect centrist. Though Garland once wrote in dissent of a Roberts ruling while on the DC circuit, I worry about a tendency to support harsher prosecution. While at the same time the country is mulling John Ehrlichman's admission that the war on drugs and its harsh sentencing was a deliberate, cynical Nixonian attack on the growing power of blacks and liberals. How many lives destroyed? It is not clear where Garland would rule if presented with another Citizens United.

And as the summer election season approaches, Obama's favorable rating is as high as any president since the 1960's. At the same time, Bernie Sanders rides in on a progressive mount that appeals to half the Democrats, a majority of Independents and as many Republicans as favor Trump. I'm not certain how "liberal" Sanders is, but he comes trying to right many wrongs, including those many egregious things that Obama and Clinton are willing to let slide.