During the 2008 presidential election, Barack Obama ran a campaign with the underlying tagline of “change.” He wanted to bring change to the nation, pull it out of its national recession and grow it fully into the 21st century.
He pointed towards the lack of jobs, the struggling economy and the recent housing collapse, not to mention two wars in the Middle East as the reasoning for change. America ultimately decided and elected him, two consecutive terms.
President Obama has brought change to the United States, but not the change he promised. Racial tensions are at an all time high, school shootings are climbing in frequency and even terrorism and the development of ISIS has placed the nation on edge. While Democrats don’t want to admit it, the change Obama has delivered has proven detrimental.
Blame it on Bush
The common theme not only for Obama but the rest of the Democratic party hinged on blaming President Bush for all of the nation’s problems. After all, blaming the old boss does offer an easy out. However, economics does not work quickly. Bills and plans signed into law do not make an instant impact on the economy. It takes years, if not a full term or two to have any impact.
Former President Bill Clinton wanted more Americans to own homes, so he created new regulations and banking requirements to do so. This caused the entire housing bubble to burst with millions of former home owners no longer able to afford their housing payments.
While Obama and the Democratic Party tried, and in many ways succeeded, in convincing the American public into believing the “blame Bush” line, this tent pole cause of the Great Recession firmly sits on the shoulders of the Clinton administration.
With a decline in profits, companies in the United States started to move jobs down to Mexico. Democrats blamed President Bush for the loss of jobs, yet the ability to transplant jobs to Mexico became a possibility thanks to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), when the agreement came into effect on the first of January, 1994. Again, during the Clinton years.
So, while Democrats want to praise Clinton as a great visionary for the economy, The Great Recession almost entirely is due to bills signed in by the former Democratic president.
Change, But Not the Change You Want
Obama preached change during his campaign. He wanted to remove soldiers as quickly as possible from Afghanistan and Iraq. However, the quick withdrawal of troops left the region insecure, resulting in the formation of ISIS.
ISIS has gone on to murder not only citizens throughout the Middle East, but conduct terrorist attacks in Europe and the United States. Democrats want the public to believe this, again, is the fault of George Bush, when in reality it is the fault of President Obama for leaving the region unstable by pulling troops too quickly.
Possibly the most startling issue to come up in recent years is the outbreak of race relations. Race relations has dropped to an all time low in the United States since the 1990‘s. Protests around the country for the deaths of black males, often unarmed, at the hands of police officers, has caused a sudden wakeup in the nation. At this point, the question no longer is whether or not one of the individuals attacked a police officer or not. Of all of the instances to come up over the last two to three years, many are most likely the fault of the civilians attacking a police officer. However, others are also likely solely the responsibility of overzealous police officers. Regardless of responsibility, African Americans in the United States now feel they are not properly treated, respected or cared for at a much lower percentage than when Obama took office.
Many believed race relations would improve with the election of the nation’s first black president. As of December, 2015 only 34 percent of Americans said they believe race relations are fairly good, the lowest since the conclusion of the O.J. Simpson trial in 1995. At the time of Obama taking office, 77 percent of Americans believed race relations were at least fairly good.
Change Isn’t Always Good
Change comes in two flavors: good or bad. Since President Obama took office, terrorism has gone up, race relations have hit an all time low and mass school shootings have increased almost annually. Was this the kind of change he promised?
