The entire foundation of your argument is inaccurate. Proposed and passed legislation is not the primary measure of a successful presidency. What if the legislation he proposes is crap and harmful to the country? That is not success.
Like any CEO, manager, etc., you measure success by the health of the company. With presidents, you have to ask whether the country is better off today than it was four years ago. In this case, the answer is clearly no. The economic indicators are worse. Unemployment is up. Job growth is down. Businesses are afraid to expand. Spending, the deficit, and debt have exploded. He failed to submit a balanced budget. Gas prices are up. Consumer confidence is down. Home prices are down. Our credit rating has been downgraded. His signature, partisan "achievement" is not only unpopular, it's likely going down in flames in the supreme court.
Polls show the overwhelming majority of the country believe the economy is headed in the wrong direction.
That's failure.
I'm afraid you just aren't engaging my larger point at all, either because I haven't communicated it very well (unlikely), you haven't actually read any of my posts (possible), or there is a genuine failure of comprehension on your part (the likeliest scenario).
The larger point relates to what presidents are capable of, and thus what it makes sense to hold them accountable for. Presidents set the agenda for the country by proposing legislation (or, "suggesting" it, since only the Congress formally develops it), appointing people to governmental positions that they feel are qualified, and running a responsible foreign policy. So, it makes sense to hold them accountable for their legislative agendas, their appointments, and the foreign policies they choose to pursue.
(Obviously, when I say that proposed/passed legislation is an objective measure of success, I do not mean that it is just the statistical ratio that matters. Clearly, the actual policies matter. And there is a discussion going on here about whether such legislation has been successful or not, plus the merits of Obama's foreign policy, stemming from my OP.)
Once we understand what presidents
can do, an important negative point is made: they cannot be held accountable for what they
cannot do. So no, you should not evaluate presidents on the basis of whether things are "better" than they were four years ago: only a fool thinks that presidents are powerful enough to harness the economy. If they were dictators that controlled everything, then it might be fair to evaluate them as such.
Ironically, your list of "things not better" here is chalk full of examples that prove my point (as well as inaccuracies: I already indicated the poll showing that stagnant lending and hiring is a result of a lack of demand, not uncertainty or "fear" of expanding, as you put it). I will take one of these examples in-depth rather than discuss them all: gas prices. Are you really naive enough to think the POTUS controls gas prices?
The price of oil is the primary determinant of gas prices (65 cents for every dollar spent on gas). As of 2011, the US produces about 7.8 million bpd of oil, or 8.9% of the worldwide total. Thus, even in an
utterly miraculous scenario that is humanly impossible in which a president instantly doubled US oil production -- something approving the Keystone XL pipeline and all the rest would not come remotely close to doing -- the price of oil (which, for simplicity's sake we are assuming is determined solely by supply and demand, something that isn't quite true) would shift from $90.71 a barrel to $82.64 a barrel. This in turn would mean the US average gas price would go from $3.533 a gallon to ... wait for it ... $3.33 a gallon.
Oil, the primary determinant of gas prices, is a global commodity and no POTUS can do a damned thing about that. You are a fool for indicating Obama has any control over gas prices.
P.S. "Oil 101" by Morgan Downey is the industry standard and is a good place to start if you want to get informed on this particular topic.
