In the darkest days of George Bush’s presidency, he and his supporters liked to suggest that history might judge his administration’s many failings with a less jaundiced eye.<\/p>\n
Count me among the skeptics.<\/p>\n
There are few political observers across the ideological spectrum who view Mr. Bush’s departure from the national scene with anything other than relief.<\/p>\n
But the “history will judge us” argument is a little more convincing for this Democratic congress and its partnership with President Barack Obama.<\/p>\n
From the beginning, pundits have insisted that this would be a do-nothing sort of bunch, especially after Democrats lost their 60-seat supermajority in the Senate.<\/p>\n
Without the ability to defeat Republican filibusters, surely a stalemate would ensue, right?<\/p>\n
Wrong.\u00a0 I’m a political junky of the first order — capable of destroying a party with my blowhard opinions about the 1964 presidential race — and I can’t remember congress accomplishing more in any two-year period.<\/p>\n
It’s fair for Republians and conservatives to insist that lawmakers made bad choices and passed bad laws.<\/p>\n
But the argument (which I saw repeated just yesterday on the Huffington Post website) that the Democrats have squandered their moment just doesn’t wash anymore.<\/p>\n
They passed a massive stimulus bill, pushed through a healthcare reform package that eluded lawmakers since the 1940s, and enacted the most sweeping reform of our dysfunctional financial regulatory system since FDR was in the White House.<\/p>\n
Before the 2010 midterms, Democrats will also have installed two new Supreme Court justices.<\/p>\n
And they may well have pushed through an energy bill and a repeal of the Don’t Ask-Don’t Tell policy banning gays and lesbians from open service in the military.<\/p>\n
Not since Lyndon Johnson was in the White House have Democrats achieved that kind of track record, yet here’s how the Politico<\/a> website assessed the situation:<\/p>\n Having moved swiftly toward achieving the very policy objectives he promised voters as a candidate, Obama is still widely perceived as flirting with a failed presidency.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n