Bill Clinton was certainly the most conservative President we had in regard to the economy and that is an example of why we had such a surplus and such a solid economy ... I think that coupled with the fact he was just smart. Everyone knows I am close to Bill and Hillary and certainly supported Hillary when she ran (why wouldn't I). I am also an Obama fan, I think he is trying to do a lot of good especially in health care ... I also don't like things such as the cell phone give-a-way .. that drove me nuts .. those are tax dollars we are talking about .. that did nothing to help anyone I thought only increased the national debt. Likewise I do have a problem with the extension of the unemployment compensation. Only for this reason. My state the state of New York is broke. They cannot afford the increase in unemployment benefits .. what then happens is they start to layoff state workers to pay for such services increasing the unemployment rate. One cannot help those unemployed by forcing others into unemployment .. that doesn't make sense to me. So it is issue like this that we need to address as a nation .. We need to help those in need but we need to do it in a careful and smart manner. I would have said lets increase it for those who are retraining and retooling for new careers in school. There is no money and we are borrowing from foreign governments to pay for this stuff. Likewise why wasn't there very close restrictions on the wall street housing bail out ... Obscene to allow executives to use tax dollar for bonuses .. I would have hoped that Obama would have stopped that stuff. I know he wanted to .. don't know what happened to not make that occur. So for me, there is plenty of blame on both side of the political arena to go around. Obama inherited a mess and he is trying to solve many of the problems he inherited .. he is doing well in many regards and not in others .. But it was certainly better than any of the alternatives I saw for sure. This independent voter will look at everything next election like I am sure others like me will do.