Obama’s year in office – what’s next?

Health care reform, bank bailouts and terror threats - one year after his inauguration Barack Obama is facing both harsh criticism and praise for his policies.

Writer and communications consultant Alicia Menendez said that there is a lesson Obama has to learn from this year.

“He [Obama] may have taken on a little too much and may have been a little over-ambitious and I think that we are going to see, in this coming year, a narrowing and a more focused agenda,” she said.

In turn, Jim Pinkerton from New America Foundation said that Republicans do not want Democrat Obama to succeed.

“We have a very partisan situation. There a political science study showing that polarization is up astronomically from 40 or 50 years ago. We had virtual elimination of liberal Republicans and virtual elimination of conservative Democrats, that leaves the Democrats as a liberal party and Republicans as a conservative party and there is not a lot of reason, from either point of view, for them to come together and compromise,” he said.