Letters to the Editor: On President Obama’s First Year

Shortchanged

Barack Obama’s presidential campaign pledge to our country was “hope and change.”

Instead, as his policies drive the country toward socialism and bankruptcy, what we’re feeling is hopelessness and short-changed.

Donald Hirt

Paso Robles

Objectivity, please

The Tribune recently published an Associated Press article wondering whether President Barack Obama has kept his promises.

When was the last time that a president kept all the promises made during his campaign the first year of his presidency?

Let us try to keep a bit of objectivity, please.

Fabrizio Griguoli

Shell Beach

Cut him some slack

The Associated Press article in The Tribune on Jan. 18, “Has he kept his promises?” really pushed my buttons.

What is the matter with us that we can’t change our picture of reality as the landscape changes beneath our feet? Is it reasonable to expect a person, any person, to reach all his or her goals in one year? Especially when forces in the world are constantly changing and those in this country who work against our progress are spending millions to convince us that he can’t succeed? I think not.

Let’s cut President Barack Obama some slack. The country was in such a mess when he took over that undoing it will take all of his term and then some. He didn’t cause these crises. His political opponents have refused to work with him, preferring to obstruct at every opportunity.

The Republican Party is becoming the party of “no,” with no constructive ideas of its own.

The times are changing as I write this. Let’s pay attention to what is needed and how each one of us might help. The Tribune can start by choosing more constructive wires.

Meredith Whitaker

San Luis Obispo

No magic wand

A year ago, if we had read in the newspaper that employers were hiring again, that health care legislation was proceeding without a bump, that Afghanistan suddenly became a nice place to take your kids, we would’ve known we were being lied to. Back then, we recognized that the problems Barack Obama inherited as president wouldn’t go away overnight.

During his campaign, Obama clearly said that an economy that took eight years to break couldn’t be fixed in a year, which is why we elected him. Obama talked of hard choices, of government taking painful first steps toward fixing problems that can’t be left for another day.

Right after Obama’s election, we seemed to grasp this. We understood that companies would squeeze more work out of employees. We understood that a national consensus on health care would not come easily. Candidate Obama never claimed that his proposed solutions would work flawlessly right away.

But today, the president is being attacked as if he were a salesman who promised us that our problems would wash off in the morning. It’s time for Americans to realize that governing is hard work and that a president can’t just wave a magic wand and fix everything.

Ellie Jeanne Light

San Luis Obispo

Keeping a promise

As a senior citizen in her 80s, I have been hoping for the Guantanamo Bay detention facility to be closed because of its history of torture of inmates.

America’s and my conscience cry out for long-delayed action. President Barack Obama promised to do so by Jan. 22. Unfair and indefinite detention must stop.

Emily M. Young

Morro Bay

Make an apology

To the always amusing but seldom accurate Rex Farris, I have this to say: No! The Sallia family does not have health insurance (“Extremist views,” Dec. 4).

I lost that this spring thanks to OBummer’s new fiscal policies. My four-year-and-counting battle with cancer allowed me to learn that we have a great health care system. The problem is figuring out how the system works. All the help I have needed has been there all along, but it’s taken a lot of phone calls to access the care needed. Typical bureaucracy.

Today is the one-year-in-office mark for President Barack Obama. Most people have removed their OBummer stickers and are running away from him and his radical agenda.

I think it is time for my fellow Americans who were so bent on firing George Bush that they voted for someone they knew nothing about, to publicly apologize. And being the forgiving person I am, I will forgive them if they promise to never do that again.

Know what you’re buying. Do the hard work of research.

Will this nation survive another three years of OBummer?

Dan Sallia

San Luis Obispo