At this point in his presidency I think it is fair to say that Obama is already in the conversation as best president since Abraham Lincoln. His only real competition is FDR and LBJ, and I think it’s a safe bet that Obama will neither beat the Nazis nor start an unwinnable war in Vietnam. In other words, he’s in a battle with FDR to be the best president since the Civil War.
Maybe some of you think that I am joking. I am not. Maybe some of you think I am damning with faint praise. Maybe I am. But that doesn’t mean that I am wrong. I am not wrong.
He is what we thought he was.
[youtube]aYKIcnj1MJY[/youtube]
You want to crown his ass then crown his ass
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whoops http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYKIcnj1MJY
I think that was the game where the bears’ defense and special teams scored like 35 points.
lol – I love, love this and repeat it often as it works for many things! š Thanks for posting the video.
Uh…too premature, BooMan. You don’t even know how the funding battle for our government will play out, and if it ends badly, I’d say Clinton was better than Obama.
I love me some Bill but I’m sorry but Barack is already a better President than Bill.
Really? With O sitting on 9.8% unemployment 2 years into his presidency in major part because of an enemic stimulus sacrifice-bunt of a bill, while Bill at a comparable time had put in place a bold economic plan that would lead to the best economic performance since the 60s?
Sorry, but let’s see some better performance by O on the economy, okay? Like finding a way to get the jobs back into this country, by not constantly coddling Wall St and the big corps as O has tended to do in his first 2 years.
A 53% president with a major wind at his back early on and with all the political momentum and capital a president could reasonably hope for should have gotten more in that stimulus. Bill, the 43% president already besieged by the MSM and GOP over all sorts of trivial side issues and pseudo scandals in his first months, easily outperformed O with his stimulus and deficit-cutting program.
Bill Clinton: 8 years of peace and prosperity, minus the MonicaMess plus some unfortunate corp-friendly actions. Obama: 2 years of mixed success with massive unemployment and a depressed housing market still to be addressed.
Without the Internet/tech bubble, Clinton would have been nowhere. That wasn’t entirely his creation.
(Hi Lisa!)
Not an economist, but my understanding is that Bill’s 1993 economic plan put in place a recovery and job creation situation that preceded the later dot com bubble which, in any case, isn’t something that all economists agree on.
Clinton and Gore put in place the legal framework that made the internet a common carrier, what we now call net neutrality. Had they either left it a government service or allowed the telecommunications corporations to do what they are now trying to do, the net would not have generated the growth that the investors got slap-happy, talked themselves into that “Goldilocks economy” bullshit and did venture deals with 17-year-olds because they could speak a little geek.
The legal framework of what was called “the information superhighway” was important.
What Clinton did not anticipate that would increase economic activity is all the work that went on to evaluate the risks and fix software and firmware that had the Y2K programming problem. That generated a lot of sales of new PCs, servers, control equipment, and software that would not have occurred otherwise. And the result was a jump in business productivity (and a corresponding repression of wages in the bust after the dot-com (and Enron) bubble.
Like I said, I love me some Bill but please can the revisionist history.
All the complaints about Obama’s economic team from the so-called progressive centre around the fact that they are former clintonites or so-called proteges of clintonites (Rubin, Summers, Geithner etc.) I don’t agree with that necessarily but really if you don’t like Obama’s economic personnel you can’t really say Clinton was much better.
As for Clinton’s bold economic plan, wasn’t it just raise taxes for the top 1.2% of people (something Obama has been crying for since his campaign) and reduce spending. For a reality check, here is the legislation that BC passed in his first two years:
1993-02-05 – The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993
1993-08-10 – Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993: Raised income tax rates; income tax, top rate: 39.6%; corporate tax: 35%
1993-09-21 – creation of the AmeriCorps volunteer program
1993-11-30 – Brady Bill
1994-09-13 – Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act: Part of an omnibus crime bill, the federal death penalty was expanded
Family and Medical Leave Act was great. Budget obviously was a good thing in the long run but I’d note that he didn’t come into office at a time when the economy was losing 800,000 jobs a month so he had abit more flexibility than Obama.
