Happy Thanksgiving! Like many of you, I am thankful today for the health of both myself and my family. I am thankful for my generally good fortune and the supportive group of friends I have. I also realize how lucky I am to be receiving a quality education that is sadly inaccessible for far too many. But let’s save that for another column. Right now, instead of preparing the dish that I am bringing to a potluck Thanksgiving dinner later today, I’m writing about the accomplishments of the Obama administration that I am thankful for. Make no mistake; there are a lot of them.

I am no Obama enthusiast, but, on principle, I give credit where credit is due and there is a strong case to be made that his administration has accomplished more than any in its first year since that of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. For one reason or another, few people seem to recognize this feat. There was outrage when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Even a number of informed progressive thinkers question what he has done. As a fiercely loyal supporter of Hillary Clinton and someone with a great deal of nostalgia for the Clinton years (the relative peace and prosperity, not the scandals, distractions and Newt Gingrich), you would expect me to be one of the doubters too. But I’m not. I am truly thankful for his long list of quiet accomplishments and the ways in which my future got a bit brighter in 2009. Maybe I’m preaching to the choir here, but I hope I can change a few minds.

The President has set an aggressive agenda that is moving so fast that Republicans have been occupied on trying to win in the largest of battles, leaving many other things on the Democratic agenda for years and sometimes decades to squeak through largely unnoticed. These include:

• Defense-policy legislation that included an unrelated measure widening federal hate-crimes laws to cover sexual orientation and gender identification — 12 years after it was first introduced after Matthew Shepard was brutally slayed. The same legislation also tightened the rules of admissible evidence for military commissions, an issue that consumed Congress in debate in 2007 but received almost no attention this go-round.
• The Food and Drug Administration now has the power to regulate tobacco and raise tobacco taxes almost twenty years after the idea was first discussed in congress.
• We finally passed legislation to make it easier for women to sue for equal pay with the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. It extends the statute of limitations to 180 days after a discriminatory paycheck.
• The President set aside hundreds of thousands of acres of land in the West for conservation and not development. This includes 1.2 million acres in Wyoming that will never be open to natural gas and oil exploration (sorry, Dick).
• Obama signed on to an expanded SCHIP, a laudable program that expands health insurance for children. President Bush vetoed it twice in 2007 despite bipartisan support.
• Then there was the Credit CARD Reform Act of 2009, ending unfair rate hikes and hidden fees. It also provides protections for young people and requires that all terms be in plain sight and in plain language.
• Under Obama’s strong urging, Congress killed weapons programs that have survived earlier attempts at termination, among them, the F-22 fighter jet, the VH-71 presidential helicopter and the Army’s Future Combat System.
• We have taken the first steps to close Guantanamo Bay, and despite questions about logistics, it will happen within a year. Obama dropped the phrase “War on Terror,” banned torture and Obama ordered that all CIA secret prisons be closed as well.
• We have moved to end the war in Iraq and ensure that it no longer dominates all other American national security interests. Troops will be withdrawn by 2011.
• The Obama administration successfully built consensus among the world’s major economies at the G20 conference in Europe on a coordinated response based on financial assistance, regulation, and a commitment to free trade.
• Obama also led the G20 leaders to commit $1.1 trillion as part of a global stimulus fund for the IMF, intended to stave off economic catastrophe by propping up the world’s vulnerable economies.
• Barack Obama took a great deal of initiative within the United Nations in working to end proliferation and make nuclear arms a thing of the past. He also gave an important speech to the Arab world attempting to re-establish diplomatic relations and improve our image.
• Just last week he established a bilateral strategic partnership with China on combating climate change and building a green economy in both nations.

I chose not to include the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act nor the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) among these. While together they arguably saved our banking industry from collapse and prevented further job losses, or even the next great depression, these are more visible accomplishments. I’d imagine that you were well aware of them. At the same time, I feel that on these issues the President compromised a little too much in order to get a deal done. Then again, they were passed rapidly and are working at least to some extent. I am thankful for them as well.

There is still a lot of work that needs to be done. The President has not done nearly enough on GLBT rights. Why has he not issued a simple executive order to expedite the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell? There has been little to no dialogue on reforming No Child Left Behind. We still don’t know what our strategy to stabilize Afghanistan will be. Health Care Reform has taken much too long to pass and the President needs to take a more active role in getting it out of the way so we can focus on climate change. It might also be nice if we could reform the banking industry so we never have to utter the phrase “too big to fail” again. Hopefully these will be victories that I am thankful for next year.

UPDATE: It seems that the folks over at Foreign Policy, who have been doing some great work lately, wrote similar articles. Find out what Daniel Drezner and Steve Walt are thankful for. Highly recommended reading.