Apart from higher gas prices and monstrous deficits, what do Obama voters have to show for their nescient loyalty two sobering years later?

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Apart from higher gas prices and monstrous deficits, what do Obama voters have to show for their nescient loyalty two sobering years later? 

When Obama was inaugurated in January 2009, gasoline prices stood at $1.84 per gallon.  Today, prices have ascended almost 100% to $3.51, and continue to rise. 

Also this week, the Congressional Budget Office announced the largest single monthly budget deficit in American history, some $223 billion.  That comes as part of this year’s projected $1.65 trillion deficit, also a record, and follows previous Obama deficits of $1.4 and $1.3 trillion.  Quite an indictment against the candidate who promised to scour the budget “page by page, line-by-line” to reduce the supposedly unconscionable Bush deficits that now seem nostalgically tiny in retrospect. 

But what about the other prominent portions of the “Hope” and “Change” platform?  Has he shuttered that liberal bête noir, the Guantanamo Bay terrorist detention center? 

Quite the opposite.  This week, Obama formally ordered the continuation of the facility, the indefinite detention of its inmates and military commissions.  As summarized by The Washington Post, his order “all but cements Guantanamo Bay’s continuing role in U.S. counterterrorism policy.” 

Reflexively, Obama supporters will counter that Congress forced his hand.  Writing for salon.com, however, even über-liberal Glenn Greenwald admits, “That excuse is pure fiction”: 

“Obama never had a plan for ‘closing Guantanamo’ in any meaningful sense; the most he sought to do was to move it a few thousand miles north to Illinois, where its defining injustices would endure…  The preservation of the crux of the Bush detention scheme was advocated by Obama long before Congress’s ban on transferring detainees to the U.S…  None of this was even arguably necessitated by Congressional action.  To the contrary, almost all of it took place before Congress did anything…  In other words, Obama – for reasons having nothing to do with Congress – worked from the start to preserve the crux of the Bush/Cheney detention regime.” 

What about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that liberals so detested? 

After all, opposition to the Iraq effort provided the very basis for Obama’s upstart candidacy against Hillary Clinton, who voted in favor of the 2003 invasion.  Moreover, he unequivocally predicted failure for the ultimately successful 2007 surge strategy, and demanded withdrawal by spring 2008 when it was convenient to do so as a candidate.  Today, however, 50,000 troops remain in Iraq, and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates acknowledged this month that the Obama Administration is “very open to a continuing presence” beyond 2011.   His administration has expressed similar willingness to extend American presence in Afghanistan. 

The 2003 Iraq invasion toppled the world’s most dangerous rogue in Saddam Hussein, created the only functioning Middle Eastern democracy other than Israel and terrified Libyan tyrant Moammar Gadhafi into surrendering his weapons of mass destruction.  Today, in contrast, Gadhafi defiantly butchers citizens, Iran continues its oppression and nuclear program, North Korea literally bombards South Korean citizens and Pakistan defies diplomatic standard by detaining American Raymond Davis.  Meanwhile, Obama suffers a Jimmy Carter-like paralysis at a moment when American leadership and power are most needed. 

How about healthcare? 

Substantial majorities continue to favor repeal of ObamaCare, more than half of all states have successfully sued to overturn it as unconstitutional and even the White House now admits that it will raise healthcare costs and increase the federal debt. 

A jarring Wall Street Journal article this week entitled “In Health Law, Rx for Trouble” provided yet another cause for disillusionment.  Detailing how ObamaCare forces parents to seek doctors’ prescriptions even for such things as aspirin and diaper-rash cream, the authors suggested curious surprise that, “The over-the-counter provision isn’t the only part of the health-care law that has defied expectations.”  Even more remarkably, the report observed that, “the unintended side effects show how difficult it can be to predict how such game-changing legislation will play out in the real world.” 

You don’t say. 

Come to think of it, that latter observation provides one of the best summaries of the Obama record.  It also explains why Obama “Hope” t-shirts have been replaced by those showing former President Bush above the words, “Miss Me Yet?” 

Or perhaps it suggests a lucrative market for one lamenting, “I Voted for ‘Hope’ and ‘Change,’ but All I Got Was This Lousy Deficit.”