Brady Bill – people had to wait 5 days for certain types of gun, whoop de do.
I know times have moved on and there is a generational change but if Obama had done just what BC did in his first two years then talk of him being an utter failure might not seem so outlandish.
Wasn’t Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in there somewhere too?
Bottom line is that Bill created some 23 million (net) jobs in his 8 years and had the economy humming along, and set the strong foundation for the economic recovery early on in his first year by acting boldly, even with no help from the GOP.
Obama had a far greater need to go bold and swing for an extra-base hit or HR, but instead chose to choke up and go for the bunt with predictable results. Yes, he had Clinton admin advisers on board, but that was his (mostly unfortunate) choice. They were good for their times (mostly), but not for the dire situation Obama had to tackle when he came in. O needed to go bold and in a different direction, rather than bring back some of the people who’d actually been a cause of the financial bust problem of 2008. There was a time for the Summers and Geithners to advise — just not in the crisis times that Obama faced and still faces.
It’s supposed to be the time of good will, and all, so I won’t contribute my rant on the huge damage Bill did when he embraced the “free market is the answer” and “big government is dead” bullshit. Best I can say for him is that he was better than a Republican.
Better than a present-day Republican. Classic old-fashioned Republican.
…was not such a good idea, either. If you were 45 and working in an Ohio factory, you never had a chance against China. We could have paced it better with trade regulation. Instead, we opened the floodgates wide.
Going slower was never considered, because there was so much money at stake by the big players, like Walmart. Clinton’s crack economic team never thought about the downside of globalization, because they never had to live paycheck-to-paycheck. They still don’t get it, as they were all quickly able to convert their skills into private-sector wealth once they were out of office.
I’m a huge Obama fan, but adopting the Clinton economic team hasn’t served him well.
and I forgot the repeal of the Glass-Steagall act which a lot of people say was a contributing factor to the economic crisis; the appalling Monica saga (yes I know repubs were utter hypocritical and idiotic on this issue but seriously man, bj’s in the oval? that’s kind of disrespectful even for a british man); bombing an aspirin factory in Sudan; implementation of DADT, failed healthcare, bombing Iraq and suing for regime change there (one of the reasons Bush Jr was able to get away with his silly escapade) etc. etc. Note, this is not to say I thought Clinton a bad President, I thought he was very good but done in by circumstance and his own foibles.
I also have to say that if you think that Clinton faced worse “trivial side issues and pseudo scandals” than Obama did in his first two years (Q: how many people thought Clinton wasn’t born in the US, was a muslim, or was ineligible to be President?) then I’m sorry but you’re just not paying attention.
Repealing G-S was a big mistake, as Bill himself recently admitted. Bum advice (was it Larry Summers?) leads to bum policy unless you’re technically proficient enough in that area of post-modern economics to understand the game going on, which Bill clearly wasn’t.
Your other complaints — Monica was stupid, and Bill fell for temptation. So he was human. And hardly the first president to fool around in the WH.
DADT — I fault Bill only for not trying harder to lay down the law about his commander in chief status to headstrong types like CJCS Powell, who was leading the oppo and encouraging the GOP and wayward Ds like Nunn and Byrd. That said, getting major reform in this area was probably always going to be nearly impossible, given the tenor of the times (majority of the public opposed it) and that Congress would have acted to undo any exec order since they were easily, by far, a veto-proof majority against changing the system.
RE trivial oppo-driven pseudo issues: No president has come close to facing all the nonsense and scandalmongering from so many quarters as Bill did. The silliness about O on the birth certif, his religion and so forth — a little noise on the side from very few people on the extreme right, or few people who count. 20% of the public was always stupid, ignorant and strongly opposed to O, on whatever basis they could cook up. O, unlike Bill, has the backing of some in the MSM, or at least in the sense that they aren’t working 24/7, as they did during Clinton, to undo his presidency (and then essentially advocate for impeachment).
