HispanicBusiness

President Obama has reached the three-year mark of his presidency with a mixed record of historic achievements and unfulfilled promises. Whether his time in office is three-eighths or three-fourths over depends on which part of the record gets voters' attention in year No. 4.

At the White House and at Obama re-election headquarters in Chicago, the focus is on what Obama got done. That list includes jolting the economy, clamping down on Wall Street excesses, overhauling health care, ending the Iraq War and killing Osama bin Laden.

The economy -- upon which Obama's re-election hinges -- took time to jolt. Obama predicted from the start of his administration that although the first 100 days would be important, it would take more like 1,000 days to make a difference. He was correct: The nation's unemployment rate didn't drop below 9% until last October.

On the Republican primary campaign trail and in the boardrooms of big business, more attention is paid to lost jobs, new government regulations, the lack of an energy policy, a soaring national debt and a Middle East that remains in tumult.

What's clear to both sides is the disappearance of the great expectations that accompanied the president into office Jan. 20, 2009 -- replaced by limited goals and a political atmosphere even more poisonous than the one Obama decried in his inaugural address.

"On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics," he said from the west front of the Capitol, his faithful stretching past the Washington Monument toward the Lincoln Memorial. "We remain a young nation. But in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things."

Partisan divide still stands

Not, apparently, when Republicans control the House of Representatives and have veto power in the Senate. Not when the president abandons bipartisanship after divisive deficit-reduction talks and refuses to meet with Republicans for six months.

Obama's three years in office have been defined by the partisan politics he sought to change. In years one and two, his Democrats rammed through $825 billion in economic stimulus and overhauled the nation's health care system and its financial regulations. In year three, Republicans blocked his $447 billion jobs bill, and political conflict nearly forced a government shutdown and national default.

Along the way, Obama has been forced to compromise on some goals and delay others, disappointing his political base without winning over his opponents. He turned from stimulating the economy to focusing on budget deficits. He ditched a "public option" that would have expanded government-run health care. He abandoned efforts to establish "cap-and-trade" emissions controls. He failed to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center.

"We went from hope to heartbreak," says Robert Borosage, co-director of Campaign for America's Future, a liberal group. Even so, he says, progressives prefer Obama to his GOP opponents. "He didn't meet our dreams, but in comparison to the alternative, he's rising in our esteem," he says.

That same logic applies to initiatives Obama had to forgo, such as providing a path toward citizenship for more than 11 million illegal immigrants. The president didn't push the issue even when he had a Democratic Congress because of broad Republican opposition.

"There wasn't enough leadership early enough," says Clarissa Martinez, director of immigration for the National Council of La Raza, the nation's largest Hispanic advocacy group. "There certainly is disappointment on that."

Too much give or too little?

Although liberals decry Obama's penchant for moderation and compromise, conservatives and business leaders complain he hasn't been flexible enough.

Ronald Reagan worked with Democrats to streamline the tax code and preserve Social Security, and Bill Clinton dealt with Republicans to balance the budget and overhaul the welfare system, but Obama hasn't been willing to ignore politics, says Bruce Josten, an executive vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He cites several instances -- from the failure to reach a deficit-reduction deal with Republicans last year to the rejection Tuesday of a jobs-producing oil pipeline -- as examples of Obama's refusal to compromise. "I don't think we had a lot of that," Josten says. "The president didn't even endorse his own deficit commission."

That's a sore spot for those who say the $15.2 trillion debt is the major domestic and foreign threat facing the nation. Obama came into office vowing to halve the annual budget deficit in his first term, but that won't happen unless taxes are allowed to rise on the wealthy -- something he couldn't make happen last year.

Obama scores higher on foreign policy and national security issues. He added troops in Afghanistan even as he removed them from Iraq, and he stepped up drone attacks on terrorist targets in Pakistan and elsewhere.

"He's demonstrated a toughness," says Aaron David Miller, an adviser to six former secretaries of State and a Middle East expert at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. "There's no question he's run a very competent foreign policy."