Depends on how you want to rate someone, as most of his days in office have been rated by an outside force unable to get over the fact that a black man is President. Jim Crow rhetoric is on the rise, blatant racism is openly expressed and goes unchallenged. The old ruling whites are scared. Obama represents the future of the country demographically, and by god, that just doesn't play in Peoria.
On the other hand, on the American 'left', many were looking for a trans-formative figure and not another Clintonian 'triangulation' type of policy nonsense that defined the 90s. Then others wanted the return to the 90s, for it was a more peaceful and blissful time, where birds sang and no one died and we were all happy. The former never realized that the trans-formative character to which they were sold -- was just him as a person and what he represented. Meanwhile, the latter wants it to be 1998 with good old Bill.
The latter would be the baby boomers and the former would be the younger generation. Each are down and out for different reasons. The younger generation realizes that they have no future; the latter have no jobs and are in debt. So there's not much to be happy about east of the Cascades where America lives.
Meanwhile the Obama administration is rather aloof, and not really understanding of how much their base is being assaulted on a daily basis by racists, fanatics and loons, who seemingly patrol the streets, the airwaves and the national conscious looking for a fight -- while at the same time be out of a job. Any rational human being will after awhile give in to this torture. Then to make matters worse, the Obama administration would rather like you to give them a standing ovation every morning for saving the economy from the next great depression. It's rather arrogant on their part.
To sum up that place east of the Cascades:
Oliver Goldsmith
Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay,
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade,
A breath can make them, as a breath has made,
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroy'd, can never be supplied.[span style="font-size: 14px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"][/span]
On a side note, I see history repeating itself among my generation in Canada. My age group is rather arrogant and aloof to what is going on in the world around them it seems. Former roommates flying off to Amsterdam for a weekend to watch a soccer game, buying Yaletown condos before they even have a job. Splurging here, splurging there, these are the affluent upper-middle to upper class kids repeating the mistakes of the past and it's going to bite them rather hard in a few years or so. They will want to take back their proclamations of using their student loans to travel the world during their undergraduate exploits.
So it's all relative I suppose.
