As today’s media-driven
society grows increasingly
fascinated with politics, we
also feel the growing need
to choose sides and take a
strong, unwavering stance
either in absolute support of
the president or in complete
opposition to his actions
and decisions.
In President Barack
Obama’s first year in office,
he has witnessed firsthand
the effects of this political
“tug-of-war.”
FOX News, for example,
caters to conservatives
whereas MSNBC’s target
audience is liberals, and
both news outlets stick to
their guns. These stations
have portrayed Obama’s
first year as either an epic
failure, which FOX would
like to have you believe, or
as the greatest first year any
President has had since
Franklin Roosevelt,
MSNBC’s position.
According to political science
Professor Greg Pezza,
it’s still too early to jump to
any type of conclusion:
“Yes, the first year has been
a rocky road at some points,
but it’s nothing out of the
ordinary. Even Reagan and
Clinton had similar numbers
after their first years.”
While the hosts at FOX
and MSNBC battle to keep their niche audiences, the
reality and truth about
Obama’s presidency rests
somewhere in between their
two positions. Pezza
believes that “alarmists”
have made Obama’s first
year seem worse than it
really has been. But the
lofty goals he set and his
great ability to inspire could
have caused Americans to
“expect too much, too
soon,” resulting in the current
doubt.
During every presidency
there are challenging and
difficult decisions that have
to be made, and Obama’s
first year was no different.
Faced with an out of control
economy and two wars, he
had to respond almost
immediately. Pezza feels
that Obama’s decision on
the war in Afghanistan has
been the issue he’s handled
best thus far. “He went
against his own party (the
Democrats) and made the
tough decision that he felt
was necessary,” said Pezza.
Yet he was still getting
ripped from both sides, by
Democrats for sending even
more troops and by
Republicans for not sending
enough troops. Both FOX
and MSNBC played heavily
on this issue.
Another hot-button issue
that has been debated
nationwide since Obama’s
first day in office is healthcare
reform. While Pezza
thinks the details of the bill
were acceptable, he feels
that the entire administration
dropped the ball when
it came to detailing what
they wanted to achieve, “by
not laying out what they
wanted; there was too much
room left for interpretation.”
That open area for
interpretation is what cast
doubt in people’s mind and
led to rumors of “death panels”
by those opposed to the
bill. What has put the healthcare
issue on the backburner
for the time-being, however,
is the state of the
nation’s economy and
unemployment rate. After
the president’s State of the
Union Address, many
Americans were left wondering
what initiatives will
really be met head-on in the
coming months and over
the course of his term.
Pezza believes it is all relative
to the economy: “If
jobs and money steadily
improve we’ll see a much
more aggressive agenda,
like the one he campaigned
behind. If the money and
jobs remain where they’re
at right now, their policies/
agendas will be streamlined
to focus primarily on
the economy.”
At the end of every marking
period or semester in
school, there are always
grades handed out, and the
same goes for every year
you serve as president of
the United States. Professor
Pezza, who knows a thing
or two about grading,,
hands out an ‘I’ for incomplete
to Obama for his first
year in office as president.
He says, “there’s simply too
many initiatives that are
going to take some time and
will develop over the coming
months.”