Crossposted from the Motley Moose
As people line up to point out, opine upon, gloat or otherwise comment upon the President's lack of success, in Copenhagen today he secured an agreement that prior to his arrival seemed out of the question.
I know, it's way more fun to criticize, but sometimes you just have to stand back and admire the handiwork.
The BBC has this:
US President Barack Obama said the deal would be a foundation for global action but there was "much further to go".
He said the US, China, Brazil, India and South Africa had "agreed to set a mitigation target to limit warming to no more than 2C and, importantly, to take action to meet this objective".
While the agreement is not yet completely written up and has yet to get the buy-in from other countries, getting any agreement at all out of the conference is more than every other effort has been able to achieve. Specifically, getting the US and China - the largest contributors to Greenhouse gas emissions - along with continental mega-blocks India and Brazil to agree to limit their impact on global and regional climate is a substantial step.
So, other than:
. managing the economy to the best possible state that could have been expected based on where it was when he started;
. doing precisely what he promised with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan;
. getting Health Care Reform to (so far) the brink of passage;
. improving the market for green technology and;
. bringing four of the biggest nations in the world together on climate change,
the guy hasn't accomplished a damn thing!
Where's George Bush when you need him? By this time he'd driven a surplus into a massive deficit, overlooked warnings about terrorism resulting in the only successful foreign attack against the US mainland and spent a fortune in international goodwill in return for global isolation. Now that's a resume!