It is a very fair question, considering how the left was, in my opinion, actively working to make Bush fail for the last 6 years or so.

The answer is not a simple yes or no question.

First, I need to define what success or failure means to me.

I don’t care about his legacy, or the continued prominence of the Democrat party when I consider what success means.

I consider it only in the context of this country and its success.

Now, let’s consider the issues that that might encompass:

• Safety from terrorist attack - this is still my number one issue.
• Recovering from the financial downfall - my second issue.
• Immigration reform and border security - #3

Universal health care and all the entitlements are nowhere in my top ten.

Sorry just the way it is.  Look at his first executive orders for example.

1. Closing Gitmo - Gitmo has a bad rap in the minds of liberals.  While there are admittedly questions about how it has been run, perhaps rather than closing it, it needs to be cleaned up and sanitized.  Instead, with no plan in hand to deal with the aftermath of the closure, he blindly orders its closing and hands off the development of a plan to a committee.  This order to me represents the fact that he is more concerned with the symbolic nature of the closing than he is with the reality and consequences.  Ending harsh interrogations and ensuring humane and legal treatment, if those were his goals, could be better served by replacing the leadership of the prison and imposing new standards.
2. Transparency and ethics -  This one seems fair until you read the fine print and realize that the “transparency” is masked by his administration’s ability to cherry pick which president’s records are accessible, ensuring that anyone can get at Bush, and still shield Clinton.
3. Lobbyist rules - His efforts to insert more ethics into politics is very laudable, except he still has on his staff former lobbyists and refuses to address questions about that to the point.

So if those are my benchmark, than there is nothing there for me to encourage or support as yet.

If the economy is considered, than my focus becomes one of assessing the impact and damage to the free market and democracy.  If his efforts lead to increases in socialism I will have no part of it.  Free market made America great, and it can weather this.

Spending?  We sit poised to see the democrats spend 3-4 trillion dollars to bail out companies.  Not just banks, but states, porn, the auto industry and even Hollywood is even asking for a piece of the pie.

Rather than fix their own mistakes and end up stronger, they want the easy button.

The problem is that the easy button is going to cripple us for decades.

How about the environment?  If he wants to encourage environmental stewardship, conservation and increased awareness, more power to him.  If he jumps on Al Gore’s eco-fraud bandwagon, than sorry, I won’t be party to the destruction of our economy on a fools quest.

Education.  I am all for fixing our lousy educations system.  But that needs to be done by forcing the schools to stop social engineering and teaching ideology, and get the schools back to teaching basic education and teaching our young people how to learn.  And we need to empower charter and private  schools who can do the job when the public schools cannot by letting people have a choice.

One more.  His job creation program to fix our roads and infrastructure.  This will be  part of the trillions of dollars of spending that he has no possible way to pay for without massive tax increases on everyone.

One of my concerns is that he has been built up on such a high pedestal that he cannot ever hope to meet those expectations.   Consider this audio clip where a woman whose car is being repossessed brags of her forthcoming wealth and who is providing it:  We Got Barack Obama!  He has the benefit of trust and a cult of personality unheard of in American politics.

On the other side of such high expectations is a media that will glorify anything he does and defend him against all criticism.  Will he subvert out freedom of the press into a state defense paper ala Pravda?

So will we really be able to fairly evaluate failure or success?  Or will someone do it for us?

So considering all that, let me say this:

I want America to succeed.  I want America to be safe; to prosper; to be fruitful, and responsible; and to be educated and productive.

If he, and his policies - despite my admittedly cynical evaluation - can do this, I will be happy.  I am rooting on our country, not on the man.  I will not root him to fail because he has a D after his name.

If however his plan is to save us by making us less safe while coddling our enemies;  to pour money into a black hole and spend us into oblivion;  and to nationalize and socialize our country to the point where our constitution is meaningless and the state becomes paramount, well than no I don’t want him to succeed because of what that success in policy will mean to our country.

In this, failure is not an option.

I close with this thought.  Obama is just a man.  He is just another politician, and as a rule, I am skeptical of politicians.  As such, I refuse to buy into hope and change when he is not really doing anything different.  Sorry, I am just too jaded by years of broken promises.

He has the chance to prove his promises, but after campaigning about the danger of the business as usual culture that permeates DC, when he begins his Presidency by  packing his staff with former Clintonites, it is not a good start, not to mention hiring Hillary as SoS after campaigning that she was unable to deal with foreign policy.

That speaks to the quid pro quo mentality, not to hope and change.

So where my blogging is concerned I will endeavor to report fairly what he does, and what the consequences are.

But I will not buy into the cult of hope and change until he gives me something tangible to deal with.

The ball is in his court.  Make me a believer.

Trackposted to HA, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, Rosemary’s Thoughts, third world county, Allie is Wired, Political Byline, Woman Honor Thyself, Walls of the City, The World According to Carl, DragonLady’s World, The Pink Flamingo, Democrat=Socialist, and Conservative Cat, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.