Several weeks ago, President Barack Obama officially announced he will run for reelection in 2012. Though I was a staunch Obama supporter in 2008, when I heard the news this time I was not particularly excited.

President Obama has lost much of his appeal to the young voters who played such a major role in electing him in 2008. For voters ages 18-29, he had an advantage of 66 percent to John McCain’s 31 percent, according to a Pew Research Center survey. Young people were drawn to his message of change and hope, and saw his potential as a transformational president.

If Gallup asked me if I approved of President Obama’s performance, I would still say “yes.” He has pushed through some of the most important legislation since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, like health care and financial reform, even if the incarnations in which they came were not ideal. He’s invested unprecedented amounts of money in renewable energy research, loans and grants. He’s officially ended the war in Iraq and pulled out almost 100,000 troops since he took office.

So why am I not terribly excited about President Obama’s reelection bid?

Obama has not been as fearless as a president as he was a candidate. Health care reform has several noteworthy provisions, like insurance companies no longer being allowed to deny coverage to persons with preexisting conditions, an expansion of Medicaid, and the ability to stay on parental insurance plans until the age of 26.

But I would have liked to see the public option included, if not a single-payer system like the method employed in the United Kingdom, Sweden and Canada. This is evidenced by poll data from the same Pew survey showing 69 percent of young people think government should do more to solve problems. Instead, the government handed health insurance companies an extra 30 million customers by requiring all citizens to buy insurance.

A particularly disappointing facet of Obama’s presidency has been his stance on taxes. It is a little-known fact that income tax cuts were included in the stimulus act, at a value of $800 per year for a married couple. This cut cost $116 billion in a time when everyone is scrambling to cut the deficit. The Bush-era tax cuts which included cuts for the wealthiest top one percent, cost $858 billion.

In a time when the poor and middle class are feeling the economic collapse and resulting budget cuts the hardest, an extension of tax cuts for the wealthy is simply unfair. I think the youth vote would have liked to see Obama fight harder on these grounds.

Obama’s stance on the wars has both pleased and displeased me. As mentioned, bringing home nearly 100,000 troops from Iraq is good news. But he has allowed the war in Afghanistan to escalate and has brought the number of troops there from 35,000 at the start of his presidency to 100,000 today, though a withdrawal is planned for this July.

When Obama first became president, he signed an executive order to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility within one year. At Gitmo, hundreds of suspected terrorists have been kept indefinitely, and there have been allegations of torture by U.S. forces. The human rights watchdog group Amnesty International has called it a “human rights scandal.” Obama has since reversed his policy and has signed a new executive order resuming military trials for the detainees. Tom Parker of Amnesty International said, “It’s very clear he is not prepared to make the tough decisions it would require to close it.” This is disappointing for those of us who believed Obama would uphold America’s moral standing in the world.

When Obama was elected, many of us thought a new era of transparency might be ushered in. Instead, he has gone back on his promise to allow five days of public comment before signing bills.

More significantly, Obama extended the Patriot Act without reforms. The Patriot Act has been attacked on the grounds that it violates the First and Fourth Amendments because it allows U.S. agents to collect and examine business records and to track individuals who aren’t even tied to terrorist organizations.

But one of the biggest and most important failures of Obama’s presidency has been the death of climate change legislation. A bill including cap-and-trade, where a roof on carbon dioxide emissions is set and polluters trade the “right to pollute” under it, was passed in the House of Representatives but could not get a sufficient number of votes in the Senate. The president did not play a big enough role in those debates.

Climate change is happening whether Republicans believe it is or not. I would have liked to see Obama give America a science lesson and also elaborate on the other ways a cap-and-trade bill is a good idea. For instance, the Congressional Budget Office reported that it would have reduced the deficit by $24 billion. It could have also been a generator of new, green jobs. Already, more people are employed by the wind industry – 85,000 – than coal, yet wind only meets two percent of our electricity needs.

Having taken note of Obama’s biggest failures as commander-in-chief, I wouldn’t want to give the mistaken impression that I believe our president hasn’t had some huge successes as well. Even though the health care and financial reform bills were weaker than Obama’s supporters would have liked, they were still some of the most progressive legislation in decades. The repeal of the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy barring homosexuals from serving in the military is a big win for civil liberties. There were also unprecedented levels of investment in renewable energy research and general infrastructure.

The President’s leadership at times has been extraordinary, and he still has time to make right on some of his promises. But failing to adequately address major issues like escalating wars, climate change, transparency, economic inequality and America’s moral standing with regards to torture has made many of his most vocal supporters in 2008, especially us young folks, feel let down. Hardly anyone knows how hard it is to be president of the United States, and we know that it isn’t all Obama’s fault. Obstructionist Republicans and the logjam in Congress might be the bigger issues. But it will be hard for Mr. Obama to energize his base for 2012 with these policy shortcomings.

Tim Cheplick is a Collegian contributor. He can be reached at [email protected].