1. A week before he was sworn in, Obama forced part two of the bank bailout through his own party — a $350 billion accomplishment.
2. Two days after he was sworn in, Obama banned the use of "harsh interrogation" and ordered the closing of Guantánamo.
3. A day later, Obama reversed George W. Bush's funding cutoff to overseas family planning organizations — saving millions of lives with the stroke of a pen.
4. Three days after that, Obama gave a green light to the California car-emissions standards that Bush had been blocking for six years — an important step on the road to cleaner air and a cooler planet.
5. Two weeks after that, Obama signed the stimulus bill — a $787 billion accomplishment.
6. Ten days after that, Obama formally announced America's withdrawal from Iraq.
7. A week later — we're in early March now — Obama erased Bush's decision to restrict federal funding for stem-cell research.
8. In April and June, Obama forced Chrysler and GM into bankruptcy.
9. In June, Obama reset the tone of our relations with the entire Arab world with a single speech — an accomplishment that the Bush administration failed to achieve despite a series of desperate PR moves (anyone remember Charlotte Beers?) and a "public diplomacy" budget of $1 billion a year.
10. Also in June, Obama unveiled the "Cash for Clunkers" program, a "socialist" giveaway that reanimated the corpse of our car industry — leading, for example, to the billion-dollar profit that Ford announced on Monday.
11. I haven't even mentioned Sonia Sotomayor, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the order to release the torture memos, Obama's push for charter schools, his $288 billion tax cut, or the end of Bush's war on medical marijuana. Or the minor fact that he seems to have — with Bush's help, it must be said — stopped the financial collapse, revived the credit markets, and nudged the economy toward 3.5 percent growth in the last quarter.
12. Oh, and one more thing: President Obama is now a month or two from accomplishing the awesome and seemingly impossible task that eluded mighty presidents like FDR, LBJ, and WJC — health-care reform.
Obama's early returns also include a host of remarkably cautious and prudent national-security decisions that seem, these days, to have been completely forgotten:
13. Appointing a conservative Bush holdover like Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense.
14. Appointing an establishment centrist like Leon Panetta at CIA.
15. Appointing a hard-ass like Stanley McChrystal to head up our military forces in Afghanistan, despite McChrystal's dubious involvement in torture and the cover-up of Pat Tillman's death.
16. Increasing the number of drone attacks on Al Qaeda — more in the last year than all the Bush years combined.
17. Reinstating, with tweaks, Bush's military tribunal system for Guantánamo prisoners.
18. Fighting, in another unexpected defense of a controversial Bush policy, lawsuits against the "warrantless wiretapping" program — as recently as this weekend with a decision that a leading civil liberties group called "extremely disappointing."
19. Sending, way back in February, seventeen thousand more soldiers to Afghanistan. As Fareed Zakaira recently pointed out, this was just three thousand fewer soldiers than Bush sent to Iraq for his famous "surge."
Read more: http://www.esquire.com/the-side/richardson-report/obama-timeline-110309#ixzz0WKpYnoNl
20. He won the Nobel Peace Prize.
These are huge accomplishments and some will count in history more than others do. Americans are now focusing on divisiveness more than on mainstream similarities. In other words, how we are different rather than how we are alike. Common ground should pull America together.
Supporting the President is the patriotic thing to do. Everyone in the world outside of America would agree with that. They question our support of the President. I wonder what can be done.
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