Sorry, homeruk, but you’re just overreacting to some few squawkers on the far right. Historically, this is par for the course for many presidents, but even well below the scale of fierce and violent oppo faced by the likes of Clinton, JFK, FDR and Abe.
The tax plan he put in place was mostly good but it was also designed to balance the budget in order to appease the bond markets (coddling Wall St.). What was so bold about that? He came into office with an economy that was already recovering from a recession instead of one that was threatening to fall into a depression like Obama inherited so you could argue something as massive as Obama’s stimulus wasn’t necessary but you can’t claim that he did anything nearly as significant or that he faced similar challenges. So what did Clinton do that was so bold? Was it presiding over the beginning of the housing bubble? Because he did do that but do you want to give him credit for that?
If the next president after Obama is another Bush, then Obama’s successes will lose much of their power, and linear ratings really won’t matter. Our nation will prove to be in a dangerous cycle, and the world’s population will continue to suffer.
FDR didn’t just defeat the fascists in Europe, he also defeated them in the US. Now, they are back. Do you see signs that Obama is defeating them in the US, or even presenting serious challenges to them?
He is certainly among the most highly intelligent U.S. presidents, Booman. And if he manages to:
1-Run for a second term. (Not a foregone conclusion by any means.)
2-Win. (Ditto.)
and
3-a-Turn the economy back around.
b-End our involvement in wars of economic imperialism. (Which means gaining at least some measure of effective control over the intelligence/military apparatus.)
and
c-Not preside over the conversion of our socio-political system into a technologically-driven surveillance state.
Then and only then will he have been a great president.
Personally, I think that he is going to be our Gorbachev. Another highly intelligent and well-meaning man who watched helplessly as his attempts to improve and shore up a rotted system failed. We are not yet to the point that the actual union of states will fall apart, but the same forces that took down the USSR…including the “Bleed ’em dry” tactic that is being used by our Islamic opponents and rampant corruption in the highest reaches of government (especially the secret government)…are working on the U.S. today.
The cards are stacked against him.
Big time.
We shall see.
So far his tactics have not worked very well.
We shall see.
Soon.
AG
AG read this post I wrote in Feb ’09 entitled Obama as Gorbachev.
http://intrepidliberaljournal.blogspot.com/2009/02/obama-as-gorbachev.html
Yup.
Like dat.
AG
Much will hinge on whether he comes to realize that there is real evil in the United States, not just honest differences of opinion, and that his job description includes resisting and battling that evil.
DaveW, knowing nothing about Obama other than the color of his skin, I think the presumption has to be that, for most of his life, he has realized there is real evil in the United States.
He’s in the midst of an unwinnable war in Afghanistan, so I can say that I don’t think he’s going to beat FDR. Barring a catastrophic emergency that scares the Republicans into working with him economically, I doubt he’ll manage anything as huge as FDR’s New Deal domestic programs either – he’ll have to settle for the incremental gains.
I also agree that you’re tooting the horn early. Two years is a long time and he could end up falling below Clinton or Carter before it’s over. Especially if his presidency leads to a resurgence of the GOP and they end up taking over the Senate and the Presidency in 2012 – I’m sure Carter would be looked on more favorably these days had he not opened the door to Reagan’s victory in ’80.
That said – our Presidents in general have been kind of lousy. Being the “second best President since Lincoln” isn’t actually that much of a metric to beat. Not that that’s particular to America – most world leaders are pretty lousy. The “best” ones are usually pushed into doing what they do more by circumstances and movements that are larger than them than they are by their own talents.
Agree with some here: too early to judge, particularly in such sweeping fashion as to invoke Abe Lincoln. (Maybe O is closer to Sen Lyman Trumbull (D/R/D-Illinois))?
Let’s see how in the next few months he handles the SS/Medicare cuts situation which, in large part due to Obama’s own actions, are now apparently on the table for the new Congress to slice and dice. Let’s also let him make good on his pledge to begin withdrawing from Afghan in July.
