Barack Obama accomplished one very important thing during his first months in office. He began to transform foreign policy language and ideology away from the proudly unilateralist militarism of George W. Bush. He spoke of the importance of diplomacy over military action, global cooperation rather than global domination, re-engaging with the Muslim world, and respecting the United Nations and perhaps even international law.

Barack Obama raised the hopes of global justice advocates by committing to significant changes in our international economic policies. As president, however, his efforts to implement alternatives have been slow to get off the ground. When the economic crisis hit, the need to overhaul our whole approach to globalization became all the more urgent. Countries that had gone the furthest to liberalize trade and investment proved to be the most vulnerable to volatile global export and investment markets. Obama took the opposite view, pointing to the crisis as a reason for postponing promised reforms, such as renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement.

When Barack Obama was elected president, many climate activists were thrilled. With the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere reaching dangerous levels, and Democrats controlling the House and Senate, hopes couldn’t have been higher among climate campaigners that Obama would act swiftly to make energy and climate change one of his top priorities.

The Obama administration, mainstream Democrats, and even many progressives are asserting that we are on the verge of a historical step forward for health reform, bringing us closer to desired affordable quality health care for all. Obama deserves credit for making health reform his top priority and likely will preside over a bill that historically covers many of the 46 million Americans currently uninsured.

In terms of domestic policy, Barack Obama has had the most successful first year of a presidency since Jimmy Carter. This might seem like damning with faint praise. Although he is not remembered as a very successful president, Carter pushed through important environmental regulation in his first year, such as the Clean Water Act and the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act. Even more impressively, Congress that year passed major legislation regulating corporate behavior with the Corporate Reinvestment Act and the Unlawful Corporate Payments Act of 1977.

Obama likewise shepherded through important domestic legislation.

In his first year in office, Barack Obama gave several exceptional speeches on foreign policy. In Prague, he endorsed nuclear disarmament. In Cairo, he called for a new engagement with the Islamic world. In Oslo, he repudiated torture. At these moments, the new president firmly broke with the policies of his predecessor and provided a glimpse of what a new, cooperative, just U.S. foreign policy could be.

Despite this interest, small businesses may chafe at the plan. Micro-businesses (firms with fewer than 20 employees) would likely be left out, says Dean Baker, a co-director at the nonpartisan Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. “Presumably, you would want to aid firms other than ones that employ close friends and family members,” he says. “Having a certain size minimum makes it more difficult to come up with some scam.”

There was one way in which President Obama’s escalation speech brought significant relief to the 59% of people in this country, as well as the overwhelming majorities of people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Middle East and elsewhere who oppose the U.S. war in Afghanistan: It was a pretty lousy speech.

“This has become more bitter and more partisan than the Clinton years,” said Nan Aron of the Alliance for Justice, a liberal advocacy organization. “It is obstructionism across the board.”

On the positive side, Obama marked his first day on the job with memos directing agencies to rely on technology to create a more open government and to administer the Freedom of Information Act with a bias toward disclosure. The Food and Drug Administration established a task force in June to develop recommendations for enhancing the transparency of the agency’s drug approval process. And an advisory board, on behalf of National Security Adviser James Jones, held a summer online forum to seek input on revisions to the executive order governing classified national security information.

In addition, the Federal Communications Commission has started an open, multimedia dialogue to design a plan for expanding high-speed Internet access. Workshops with stakeholders, including industry, advocacy groups and community organizations, are hosted online and the public is encouraged to post questions online, live.

“I think it’s a great step in the right direction. And their motives are pure. They are experimenting with ways to bring more voices into the commission,” said Ben Scott, policy director at Free Press, a nonpartisan organization that promotes independent media ownership and universal access to communications.