When I look at Obama, I see a man who is trying very hard to do right by the people

[JDPriestly]

46. Bush had a Democratic Congress and got what he wanted.

Obama could not get what his supporters wanted and what he had said he wanted when he was campaigning even with a Democratic majority in Congress during the first two years of his presidency. He has been too willing to compromise with conservatives. As a result he appears weak.

Do you like the results of Obama's economic policies. Three new trade agreements accompanied by promises of new jobs -- although the evidence indicates that prior trade agreements have cost us far more jobs than they brought.

Obama is too beholden to Wall Street and the banking sector. He should be acting to organize the break up of the too big to fail banks. I am not impressed.

And Obama's performance on human rights issues, the legal stances of his administration on various issues including, for example, the matter of Siegelman have been appalling.

Obama has taken contradictory stances on the surveillance of American citizens, but nothing has improved since the Bush regime.

Also, anti-terrorist measures are needed but those that have been adopted are too extreme. I haven't met any terrorists. Have you? I have great difficulty believing that there are enough terrorists or that those who exist in our country pose enough of a threat to our nation to justify the excesses to which Homeland Security has gone, or the weapons that have been provided to our local police departments.

The reaction of our government seems to be so exaggerated that I fear our government will begin to look for something to do with all the anti-terrorism hardware that it has accumulated and start picking on minorities or independent thinkers among us.

Environmental threats are more serious than terrorism in my opinion. Yet Obama is not doing anywhere near enough to protect our environment.

We are paying for Bush's mistakes and will pay for them for a long time. Obama needs to at least make a much stronger case against the Bush policies.

Obama's compromise on the extension of the Bush tax cuts is completely unacceptable -- and it was made, if I remember correctly, at a time when there was a Democratic majority in Congress -- in 2010, but after the election.

Ending the Bush tax cuts would have brought revenues that Obama could have used to put people back to work. That would have been better than extending unemployment benefits.