By Alex O’Brien

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Forget the commonly asked question, “Are things better than they were four years ago?” and consider this, “Is what America voted for and what we were promised in 2008 all coming together in 2012? Is Barack Obama, and everything he promised to do for this country best for this country?”

In 2008 Barack Obama ran on the promise to be America’s “fix it” guy and also made the promise to improve this nation’s economy over a period of four years. The senator then, promised more jobs, lower deficits, and renewed morale, and America bought it.

After a record voter turnout, we literally walked this man into our country’s oval office, and for the past four years he claims that he’d done everything he could possibly do to fix this mess he was handed as president. So after hundreds of billions of dollars to supposedly stimulate our economy, and several promises to keep the unemployment rate lower than 6 percent, has he made progress?

In 2009 Obama promised that if he didn’t have the economy fixed in 3 years, then his presidency would be a “one term proposition”. Since he took office, the unemployment rate has been above 8 percent  for a post-World War II record, 40 straight months. More than 23 million Americans are either unemployed, or have given up looking for jobs, while one in seven Americans receives food stamps. According to the Bureau of Labor Stats, the number of young women unemployed has increased from 12 percent  to 14 percentsince 2009. About 2 million young women in America are unemployed in America.

But let’s for a second forget about the economy, just this once. And move toward the international spectrum that’s been in recent headlines.

Our nation’s foreign policy under the current administration is so poorly organized that when it came to the anniversary of our one of nation’s most somber tragedies, 9/11, only four marines were given the job to protect our nation’s ambassador in Libya. The murder was blamed first on an amateur video against Muslims, when the reality of that matter, is our president wasn’t responsible enough to better equip our ambassador in debatably the most dangerous part of the world for Americans, the Middle East, with the ample protection they needed.

This administration will do and say whatever it take to get elected including risking the life of the U.S. ambassador and his entourage. For example when Osama bin Laden was killed by SEAL  team 6 the administration acknowledged his killing and then quickly dispatched his body to sea and took a low key approach to his demise for fear of igniting the outrage of militant Muslims. The point being to not trumpet the death of bin Laden as to cause further attacks against U.S. personnel and property. Yet because of pure politics the president and vice president made their political battle cry, “bin Laden is dead, GM is alive.”

This further added fuel and resentment to the radical Middle Eastern community and was in all likelihood, one of the prime reasons our ambassador was brutally murdered several weeks ago. As a footnote, while the administration continues to try to avoid responsibility for its lack of response and readiness and attempts to use the amateurish video as the sparks for this attack, the leader of Libya firmly denies that the video had anything to do with the attack and that the operation had been in planning for months.

The candidate that promised to bring change to the presidency and bring us together as a nation has done nothing but divide us and polarize us more than any time since the Civil War.

Alex O’Brien is a senior at Iowa City Regina High School.