Obama's top 5 successes

The president will surely boast of his accomplishments during Tuesday night's State of the Union address. So what exactly are they?

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2. Getting Osama bin Laden
"Victory has a thousand fathers," John F. Kennedy said after his humiliation at the Bay of Pigs, "but defeat is an orphan." Had the bin Laden raid failed, it would have been completely on the president. Yet in the wake of its stunning success, Obama did not gloat. He gave credit where credit was due: To the many thousands of unknown men and women of America's intelligence agencies who spent years painstakingly piecing together minute scraps of information that led to the raid on bin Laden's Abbottabad compound — and to the heroes of SEAL Team Six who carried it out. This alone is one definition of true leadership. And the president deserves credit for bravely giving the order. The Defense secretary at the time, Robert Gates — who served eight presidents, including Ronald Reagan — called it "one of the most courageous calls... that I think I've ever seen a president make." Former Vice President Dick Cheney applauded Obama, too. "You've got to give him a lot of credit for making the decision," Cheney said. "It's no question that was his responsibility and I think he handled it well."

1. Preventing a depression
Republicans like House Majority Leader Eric Cantor point out that the unemployment rate has increased dramatically on Obama's watch. Cantor is right: It was 7.8 percent in January 2009, and three years later, it is 8.5 percent (down from the October 2010 peak of 10 percent). Yet three years before Obama was sworn in, the unemployment rate was 4.7 percent. Republicans are also right when they say economic growth has been weak under Obama. But this still beats the two quarters before Obama was sworn in, when GDP fell at annualized rates of -3.7 percent and -8.9 percent. So let's be honest: The economy was in free fall when Obama was sworn in. The house was burning down, Republicans got out by the scruff of their necks — and now don't like the way Obama put out the fire. One of Obama's firefighting tools was the much-maligned stimulus. Was part of the stimulus a mismanaged boondoggle? Absolutely. But part of it was also tax cuts that went into the pockets of 95 percent of working families. Without the stimulus, the Congressional Budget Office and other independent analysts estimate that the unemployment rate and the U.S. economy as a whole would have been far worse off than it was. Obama's economic policies may not be popular, and are surely imperfect. But they unquestionably forestalled disaster.

Again, stay tuned: Next week, I'll point out the president's top five mistakes.

Update: Read "Obama's 5 biggest mistakes."

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Paul Brandus is an award-winning member of the White House press corps who founded West Wing Report in 2009. Follow him on Twitter: @WestWingReport.