IS OBAMA A GOOD PRESIDENT?

I get a bit peeved when I hear some of the Republican presidential candidates say that Obama is the worst president we have ever had, without saying why. That leads me to think they are just spouting rhetoric to appeal to the hard line Republicans.

I'm not a Democrat - I'm registered as an independent. Though I usually vote for the conservative ticket, I don't agree with all things that Republican Presidents have done either. I didn't like W's economics. I didn't like the short term results of Regan's deregulating the telephone industry. (Those incessant phone calls to switch companies.)

I think Obama has done some good things, like the recent reduction in government freebies - pens, etc. Maybe it was a small thing, but very significant in meaning. He has tried to establish good relationships with other countries, though differently from what other presidents have done. He has tried to deal with the need for health insurance for all Americans.

I have Democrat friends who say George W. Bush was our worst president. But I tend to believe that they say that mainly because they are Democrats, not because they have done an in-depth analysis of each president's accomplishments and failures.

Should Obama be re-elected as our president? If we go on his popularity among those who voted for him last time, and consider some of his successes, perhaps so.

However, there is one big problem. He has sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States, in which it is stated that a president must have been born in the United States to citizen parents. While he has attempted to show that he was born in Hawaii, and not in Kenya as the Kenyans claim, he still does not qualify because one of his parents was not a U.S. citizen.

Unfortunately, there seems to be no legal mechanism for removing a president who does not constitutionally qualify for the office.