Citizen's United II - the other foot

[kandrathe]

I believe Presidents should be measured by what they did, and allowed to be done during their tenure.

Something something congressional sovereignty something? It's not quite that simple, surely.

Only if you want to be really, really fair. The bottom line is that unless the congress repeatedly must over ride the presidential veto, the president ends up getting his way with compromises. A popular president will help to carry the political tide in their favor, so in many ways, there again, the success of the president can be also measured by the size of his coat tails.

The other "fair" would be to realistically factor in the spill over from the prior administration (blame it on Bush). Obama, and Reagan took the presidency at desperate financial times, and did drastically different things. We still have not seen the full impacts of Obama's first acts (especially since the begin dates were set for after 2012, or 2016). So to be fair to Obama, his administration will be responsible for our economy, possibly until 2020. Monetarily, I firmly am in the "no free lunch" crowd of fiscal karma, so I believe every Fed action done to pump up the economy has a red letter pay day in our future. Some one must pay for every stimulus dollar, and it is either an investor who risks and loses, or long term investors/savers/pensioners who's valuations are drastically depreciated.