Meanwhile, let’s also recall that by this time in office, LBJ (late 1965) had already made the decision earlier in the year to massively ramp up US military activity in VN — the bombing began, and in the spring he crossed the Rubicon by sending in the first US combat troops, something JFK wisely decided not to do. The quagmire was well underway by December ’65 and it would only get worse under Johnson.
It was also in 1965 that LBJ began tapping the phones not only of antiwar protesters but of his own VP, Hubert Humphrey, after he’d expressed anti-escalation sentiments directly to LBJ. I wouldn’t put Johnson anywhere near a Best Presidents list.
Those who do belong: AL, JFK, FDR, then Clinton.
Obama has had a good week. Let’s hope he doesn’t do another 180 on budget cuts re badly needed social safety net programs and let’s hope he doesn’t again cave to the Pentagon on war matters, but instead shows some toughness and independent-mindedness and courage in telling them no.
wow, what a bunch of Eeyores here. Visiting Eeyore’s Gloomy Place for Xmas holidays? But love He is who we thought he is clip.
Booman,
Obama passed a shitty, corporate-friendly healthcare bill. He extended a massive tax cut for the wealthiest Americans. His policies regarding detainees are as bad if not worse than Bush-Cheney. He dragged us deeper into a terrible situation Afghanistan. He appointed Goldman Sachs guys to run the economy. He appointed a halfass FCC Commissioner who is not a staunch defender of a free and open Internet. His Secretary of the Treasury is a pawn for the financial industry. And on and on…
Repeal of DADT is wonderful, and Obama has done some other good stuff which I applaud. But let’s get a grip here, and remember that for his first two years Obama had a 20-seat majority in the Senate and a huge margin in the House, and a powerhouse mandate from the electorate– so we ought to measure his accomplishments in that light. It’s also worth noting that the yardstick for measuring Obama is the Bush-Cheney regime, which is as bad as it gets. Doing better than Bush is setting the bar pretty darn low. I’d regard Obama as mediocre at best.
My measurement is whether he is being president to all the people. More has been done to help more people than any president I can remember since LBJ. In the process he may have helped companies — that employ Americans too. And even the wealthy, who invest too. But for the disenfranchised, he has done a huge amount.
Yes, it’s nice that those who made a big noise got what they wanted this Congress: 9/11 responders storming the Senate, gay service members chaining themselves to the WH fence, big corporations with their big money. But what impresses me the most is that those with no voice — the unemployed, the hungry, the average working folks who want to send their kids to college, etc — they have a champion in the White House.
This is something that Progressives should be recognizing, applauding, encouraging, assisting. Instead, too many are carping.
Here’s your post slightly revised. Obama passed a healthcare bill which will result in 31-32 million more people in America having access to healthcare and that represents, through subsidies and increasde medicaid, one of the biggest transfers of wealth from rich to poor in the country’s history. His policies on detainees are hamstrung by Bush-Cheney but he’s making an effort to align them with the rule of law. He’s making a last ditch effort to salvage the situation in Afghanistan. I don’t agree with it but I am confident that he took the time to review all the possible options before making the decision. He and his economic appointees saved the country (and the world) from going into a massive depression. His Secretary of the Treasury is a lifelong public servant, whose bank stress tests are credited as being a major part of pulling the country out of depression.
He has countless other achievments all of which happened in an atmosphere of utter intransigence on the part of the opposition and disgraceful and racist commentary from a significant minority of the population, who have sought to illegitimise the President from day one. I might add that they have all been achieved over the disgraceful and intransigence of some so-called progressives who should be his biggest supporters. The yardstick for measuring this President is as against other Presidents, not against Gandhi-ji or Martin Luther King. When using that yardstick, Bush Jr doesn’t even come into the picture.
It may not surprise you but I wholeheartedly agree. Not just because of the string of achievments, of which there have been many, but of the way that he carries himself in the job. I know people complain that he is aloof, doesn’t connect and all that rubbish but speaking purely from a personal point of view, every time I hear him speak he persuades me again and again to keep faith in him. I think that one of the reasons that people think he’s aloof or doesn’t connect is that he simply behaves differently from past Presidents. An example being the question on gay marriage where he says he that his thinking is evolving and that goes round and round on the issue with himself. I don’t think I’ve ever heard another sitting President ruminate so much openly and I think it makes him able to deal with the admittedly terrible decisions he has to make on a daily basis.
