Countdown of 10 amazing moments from the year 2011: No. 2 President Obama

Prior to leaving Washington D.C. on December 23 to join his family on Christmas vacation in Hawaii, President Barack Obama spent the week advocating for passage of the Payroll Tax Cut Extension, finally achieving a last-minute victory in the kind of intense political tug of war that characterized much his presidency in 2011. His endurance in his third year as the “leader of the free world” and the often-debated advances he has achieved on behalf of the U.S. in the face of economic and political upheavals that shook the world place him at number 2 in the current countdown.

Back Then and Right Now

December 2010 saw a drop in the unemployment rate to 9.4 percent, an event which Obama in January 2011 described as a sign of “clear growth” indicating the U.S. economy had continued to sustain a painfully slow but steadily progressive recovery. This “trend” was one he encouraged business owners to take advantage of:

“Companies who are listening out there: If you are planning or thinking about making investments sometime in the future, make those investments now and you’re going to save money. And that will help us grow the economy. It will help you grow your business.”

Nearly all, including the president himself, agreed that his statement presented people with a powerful challenge at a very uncertain time. From proposals presented in April urging cuts in spending while simultaneously allowing tax breaks benefitting the wealthy to expire, to engaging in a nail-biting political drama in July that eventually led to raising the national debt ceiling in order to avoid default, President Obama aligned himself with the American people by confronting major economic issues head-on.

This image of the president as a champion of the American middle class grew stronger with the introduction of the American Jobs Act, of which to date only fragments have been accepted by the either the House of Representatives or the Senate. Some critics of the president’s economic initiatives have characterized them as forms of socialism contrary to American democratic principles. However, even critics acknowledged the vigor with which the U.S. president took to the road to defend and promote the American Jobs Act. Likewise, a number of such commentators noted how his articulation of the economic divide in America helped spark the country’s own version of Arab Spring in the form of the popular Occupy Wall Street movement.

With the recent that the unemployment rate has dropped to 8.6 percent and with both offline and online retailers reporting major an increases in 2011 holiday spending over spending in 2010, President Obama’s original assessments presented at the beginning of the year would appear to have been fairly accurate and belie the often-repeated description of his administration’s policies overall as “failed.”

Commander-in-Chief

The single almost universally recognized event that set the tone and theme for the first decade of American history in the 21st century was the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City on September 11, 2001. In addition to generating wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it initiated during President George Bush’s administration the decade-long search for the plot’s mastermind, former al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. That search ended when President Obama worked with special task force strategists who located Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and killed him on May 1, just four months and ten days before the tenth anniversary of 9/11. Obama’s comments on the occasion struggled to balance the bundled sense of anguish and frustration that had defined a decade with that of cautious relief that now marked a new chapter:

“The cause of securing our country is not complete. But tonight, we are once again reminded that Americans can do whatever we set our minds to. That is the story of our history, whether it’s the pursuit of prosperity for our people, or the struggle for equality for all our citizens…”

Mr. Bin Laden’s death signaled a major turning point both in healing the collective grief that Americans and others who suffered losses on 9/11 have carried since the day of the event and in the “war on terror” itself. Following his death, additional major al-Qaeda operatives also fell, including the American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, his 21-year-old son Abdul-Rahman Awlaki, al-Qaeda’s Egyptian-born media chief Ibrahim Banna, Ibn Amin, and a number of others in Pakistan as well as in Afghanistan.

These military victories prompted commentators to acknowledge President Obama’s clear proficiency in his role as commander-in-chief even as they sometimes questioned his approaches to international diplomacy. His greatest victory on this front, however, may well have less to do with those killed or not killed than with the fact that he kept a crucial campaign promise to end the war in Iraq and bring American troops home by the end of the year.

Setting aside weekly polls that reportedly gauge public opinion of President Obama’s job performance, how and what the majority of Americans feel about the impact of his leadership will not be certain until voters go once again to the polls in November 2011. For now, his status as the country’s first African-American president and the national and international events in which his leadership has played such a significant role have already placed him among the most exceptional presidents in America’s history.

NEXT: Countdown of 10 Amazing Moments from the Year 2011: Number 1

by Aberjhani, National African American Art Examiner
co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
and co-author of ELEMENTAL the Power of Illuminated Love

Catch up on the Countdown of 10 Amazing Moments from 2011