United States Presidency: First-Year Blues

As United States President Barack Obama reaches his first anniversary in the White House, public impressions of him are beginning to solidify into conventional wisdom, and this could soon define him for the rest of his presidency. As with his two immediate Democratic predecessors, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, the danger is that the superficial image of the president as too liberal, too naïve and too indecisive, fair or not, will have real consequences in all areas of policy, especially ahead of this year’s midterm elections.