Yes.

Fairly, yes. Most of my many complaints are with his domestic policy.

Not entirely, but I'm not sure there's a good way to handle it. For one thing, the success with which he's separated the Afghanistan war (against the Al Qaeda group responsible for 911 and the Taliban group that's given them aid and comfort since well before that date) from the Iraq war (against a man who's been dead for several years and various ethnic factions his reign of terror repressed) is amply demonstrated by how you phrased that question. There still seems no end in sight in Iraq, something of which we'd all probably be much more aware if the domestic scene weren't such a literal disaster.

At times, both. Initially he had at least as much good will internationally as he did domestically, and certainly his willingness to exhaust diplomatic options with Iran before moving straight to an invasion was encouraging to many. However, because of the scale and the involvement of a foreign based company, the Deepwater Horizon disaster is exposing to many abroad what many here spent the last year learning: Whatever his other faults or merits, McCain had a point with that crack about "on the job training. "

Oh, is he actually handling it now? I thought BP was still in charge. Because that's worked SO well so far. Given that it was his Dept. of the Interior that approved a lease application that was a hodge podge of BPs plans to drill the arctic and Japanese home shopping websites, and given his election campaign promise to clean up and overhaul Interior and MSS in particular, I'm deeply underwhelmed. After the handout to the banks, the handout to the Big Three and the handout to the insurance companies, I suppose it's no surprise he'd continue allowing the oil companies to regulate themselves, but if I'd wanted Mitt Romney to be President I'd have voted for him.

Not only no, but HELL, no! The right keeps screaming, "socialism!" and I keep saying, "WHEN...?!!!"

What was it Ike said about Nixon? "Gimme a week and I might think of something. " He's done a better job engaging with our allies on strategic issues (Iraq, North Korea, Israel) but domestically it's been a horror show unless your name ends in "Inc. " Stimulus in the form of emergency bailouts at the top of failing industries isn't New Deal deficit spending, it's the same old trickle down insanity that failed in 1930 and again in the '80s.

I'd hope by now that's pretty clear, but specifically, he (and we) desperately needed him to take office already writing legislation like FDR did and use his once high post election popularity to strongarm whatever Congressional Dems he needed into voting for it like LBJ did. Instead he let the minority party get out in front of him on almost every major issue, most notably the healthcare bill, by farming it out to mostly incompetent Congressional leaders who lacked a bully pulpit to bring recalcitrant caucus members to heel. Instead of using his own popularity to push through a true universal healthcare bill, he let an inept Congress write an unpopular patchwork bill that dragged his approval down with theirs and has left him with little mandate to do anything save survive.

I'm not convinced much has changed, but it'll probably be another year or two, at least, before we can gauge the effects with anything like objectivity. Too many people have a vested political interest in the answer right now (not to mention the vested personal interest we all share. ) The extent to which we are or aren't in a "full fledged depression" or just a "major recession" has a lot more to do with the few remaining New Deal reforms designed to prevent that, just as removing the many we did had more to do with creating this situation than anything else. Deregulation sounds like a great idea until you have things like the housing bubble, insurance companies eating the nations lunch and Deepwater Horizon.

What are my choices? If it's between McCain and Obama, that'd be really tough, because McCain does at least know what he's doing, and knows how to actually govern and enact policy rather than just spout inspiring rhetoric that doesn't put food on the table. On the other hand, he's still a Republican, and I don't honestly believe he'd have been any tougher on the banks, the insurance companies or the oil companies than Obama has been. He'd probably be a bit less generous to the Big Three, but on the other hand we might be six months into an invasion of Iran (on yet another hand, that might not be a bad idea.... )

If it's between the nominees of the last two major parties (i.e. I can't have Gore, Kucinich, Cobb, etc. ) I'd probably still vote for Obama, and hope he finally catches up to the learning curve really soon. Although the only thing stopping him from taking over from BP right now is still his refusal to do so (despite a federal law requiring it. ) As things stand, it's hard to even get a clear answer on whether the oil is still flowing, let alone what efforts the federal government is making to contain and repair the damage. From where I sit, admittedly distant, it seems like BPs priority throughout has been to protect as much oil as possible from one of the richest strikes in the Gulf, with environmental and community concerns secondary, and it also seems like Obama remains content to accept that. The LA Atty. General evidently isn't; Wikipedia claims he's invoked the 10th Amendment to justify LA building sand berms to keep oil off the beach despite the Army Corps of Engineers denying permission, but the oil continues being channeled, as much as possible, to other offshore drilling rigs and supertankers where it can be safely contained (and shipped to refineries) and I don't expect that to change. God speed to the relief wells, because that's apparently the only thing that's going to stop this: It's not enough to plug the hole, BP wants a way back into it, and despite the gross negligence with which they've held their oil lease so far, Obama appears willing to give it to them.