With the anniversary of Obama's inauguration and his upcoming State of the Union speech we all have to get ready to listen to pundits from all persuasions give the obligatory grade for the president's first year. Obama himself famously stated on Oprah that he thought he deserved " a good solid B+." But before we start arguing whether he deserves a B, C, or D, we should really decide on what exactly we are basing our grade on.
As a teacher I often have to use a rubric to grade a given assignment. For something as basic as an essay I must consider the following: quality of ideas, state of organization, author's voice, word choice, sentence fluency and of course mechanics. After objectively analyzing each set of criteria I can then give a subjective grade for the whole that is justifiable and informative. On what then do we grade a year's presidency?
I can easily imagine every conservative pundit
automatically giving President Obama a very low grade because he has done things with which those pundits certainly disagree, such as the stimulus package and healthcare. Just as easy to imagine is a progressive pundit giving the president glowing grades for those same two programs.
automatically giving President Obama a very low grade because he has done things with which those pundits certainly disagree, such as the stimulus package and healthcare. Just as easy to imagine is a progressive pundit giving the president glowing grades for those same two programs.However, it is not that cut and dry. Conservatives 
certainly like that he is moving forward more forcefully in Afghanistan, and liberals
have already been complaining that healthcare doesn't go far enough. But shouldn't a grade go beyond a basic political talking point?
certainly like that he is moving forward more forcefully in Afghanistan, and liberals have already been complaining that healthcare doesn't go far enough. But shouldn't a grade go beyond a basic political talking point?So, by what criteria are we to grade? How close he stuck to campaign promises? How the economy is doing? How the center of the country feels about his presidency? Furthermore is a grade even all that telling when we are talking about year one of a presidency?
3 comments:
"I can easily imagine every conservative pundit automatically giving President Obama a very low grade because he has done things with which those pundits certainly disagree, such as the stimulus package..."
Lest those "conservative" pundits forget, it was the previous administration that began the practice. Now, if they've observed such a fact at the time and uttered such similar disagreements, then of course they've the credibility to do the same at once.
If however they were merely apologists for the former but not for the latter, let them make utter fools of themselves and subsequently earn the criticism which will surely come their way.
One year is 25% of the term so I think it is fair to give a grade at this point in his presidency.
As for how to grade him, why not simply look at what he has done, compare it to the U.S. Constitution that he swore to uphold, and see how he fares?
That's a fair barometer Beth but then from that, we'd do well to also do the same for every other president, member of congress, and member of the Supreme Court.
Do that and you'll find quite a disturbing trend amongst them. Of course the "conservative" pundits would have us believe that Obama is something of an rarity in this regard. History proves this is simply not true.
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