President Barack Obama is now past the midway point of his second term and his approval rating stands at only 48 percent. It's worth wondering why that is, given an impressive list of accomplishments in his tenure to date.

President Obama, if you recall, took office as America was entering the worst fiscal crisis since the Great Depression, one that impacted the entire global economy. It would be difficult to argue that, under this president's guidance, we have not come out of that crisis far better than many other countries. Unemployment now stands at 5.4 percent, the best it's been since June of 2008. The stock market has enjoyed an unprecedented run and inflation is in check. The rich have been getting decidedly richer under this president and through both George W. Bush’s and Obama's aggressive fiscal policies we have even managed to salvage our automobile industry.

When Obama took office he also inherited two wars and a global pandemic for good measure. He has managed to get our troops out of Iraq and reduce our combat commitment in Afghanistan to a residual force. He cannot claim credit for our avoiding a global plague but he did finally take an imperfect but positive step toward curing a national disgrace that has been our health care insurance system. No president has wanted to tackle this Tar Baby of an issue, but this president did it in spite of a Republican party whose sole mission was and is to cause the White House to fail, at any cost.

Today America leads the world in oil production again and prices for oil are approaching a record 10-year low, translating to lower gas costs at the pump and oil and natural gas savings to heat our homes. Obama killed Bin Laden, officially acknowledged the rights of the LGBT community, has overseen the recovery of the dollar against most foreign currencies, he has begun to normalize our relationship with Cuba after 50 years of policy vapor lock and he may well have managed to help negotiate our way past a nuclear-armed Iran. Even more impressive is that this president, for the first time in my lifetime, has struck a balanced view toward Israel that continues our commitment to its sovereignty but not at the expense of our morality.

It has not all been perfect mind you. This president failed to articulate the historical lessons of George W. Bush's foreign policy nightmare that led us into Iraq under false pretenses with the naïve belief that we and we alone could establish a democracy in the Middle East while being welcomed as heroes. This failure of Obama's to speak to the historical truth of that gigantic miscue has allowed the neocons to continue to spit bile into our foreign policy making and more importantly not allowed we the people to learn from that costly mistake. In my opinion, Obama has also been too quick to lash back at the Republican party, which for all of its obstructionist ways is required to be a partner in governance. Obama has been too partisan. I don't care if our president is a Democrat or a Republican, I only want them to lead with distinction.

Despite those obvious misses, this president has carefully tried to craft the message that this country is not anti-Muslim but rather anti-extremist. He has even more delicately tried to move us from the blind faith that we are somehow preordained to be the shining city on the hill in all that we do. What many call Obama's lack of belief in America is the honest truth that he understands all too well and that is that we are not destined to be the best at anything. Just because we are America does not mean our form of government, foreign and domestic policies or Christian beliefs lay claim to superiority or longevity. To continue in the false pretense of perfection is the quickest avenue to doom for any system of government, large or small.

What then does it mean that half of us think that he is failing as a president? Despite the right-wing hand-wringing that a second term Obama presidency would spell the end America as we know it we have seen a slow and steady move toward prosperity, social progress and a reasoned foreign policy. All of this in the face of a Republican party that has been largely shanghaied by the extreme right.

We are going to miss him when he's gone.

Des Fitzgerald lives in Camden