I’m with you on it, Booman. When you ask someone to give an example of another president who accomplished so much with so much resistance, they are speechless. Yet they hang on to their hatred for Pres. Obama. We live in an odd world.
Yet they hang on to their hatred for Pres. Obama. We live in an odd world.
Are you saying people on the left hate the President? If so, I think you really don’t get it, at all. How is it hate to point out, truthfully, that the HCR/HIR bill was/is based on something the Heritage Foundation was plugging during the Clinton Presidency?
Well, he could have done better on the tax legislation if he had fought harder or at all. Where are we going to be 13 months from now when the extended unemployment benefits run out, and the UE rate hasn’t moved an inch. Needless to say, it will be THE issue in the 2012 election.
Krugman’s take? I told you so.
Obama’s Christmas Miracle: Wins on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, START, 9/11 Bill
by Lloyd Grove
“In other words, he’s in a battle with FDR to be the best president since the Civil War.”
Agreed, and am gratified that at leat one blogger on the left agrees with me.
My biggest disappointment is that Obama didn’t create a huge new WPA-style work program. If he would/could have, I would unquestionably rank him higher than FDR at this point.
I actually agree. I’m furious at what hasn’t been done, but I’m also a little awestruck at how much he HAS accomplished, given the tenor of the times and the fact that most of the people watch a news channel devoted 24/7 to blocking his every move. That’s some quarterback.
Very interesting discussion!
A little premature, IMO, to compare him to Lincoln or FDR. He had a good week, and all in all a good two years. He’ll have to step it up a notch or two to join the heads on Mount Rushmore. Here’s a wishlist that would put him there:
a) start to reverse the US wealth gap with new tax and fiscal policy
b) become a peacemaker rather than a warmaker in the middle east -break the Gordian Knot in Israeli-Palestinian relations
c) break up the too big to fail banks
d) stop job and manufacturing outsourcing
Hey, no one said it was going to be easy.
Well not so fast. There are still two to six years to go before history gets to judge him.
At this point in FDR’s first term, he had passed the Glass-Steagall Act, created the FDIC, cobbled together quickly the Civilian Conservation Corps, sent $500 million to backfill state budgets, created the Civil Works Administration to provide jobs to those in need, passed the Agricultural Adjustment Act that stabilized farm prices and won a generation of farmers to the Democratic Party, established the Tennessee Valley Authority, passed the National Industrial Recovery Act (later found unconstitutional), started the Public Works Administration, and framed it as “relief, recovery, and reform”.
At this point in LBJ’s first two years, he had passed a chicken tariff, blown off Walter Reuther’s concern about Volkswagen imports to the US, passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, passed the Voting Rights Act, framed the civil rights changes in terms of Christian redemption (echoing MLK), liberalized immigration policy, passed the Economic Opportunity Act, passed Medicare, and begun the escalation of the Vietnam War that would (because of his platform in 1964) create the “credibility gap” that brought down his chances for a second term.
Abraham Lincoln had walked into a Civil War, sprung by the Confederate States of American shortly after his inauguration. He had to contend with a Britain and France that remained officially neutral. A naval captain had seized two Confederate representatives aboard a British ship, and they were imprisoned in Boston. Britain declared war, and Lincoln let the Confederacy go its own way in order to avoid war. Sentiment was high in the North for war with Britain. He has gone through the disaster at First Manassas, replaced a general, faced attacks from an ironclad ship. McClellan became bogged down in the Virginia peninsula, but Grant produced a victory in New Mexico and the port of New Orleans was captured. He had lost Harpers Ferry and Lee’s armies were pressing through Maryland toward Pennsylvania and resulted in the bloodiest battle of the war — Antietam. The war appeared to be at a stalemate.
Fortunes can reverse quickly, and for reasons outside of the leadership abilities of the President.
