Halperin gives Obama report card, Part 1

http://http://vimeo.com/7465164

Halperin gives Obama report card, Part 2

Coinciding with President Barack Obama’s visit to Madison on the anniversary of his election Wednesday, a senior political analyst for Time magazine gave a University of Wisconsin crowd his report card of the president’s performance thus far.

Focusing both on things he found surprising and expected, Mark Halperin said the most unfortunate surprise is the degree to which the country remains politically and socially polarized.

“To date [Obama] has not solved that,” Halperin said. “In terms of voting behavior and rhetoric, things are as bad as they were under the previous president.”

Halperin added a president can do one of two things to get legislation passed: appeal to their party leader and garner partisan votes or appeal to both parties and stimulate votes from both sides.

While he acknowledged the second is often more difficult, he said he was surprised Obama made a decision early on to do things with Democratic votes. A likely reason for this is the super filibuster proof majority they currently enjoy.

James Nafziger, Willamette University Law professor and namesake to the lecture series that brought Halperin to campus, was not particularly surprised Obama has seemingly struggled to unite the country.

“It seems to me he has a difficult job being both a reformer and a unifier,” Nafziger said.

One of the roots of this “poisonous” partisanship according to Halperin is the weakness of the Republican Party.

“I think the Republicans are so weak now as a party they are unable to be gracious,” Halperin said. “All they have is to attack the president … because none of their leaders see a path back to being a majority party.”

School of Journalism and Mass Communication Director Greg Downey said he sees one possible solution to this often caustic partisan split in something often taken as a symptom: partisan journalism.

“A healthy, polite, evidenced-based professional partisan journalism can help put the focus back on issues and illuminate points of agreement and points of consensus and points of shared vision for the future, while laying out in stark relief the points of difference as well,” Downey said.

Halperin was also surprised Obama has not forged more meaningful relationships with heads of states overseas, and accomplished more in terms of pursuing America’s foreign policy agenda.

Many of Halperin’s criticisms were attributable to the consuming nature of the economic crisis at home, as well as balancing two wars in the Middle East.

Halperin qualified this criticism saying simply by replacing former President George W. Bush, Obama has in fact elevated the United States’ role and standing in the world.

Halperin commended Obama on his success in beginning to turn the economy around, stabilizing the financial system and getting stimulus money into the pipeline.

He added Obama might have to break his notorious even-headed demeanor in the future.

“I think there will be some issues people would like to see him a little angry about, a little less cerebral, a little more fired up and ready to go,” Halperin said.