In Defense of Obama by Paul Krugman

[Chathamization]

24. Mostly agree with the article...

This is a bit odd though:

They're outraged that Wall Street hasn't been punished, that income inequality remains so high, that ''neoliberal'' economic policies are still in place. All of this seems to rest on the belief that if only Obama had put his eloquence behind a radical economic agenda, he could somehow have gotten that agenda past all the political barriers that have con- strained even his much more modest efforts. It's hard to take such claims seriously.

Let's be clear: The financial crisis should have been followed by a drastic crackdown on Wall Street abuses, and it wasn't. No important figures have gone to jail; bad banks and other financial institutions, from Citigroup to Goldman, were bailed out with few strings attached; and there has been nothing like the wholesale restructuring and reining in of finance that took place in the 1930s. Obama bears a considerable part of the blame for this disappointing response. It was his Treasury secretary and his attorney general who chose to treat finance with kid gloves.

Eh...OK...

Still, the main thrust of the article is good. It only touches on some of the very real problems with the Obama presidency, but that can be expected given the focus of the piece. There has been some significant successes that have happened, and they don't get talked about a lot, or get trashed when they do. The trashing of the ACA in the media a year ago followed by media silence when it turned out the ACA has been working fairly well is a perfect example.