The best publicized issue is his campaign's implication that Mitt Romney committed felonies when filing SEC documents about his involvement with Bain. The fact-checkers have looked over this repeatedly and found nothing to the attacks. Regardless, when asked about Romney's request for an apology, Obama took the low road and repeated the allegations.
This is a reminder that Obama was always a dirty campaigner and will drag his final campaign through the mud.
An under-reported event was Obama's undoing of welfare reform through executive order. Remember that welfare reform centering around a work requirement was a bipartisan piece of legislation and is considered one of President Clinton's major accomplishments. Regardless, the Obama administration announced that it would be willing to grant waivers on the work requirement to any states that one one.
The law was written so that waivers cannot be issued so this is another example of an imperial president writing new law by fiat. When Obama first came to office, several supporters urged him to dissolve Congress for and fix the country through personal rule. In the last few months of his term he seems to have done just that. First he rewrote bankruptcy law for GM then he ordered the Department of Justice not to support the Defense of Marriage Act in court. More recently he rewrote immigration law.
For those who are willing to overlook this because Obama is "doing the right thing", remember the precedent this sets. Even if Obama wins reelection a Republican is likely to win in 2012. Would you want a President Santorum issuing an executive order that abortion would be treated as murder?
Finally there was Obama's speech in which he announced that successful people have not really earned their success.
There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me — because they want to give something back. They know they didn't — look, if you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own. You didn't get there on your own. I'm always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business — you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen.
There is a Marxist thread here that people only become rich by exploiting the working classes. No surprises there since Obama was a Marxist in high school and college. Obama, like Elizabeth Warren, is trying to make the point that the rich benefit from the infrastructure of American society.
That is fine but what neither admits is that the rich already pays a high portion of the taxes. Nearly half the country does not pay income tax at all. Based on percentage of income tax paid, we already have the world's most progressive taxes. So why does Obama want higher taxes? It is not what portion of the tax burden the rich are paying, it is the fact that they are still rich after paying the taxes.
One interesting point about Obama's "you didn't succeed on our own merit" speech - he doesn't believe that about himself. He has been quoted multiple times complaining about the difficulty of creating a cabinet when he could do any member's job better than anyone else.
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