After eight years of misrule under Bush, in the middle of an appalling recession expecting everything top get done in four years was always fantasy  Given the size of the challenges facing the Obama administration when he was elected, they were never going to be resolved in four years. Perhaps his largest mistake was not amending his “Yes, we can” slogan with the caveat “but it’s going to take a while.”  A debt of $14tn was never just going to vanish like the morning mist, particularly in the depths for a recession caused, in large part, by the Bush administration’s inability to regulate their friends in the banking industry, to start unnecessary wars and to give away tax breaks to the rich.  Equally, Obama came into the job at a time when most of the rest of the world was barely on speaking terms with the US and has had to rebuild bridges with all of the traditional allies beyond the ever loyal UK and Israel – although even they were looking edgy by the end of the bush era.  Even getting up to the starting line has taken the better part of his first term, it would be folly to hand the country and the economy back to the same people who caused the problem in the first place [i] .  [i] Steven Rattner. "Ron Suskind’s inaccurate revisionism." Politico. October 1, 2011