So far Obama’s biggest mistake is to think that there is a silver bullet strategy that works in every recession. The current recession in its cause and depth is more like the Great Depression than any of the other recessions between 1929 and now. The economic team that he assembled still has not grasped that fact — that Friedman economics does not work in this situation.
His greatest success is winning the trust of the Defense establishment and the military. The repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is as much a result of the fact that he did not precipitously pull US troops out of Iraq or Afghanistan and that he did not tolerate the insubordination of Stanley McChrystal and by implication David Petraeus.
But there are a lot of things that can go wrong in the next two years. And a lot that can go very right.
The progressive movement must start making the case that 30 years of Reaganomics and conservative philosophy have failed to deliver peace and prosperity as promised. Having that case made with the public makes Obama’s job a lot easier than it has been. And maybe then we will begin to see what his vision of a recovered America is.
Yeesh. Talk about putting on your own ‘Kick Me!’ sign.
You’ve got more patience, or a higher pain threshold, than I.
I think a lot of commenters on both sides are correct. So far I’d grade Obama mixed, which puts him somewhere around LBJ in the upper echelon of our history of mediocre leaders. LBJ had bigger legislative accomplishments by this point, but also far more of a mandate (and a much more cooperative Congress) after shellacking Goldwater. LBJ’s escalation of Vietnam was also done with less evidence of its unwinnability than Obama’s Afghanistan escalation. In both cases the locals had already beaten off one colonial power in a long war, but for Vietnam we had much less of a notion that colonial occupations are usually unwinnable; we were closer to our WWII aura of invincibility; we’d already been in Afghanistan seven years, not three; and the Cold War rationale, while badly flawed, still makes more sense than — uh, what’s our rationale for being in Afghanistan again?
But mostly all that misses the point. Obama has to be great; if history doesn’t judge him as great, it’ll likely regard him as a disaster. There’s little middle ground. Lincoln and FDR are regarded as great because they inherited crises and succeeded; people like Andrew Johnson, Hoover, or Bush II were awful because they didn’t rise to their challenges.
By any measure, Obama inherited multiple crises of historic proportions: a terrible economy, two bankrupting and pointless wars, and climate change, to name three. Even worse, he did so in a political environment that’s bitterly divided, with an opposition more interested in immediate political advantage than what’s best for the country (let alone world).
So far Obama’s response to that last factor has been the key to his presidency. His insistence on bipartisanship in an environment where that’s not about to happen has been both a strength and a weakness; it can elevate him one moment, and make him look like he’s weak and not fighting back the next. His worst moments as president have been concessions to (or embracings of) Republican or Bush policies; his best moments would not have been possible without those worst moments, which got him the capital to overcome the “Party of No” strategy. But in the three huge crises I named, Obama is still incomplete, trending downward, largely not through his own doing.
Obama could still finish regarded as “a brilliant president” or “an abject failure,” or “both.” The only unlikely option is “neither.”
“Maybe some of you think that I am joking. I am not.”
i don’t doubt you mean it for a second. You have a bigger mancrush on Obama than anyone else I know.
You have a bigger mancrush on Obama than anyone else I know.
As much as I like Boo(and yeah .. I like him despite all the times I disagree with him and such), his Obama mancrush(which I don’t think he really has much of one) can’t hold a candle to these two sites:
http://www.thepeoplesview.net/
&
http://blackwaterdog.wordpress.com/
(And yes, that second one was what Greenwald compared to Leni Riefenstahl before he apologized and said that was probably the wrong name to use .. meaning Riefenstahl .. in trying to compare the site to over the top propaganda)
I like blackwaterdog a lot, but he’s definitely working the mancrush with all the photos.
As for me, I like the president. I worked as hard as I could to help him get elected and I pretty much got what I expected. He told me he was going to escalate in Afghanistan, which was preferable to him lying to me about it. I am disappointed that he wasn’t stronger about establishing accountability and making a decisive break with Bush’s national security abuses, but I did notice that the brushback was scalding and that literally no one in Washington had his back.
