Barack Obama became president of the United States in 2009. What do you think are his major achievements, either Japan-specific or not? I'll talk about some of the big issues within the US (the Afghanistan War, health care, Guantanamo Bay), but would like to discuss international perceptions of the US, too. Please try to think of one good thing and one bad thing you think the US has done in the past 2 years.

I gave the talk at the Akita Communicative English Studies group meeting. See http://www.edinet.ne.jp/~takeshis/images/AES06/AEStop.html for more information.

President Obama took power in January, 2009. On Sunday, we talked about his major accomplishments in the two years since then.

To begin with, there are two main political parties in the United States: Democrats and Republicans. Major issues can be divided into two categories: social issues and economic issues. To give some examples, on social issues, Democrats are likely to be pro choice. Republicans are likely to be pro gun and pro Christian. On economic issues, Democrats are typically fans of government safety net programs, like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other smaller such programs. Republicans are typically fans of military spending, opponents of other spending, and want to lower taxes. Those are some stereotypical party views, and as such should be taken with a grain of salt. But even this simple analysis shows that we have 4 classes of voters -- a person could side with mainstream Democrats or Republicans on both social issues and economic issues or on just one of each. This leads to a problem that the US currently faces, where voters decide who to vote for based on social issues, and the voters' economic views are mostly ignored.

Certainly Obama's greatest triumph was catching Bin Laden, though many of us found the execution rather unsettling. Also, Obama passed legislation that will allow homosexuals to serve in the military. This reverses a 220 year ban, and is Obama's only liberal triumph to date.

On the economic front, he passed landmark health care legislation. This bill deals with some problems in the American health care system — children can stay on their parents' insurance until the age of 25, many preventative procedures are now free, and it is harder for insurance companies to reject applicants with pre-existing conditions. Still, the big question is whether this legislation helps limit costs. If health care prices keep going up, it will have been a failure (and a gift to insurance companies who will get millions of new customers). If costs are limited, on the other hand, it will have been a success. Much of the bill takes effect in 2014 and later, so right now we can't tell.

There are some issues where the voters' views are mostly ignored by politicians. As mentioned, politicians often focus on social issues to gain votes, and this gives them some freedom to ignore popular opinion on economic issues. For example, the majority of Americans would like the US to leave Iraq and Afghanistan in the relatively near future, but it is unclear when this will happen. Also, the majority of Americans support Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid in their current form, yet there is a lot of political discussion on how to change these programs. On taxes, the majority of Americans favor raising taxes on the rich, yet Obama allowed taxes to be lowered. And finally, the majority of Americans want some sort of justice brought to bear on banks and bankers responsible for the economic downturn three years ago, yet both Bush and Obama have ignored this issue entirely.

The next election is in 2012, and right now it seems Obama has a slight edge over possible Republican candidates. However, we will have to carefully watch what happens with taxes, cuts to government programs, and the wars currently being fought. Those matters will play a major role in driving public opinion in Nov. 2012.