>Have they really changed for the worse?
>
>Yes.
>
>Step back from the daily news cycle and look objectively at a few metrics regarding where we were when he took office and where we are now.
>
>National Debt
>End of FY 2008: $10,025 Debt/GDP ratio: 68%
>End of FY 2013: $16,738 Debt/GDP ratio: 99% debt hit $17 trillion a few days after the end of the fiscal year.
>
>IMHO, this is much worse!
>
>DJIA
>S&P 500
>
>I admit that the markets are doing well for now, but I am not in the stock market, so that point is irrelevant for me, personally.
>
>Unemployment rate
>
>This number is misleading and not a true picture of how the economy is doing. Many people have simply given up and dropped out of the work force. let's look at the labor force participation rate, which is a much more accurate indicator of how the economy is doing. The labor force participation rate is at its lowest rate since March of 1978. So, looking at it like this, things are much worse. You might also want to look at how stagnant wages have been since Obama took office.
>
>Number of manufacturing jobs
>
>Score one for Obama {g}
>
>Number of US troops in harm's way
>
>We might also want to look at the number of terrorist threats in this context.
>
>Number of people without health insurance
>
>May we also look at the number of people who lost their health insurance and/or doctors because of Obamacare? And do not forget that having coverage and being able to find a doctor or hospital who will accept it are 2 separate issues. A lot of the newly insured people are on Medicaid, a plan in which most doctors are no longer participating.
>
>Reagan asked it this way:
>Are you better off than you were 6 years ago?
>Looking at those metrics, there is only one answer.
>
>And that answer would be NO.
>
>The national debate has definitely changed for the worse but that trend was set in motion long before Obama came along.
>
>True enough. But he has almost doubled it. I would say that he put the accelerator to the floor on that one.
>
>His biggest failure in my judgment has been his inability to unite the country as he promised he would.
>
>So, you think his foreign policy has been brilliant? What about the IRS scandal? The VA scandal? Benghazi? I think that there are lots of failures on which we can focus.

People really overrate a president's influence. You can't hold him responsible for everything that happens in the federal government. He had nothing to do with any of those things.