Other than that, given the nature of the Democratic caucus in the Senate, the Senate rules, the Republican’s total-opposition strategy, the media bias, and the moneyed interests arrayed against him, and given the state of the country when he took over, I have to give him the highest marks for his legislative achievement.
Yeah, he’s easily in LBJ territory. Give him another three terms and some Nazis to defeat and he might start approaching Franklin Roosevelt.
Is it a mancrush? No. I am just damn glad he’s president and you can be sure I am not going to abandon him after putting up a record like this. Why Democrats feel they have the luxury to tear down their own presidents is somewhat of a mystery to me, but we do it every time.
I had a conversation about this in real life a while back. I think it was with brendan, but I am not certain it was him. Someone asked me if I’d be reacting the same way if Hillary were president. The truth is, for the most part I would be. I might roll my eyes at Lanny Davis and mock Mark Penn and throw a few missiles at James Carvile and his awful wife, but I’m in politics because of the Republicans. They are who got me off my couch and into the game. And they keep getting worse all the time. I told people how bad Bush and Cheney were going to be, and they proved me right. The next time we have a Republican administration the country itself may not survive. I’m not kidding. They are that bad. And I don’t need to think too hard about what side I’m on.
So, yeah, I’m biased. I am biased against Republicans. I’m not all that interested in beating up on Democrats unless they are being self-destructive. I know their shortcomings, and they are many. But I don’t have the luxury of waiting around for something better.
As for me, I like the president. I worked as hard as I could to help him get elected and I pretty much got what I expected.
I like him too. And as I believe I’ve mentioned before, I volunteered both in the primary and general election. Am I disappointed in the civil liberties end? A little. I never figured he’d roll back what Bush did because what President does that? None. I am disappointed that he’s extended it. But what I am really disappointed in is his handling of the economy. He’s catering too much to Wall Street. Is there any reason, other than sucking up to Bob Rubin, that Bernanke had to be reappointed? And Stiglitz would be too much of a DFH to be confirmed? I don’t believe that for a second. After all, look at Stiglitz’s resume. I think it speaks very well of Stiglitz that he’s worked where he has and hasn’t been swallowed by the “Borg” so to speak. Maybe it is my bleeding heart nature showing through that I worry about all those people who will suffer because the job market isn’t getting better fast enough. People who will be kicked out of their homes by the criminal banks.
Maybe it’s because he was appointed by Bush, but I just don’t get all of the Bernanke hatred. Ok, he didn’t try to pop the housing bubble when it happened, but I’m not convinced that could be done, and it especially couldn’t be done as the explosives were already laid from Greenspan. The guy is doing the best that he can in this economy, and like Atrios, I really don’t see what more he can do at this point.
What’s more, Simon Johnson, every Serious DFH’s dreamboat, was pimping Thomas Hoenig to be Treasury Secretary. Hoenig is calling for austerity these days, and for higher interest rates.
I didn’t necessarily support his reappointment, but once it was made, I did. Defeating him a.) Could have made way for someone worse, and b.) Would have hurt Obama, badly. I guess I understand saying “why’d he appoint him in the first place,” but Bernanke isn’t terrible, and he certainly doesn’t deserve the scorn he gets (especially when you look at other Fed governors and board members).
If Obama were president during the Cuban missile crisis, I think Washington, DC and most other large American cities would be radioactive rubble by now. [For gruesome effects check out the movie, The Day After] I don’t think he would have been able to resist the war leaders like LeMay and Maxwell et al who were obsessed with bombing Cuba and finally taking out Castro. Thus provoking a Russian response on Berlin and thence to nuclear armageddon.
As to an unwinnable war in Asia, Obama didn’t start the conflict in Afghanistan but he sure as hell has enlarged it. And this despite the sorry example of Vietnam some forty odd years ago. Watching the war progress in Afghanistan to say nothing of potential fighting with Pakistan (and, on the horizon, Iran) is like experiencing deja vu all over again, as Casey Stengel used to say.
