Top Democrat on Obama's Domestic Agenda After One-Year: Much Better than Bill Clinton's

After one year in office, the White House and its Democratic allies sum things up this way - we're in charge, you're  not happy, but think how much unhappier you could be.

It's not exactly bumper-sticker material and polls suggest it's been of limited political utility. But, for now, it's the best the party in power has to offer when its aggressive policy agenda and political future have been mired in anxiety surrounding an economy barely hobbling out of deep recession.

As bad as things are, Obama and congressional Democrats say without the $787 billion stimulus, hundreds of billions in bank and auto company bailouts, unemployment would be much higher and state budgets in free-fall

"We knew that the recovery coming out of this extraordinary recession was going to be long and hard, and the easiest thing to do would have been to not take tough decisions and simply to point fingers," Obama told House Democrats on Thursday. "We can say now what we couldn't say a year ago: that America is moving forward again. The economy is growing. Job losses have slowed to a trickle. Job losses over the last quarter of 2009 were still unacceptable, but they were one-tenth of what we endured in the first quarter."

The White House says the stimulus saved or created 2 million jobs. Still, 1.7 million Americans who had jobs when Obama was inaugurated are jobless now.

Obama's economic team urged Congress to swiftly approve the stimulus, arguing a torrent of federal dollars would keep unemployment below 8 percent. Without stimulus spending, Obama's team warned, unemployment could rise to 10 percent.

Which, of course, what the jobless rate is now, down from 10.2 percent in October.

The federal debt, now $12.3 trillion, is $1.7 trillion higher than when Obama took office. Last year's deficit was $1.4 trillion. The first quarter of the new fiscal year shows Uncle Sam's deficit hole is nearly $60 billion deeper than it was over the same time a year ago - pointing to a flood-tide for the reminder of what will surely be a tense mid-term election cycle for Democrats.

Still, the party faithful give Obama high marks when his accomplishments are weighed against the challenges he faced and the first-year output of fellow Democratic President Bill Clinton.

"The economy's better than it would have been, health reform is going to be a massive achievement when it gets done in a month or so, so i think, its been a very good first year," said Bruce Reed, CEO of the Democratic Leadership Council and former domestic policy adviser to Clinton. "I would trade our first year to anyone who would take it. I always felt that our first 100 days were the least successful since (President) William Henry Harrison who died."

Obama has devoted considerable energy and political capital to winning health care reform. But goals for passage have repeatedly slipped. The entire effort, "hanging by a thread" in the words last week of Democratic Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, may collapse if Democrats fail to hold their 60th Senate seat in a special election to fill the vacancy created by the Aug. 25 death of party liberal and early Obama endorser Edward M. Kennedy.

"It's hard to say that (Obama) has accomplished any of his major goals," said Democratic pollster Doug Schoen. "Health care remains a big if, cap and trade is by no means a done deal and there is no economic recovery plan in terms of job creation. I don't think we have a sense of what the Obama agenda or mission is. To say that it's mission accomplishment would be a vast overstatement."

Obama has said he's not satisfied with the economy and has vowed to push the rest of his unfinished domestic agenda aggressively. He did, however, give himself a "solid B+" on his first year in office -- a verdict polls suggest the country does not share.

The latest Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll shows  Obama's approval rating at 50 percent, down 15 points from his inauguration. Half the country says Obama has fallen below their expectations while 36 percent says he has met them. In March, only 23 percent said Obama was falling below their expectations.

"The surprise is that he's exactly like his predecessors," said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics. "He cannot float in air. When there's a bad economy when his policies are unpopular he moves down in the polls just as rapidly as people who've held the presidency prior to him. That is the great surprise. If you go back to the campaign, you would have thought that he walked on water."

When Obama seeks some policy and political breathing room, he still points to what some White House advisers describe as the bitter inheritance of the Bush presidency. Last week he complained about "eight years of failed policies" that contributed to "the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression."

Reed, the former Clinton adviser, calls this a substantive reminder of how bad things were when Obama was elected rather than a partisan blast at the past.

"He has defied labels and made some on the left of the Democratic Party and some on the right express their disappointment; but in the main, he has done what he said he would do," Reed said. "A lot of Americans are still under water, the national government has a lot more red ink than it should. It would be way too much to expect all these problems would be behind us after this one year."

Ed Gillespie, a former counselor to Bush, said Obama would be wise to get over the Bush years.

"He ran as a post partisan figure, he's turned out to be a very partisan figure and he's turned out to continue being a political candidate too often rather than a president who accepts responsibility and stands up and says 'Here are the problems, I'm going to fix 'em'," Gillespie said. "He continues to play a blame game."

Despite this criticism, voters blame Bush (36%) more than Obama (6%) for the economy, the issue by far voters want him to focus on this year (48% to 12% over health care).

"I think there are 2 accomplishments," Schoen said of Obama's first year. "The first accomplishment is that by luck or design (Obama) has managed to avoid an economic catastrophe. The second accomplishment, and it's by no means insignificant, is continuing to hold the Bush administration accountable for the economic problems we face. Notwithstanding the fact that Republicans do not control the House, the Senate or the White House."

But Sabato said this tactical success cannot and will not last much longer and that Obama and congressional Democrats face perilous mid-term reckoning.

"Americans wanted a change," Sabato said. "I think it's now obvious they didn't want this much change, at least not in the areas of taxing, spending and debt. "The fly in the ointment is going to be the economy. There aren't many economists who believe unemployment is going to go down much below 9, maybe not below 9 percent at all. White House's are always optimistic. They have to be optimistic to survive. But optimism meets reality on a day called election day."