I've been tough on President Obama in the past, so I thought that I would take a moment to share what I really think overall.  We live in a time when politics and finance mix more than ever before and so that makes the president a more polarizing figure.  I am guilty of being occasionally hard on the man in office (not just President Obama but all of them in my lifetime at one time or another).  However, as I think about it, I have been unfair and I want to set the record straight here and now.

First of all, to paraphrase Art Linkletter, the famous television personality of TV's Golden Age who passed away last week at the age of 97, I have seen worse presidents in my lifetime  and we are going to be just fine.  In Herb-speak, President Obama is like most presidents - a victim of the very human failing of over-promising and under-delivering.  Most humans, let alone presidents, do this, as it is so much more fun to tell someone something that they want to hear as opposed to being the bearer of bad news and hard truths.  In fact, as all of us respond to incentives, presidents like this one and nearly all the rest find making huge promises the best path to office.  Make no mistake about it, the one characteristic shared by all politicians is the desire to gain power and it has nothing to do with which party they are a part.

This past week I felt particularly sorry for the president as he is faced with this horrific mess in the gulf with all that oil gushing and killing everything around it.  He did not have a thing to do with the drilling in the first place, the government is not in the oil business and has literally no capability to fight this thing, and yet people are increasingly blaming' him for the disastrous consequences as this drags on.  I've got news for anyone tempted to do the same thing; lay off!  He is the president, not a wizard.  We all need to get our expectations in line with reality in blaming President Obama for this as we all should have when we blamed President Bush for a hurricane.  Disasters, man-made like this one or natural like Katrina, are both unpredictable and messy.  It is just plain not President Obama's fault.

Now what I find heartening about the guy is that he resists making ridiculous promises even as his critics want him to.  He has also demonstrated an ability to stand up to his own supporters which I find refreshing.  Specifically, he again and again states in regard to the oil spill that there are a lot of scientists and engineers weighing in often with conflicting opinions and he is trying to take it all in and make the best decisions possible given the information at hand.  Good for him!  Not once have I heard him say in relation to this crisis that he is going to take over and fix it.  Stand your ground Mr. President!  And he has also said repeatedly that we need to keep using offshore oil to maintain our future economy.  He knows that the big winner (if we don't) are the Arab oil states and though they would gladly pick up the slack, he wisely knows that we must maintain as much as possible of our own ability to produce energy for security reasons alone.  Oh, he has frozen new permits for a while for review, but that is prudent given the shocking lack of safety standards revealed in the current crisis.  Drilling will resume as the president as said over and over, to the chagrin of his environmental supporters.

So while I have been tough on the president over the economy, I have respect for him and feel his pain.  None of us can know the pressure he feels day in and day out.  While it is a free country and we are all obligated to freely share our opinions, we should remember that the president is only a man, flaws and all.  He is not a king and most of all, he is not a God. He cannot will away problems magically and we need to remember that as we all move down the road.

Finally, he is the Captain of our ship and will be for at least the next two years.  Since we are all passengers on that ship it is hugely in our interest to cheer for his success!   That does not mean agreement with him when we think he is wrong, but it does mean hoping that he is right more often than we are.  For all of my critique, I am the president's loyal critic meaning that I would much prefer to be wrong and that he is right about the economy in particular.  After all, that would mean a stronger recovery sooner for more people and who but a narcissist would be against that?  So you go Mr. President!  I will criticize from time to time but never forget that it is with the affection of one American to another and I wish' you nothing but success.  Family always has its fights, but always has each member back in a pinch.  President Obama, I have your back.