The continuation of the Bush policies on Guantanamo, FISHA, torture, rendition, limitations on habeas corpus is hardly a cause of praise. Neither is, in my opinion, is the failure to go after Bush and Cheney for their obvious violation of the Nuremberg principles which America so egregiously trumpeted after World War II.
Kowtowing to the banksters in the recent economic crisis hardly merits a comparison to FDR whose spirit, I imagine, must be anguished beyond compare. If I am not mistaken Wall Street was quite generous to the current president in the area of campaign contributions in 2008. Just goes to show sometimes you get what you pay for.
So to imply that Obama, and after only two years, can be compared to some of America’s greatest presidents like T. Roosevelt, W. Wilson, H. Truman, JFK who all demonstrated courage in times of need and peril and who played significant roles in enabling ordinary Americans to achieve one of the highest standards of living in the world is like breathtaking. I don’t think, BooMan, I could disagree with you more.
Interesting post, even more interesting comments.
I actually think he has been a pretty fine president, given the mess that he inheritied. Agree that calling him one of the best .. will take a little while. But his first two years he did manage to accomplish things that no one thought he could do.
I love the way he carries himself. I like what Michelle has done as first lady. I have to admit that I was a little surprised at the vehemence and anger he has faced, and in my heart of hearts I believe a lot of it is racist.
I’m surprised and disappointed in the anger and yes, “hatred” he is facing from the far left. I can’t call it anything thing else. I can remember when Carter was president and a lot of Democrats were unhappy with him, but I don’t remember it being so bitter and angry. Again, in my heart of hearts, I think a lot of it is coming from folks that wanted Hillary and never really liked him in the first place.
My husband is a true “Independent”, and over the years has tended to vote against who ever was in power. He voted for Obama, but that was partly because he was extremely disappointed in McCain’s choice of Sarah, and thought that he had sold his soul to the radical right, which my husband can’t stand.
So what is his opinion of Obama after two years? Plesantly surprised and pleased. Me, I would give him a B or B+, certainly not an A … yet.
Another reason some hate Obama is because he is intelligent.
FDR was intelligent and he was also hated by some.
Provocative, but at least partially true.
Johnson was a great president except for Vietnam. But that’s a BIG exception. You could intelligently make the argument that the bad of the Vietnam War canceled out all the good that happened on the domestic front.
So, yeah Obama’s the greatest president after FDR. But after FDR there’s a BIG drop off!
If all the folks arguing over whether President Obama and the Democrats have done enough to be considered a great Congress, here is a list of their accomplishments:
http://www.winningprogressive.org/obama-democrats-long-list-accomplishments
Impressive compilation, WInning Progressive. Kudos to you, and, of course, President Obama.
Agree Booman. The rest of the world knows they are witnessing a true leader of the world. Rescuing the economy alone was historic. What an amazing two years of difficult, difficult work that demanded his extreme intelligence and, quite frankly, just physical endurance. However, as insignificant as it might seem me, the most difficult thing might have been not allowing the stupidity of the Sarah Palins of the country with their 24/7 media coverage and the cowardice and jealousy of the McCains of the political world, to demoralize him to the point of determining he would just accomplish what was necessary and not fight the tough fights.
It might be that he is already two steps ahead of his opponents by still having immigration on the table prior to the 2012 election. If the Republicans don’t pass it, the Hispanic vote, which made the difference out West, will again be the critical Obama supporter/voter.
I am not going to join the Obama love fest. There is a melt-down in the housing market, and an eviceration of the middle class that Obama is just watching without any help whatsoever. His inability to control the financial sector is just another example of his lack of resolve. Where is the Democrat in this supposed Democratic politician? He is just a toadie for Wall Street and the banker thieves.
What the FUCKING fuck are booman and all those other bots thinking?
Obama has proven to be nothing but a cum receptacle for the Elite class, while throwing us a couple plastic mardi gras beads from the Banker MIC Tank barely disguised as a float.
Are these people retarded entirely or so doped up on methamphetamines that they cannot help but hump the leg of their master?
Some days, I just have to wonder what the FUCK are these so called liberals thinking?
You people have seriously lost your minds…..
/rantalicious rant