[quote=pri_dk][quote=SK in CV]He did miss golden opportunities, and I think it’s unlikely he’ll get the chance again. [/quote]

Can either of you guys provide specific examples of these missed opportunities, such as “he should have done A but choose to do B?” – things he could have realistically accomplished given the opposition he has faced from the Republicans?

I hear this sort of general criticism a lot these days, but I rarely hear specifics.
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In my mind, the most striking and damning of Barack Hussein’s many failures and missed opportunities was what he signed into law in Feb 09 just shy of a month on the job. By signing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Obama gave away the keys to $787+ billion to Reid and Pelosi of what could have been meaningful spending. Where was the Republican opposition then? How quickly you seem to forget the composition of the 111th. Remember, Obama rose to power with a formidable congressional majority which few modern presidents have enjoyed (59-41 in the Senate–not fillibuster-proof, but still dominant; and a commanding 76 seat majority in the House.)

In the ARRA, Obama showed his first of many failures to take bold leadership. If Obama were indeed the embodiment of hope and change, and an effective game-changer in Washington, he would not deferred such large and consequential decision-making to congressional leaders. Instead of demanding a few landmark “in-your-face” spending programs we could actually see, Obama let congress piece together a pork-stuffed, questionably effective bill chock-full of business-as-usual earmarks and giveaways. And to those who argue it saved state and local government jobs, look at the monthly BLS employment situation reports over the past 18+ months, and try telling me how many state and local jobs it actually “saved.”

Had the $787 billion been spent strategically on a select few national priorities, we could have made a meaningful down payment on real long term job-creating infrastructure programs: repairing, upgrading, or replacing thousands of bridges, highways, and airports; installing large-scale national wind and solar farms and assisting with clearing permits and speeding environmental review; building a few meaningful high speed and intercity rail lines where they actually matter, and building them with the same commitment and fervor as something like what we got out of the Highway Act of ’56.