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Peter Baker of the New York Times takes a detailed look at Obama and the Presidency in October 2010. He has a long informal interview with President Obama, and uses his knowledge of prior Presidents, to provide a revealing look at Obama's first term in office upto this point. It provides an exceptionally insightful look at the man and his administration, in all its facets, facets that have create both hope and disillusionment. Obama comes across as the cerebral person even in his musings about popular disappointment with the administration, and does not seem connected with the gut-wrenching issues of jobs, foreclosures, the economy, and the economic future as a President needs to be. After all the inspirational rhetoric, Obama, says Baker, did not stay connected to the people who put him in office in the first place. And revealingly Baker shows that even today Obama talks only to a few insiders, compared to Clinton's wider circle, to understand what is happening in the country.

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Two thirds of Americans are becoming pessimistic about the economy. This is one of the results of a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll. This is up from 53% in January. Voters are losing confidence in the idea that the Democrats can come up with better solutions than the Republicans. Only 24% of those polled have positive feelings for the Republican party, with Democrats doing only slightly better. Democratic pollster, Peter Hart- who along with Republican pollster Bill McInturff conducted the survey- calls it the JetBlue election. This description is from the JetBlue flight attendent who ran from the plane after exiting through an emergency chute. There is a sense of severe discomfort and looking for the exit, he says. With 6 in 10 of those polled expressing a loss of confidence in the policies of the Obama administration to improve the economy, including 83% of independents, and a quarter of Democrats. The situation has deteriorated on the confidence level with the war in Afghanistan as well. 68% of those polled say they are less confident now that the war in Afghanistan can be brought to a successful conclusion....

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This editorial in the New York Times is strongly critical of former president Barack Obama for accepting $400,000 in speaking fees from Wall Street for a single speech. It says the news is causing people to question the ideas and words presented by Obama in his books about the dangers of losing sight of the interests of ordinary people. It gives the impression says the NYT, that Obama is cashing in like everybody else, and that his talk was empty. The editorial says the millions raised by Hillary Clinton led to her defeat in the election. Obama is reported to plan a foundation with the work of training a new generation of political leaders. This NYT editorial says it would be better to stay true to vision and purpose, to walk the talk for president Obama, especially now that a recent poll shows two thirds of voters, including about half of Democrats say that the Democratic Party is out of touch with the interests of the American People. By associating this closely with wealthy donors leading Democrats contributed to this. During a period when some of the remarkable achievements of the last fifty years such as the European Union are being called into question, when ordinary working people, young people and older people are struggling, this is all the more a tone deaf approach by politicians. The idea of helping train a new generation of political leaders through a foundation sounds bizarre in this context, and seems to suggest politicians believe there is always a solution through marketing their audacity and money.   ...

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President Obama's speech announcing the details of his executive order on immigration on Nov. 20, 2014, starts by saying he is not bypassing Congress or the Republicans. He says Republicans had the opportunity to pass legislation in the House that passed the Senate, or come up with their own bill. And still have an opportunity to come up with a bill he could sign into law that address the shortcomings of the current immigration system. In selling the bill to Americans he points out that this is not an amnesty, that the current system which allows immigrants here to stay illegally without paying taxes or any accountability is an amnesty. He points to deportation of millions as not an option, an out of the character of America. That deportation of criminals will continue and is up 80% in his administration, without mentioning that deportation under his administration for ordinary undocumented immigrants without any criminal record had reached a high of 400,000 a year under his administration, higher than under the Republican Bush administration. In fact it had reached such levels that Hispanic groups stated they would sit out the midterm 2014 elections and not vote for Democrats or Republicans, after providing a significant part of the winning margin for Obama in the 2012 presidential election. President Obama says he has the legal authority to prevent deportation, and that this is essentially what this executive order does- providing a temporary right to stay and work in this country to undocumented immigrants here living in the shadows who are here for more than 5 years, not a permanent status or citizenship. He cites other presidential decisions of the last 50 years, Republican and Democratic, that have integrated large groups of undocumented immigrants, including an executive order by President Reagan. And he refers to the Bush presidencies 41 and 43, where both father and son, considered Hispanic Americans "a part of American life," as good hard-working people deserving a chance to be Americans. The speech ends with an appeal to the compassion of Americans urging them to look at their own individual stories going back one, two or several generations, or Ellis Island where the early waves of European immigrants entered the country in the 19th century, and to immigrants from the period after the early British settlements in the 18th century. This is typical Obama, as much as the calculated decision to pursue a aggressive deportation policy was for the first 6 years of his administration, including the decision for "Dreamers" or young people before the 2012 election. "Scripture tells us, we shall not oppress a stranger, for we know the heart of a stranger. we were strangers once, too. And whether our forbears were strangers who crossed the Atlantic, or the Pacific, or the Rio Grande, we are here because this country welcomed them in." Over 2 million deportations in one of the most aggressive deportation policies of any administration, followed by an effort to stop deportations before the next presidential election, when the NYT had called his deportation policy "infuriating." ...

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David Leonhardt on the policy errors of the Obama administration in managing the economy. Why he asks did the Obama administration not take the risks it took for "undeserving" recipients in the auto industry to provide significant help to GM and Chrysler and at the same not provide large scale and situation changing help to millions of mortgage holders who were under water? The housing crisis with millons of foreclosures depressing home prices has played a significant part in the lagging economic recovery. He points out that Obama economic advisors had read Rogoff and Reinhart's book "This Time Its Different," about the longer times it takes for a economic recovery after a housing bubble, and still made the mistake of believing economists who suggested that the stimulus by itself would be sufficient and that recovery was underway in 2010. Others in the Democratic party had pointed to the lack of focus on unemployment by the Obama administration. Why were such voices not heard?