It should be no surprise that I think an Obama presidency would be, overall, the lesser of the two alternatives.
I’m imagining a couple of positives though…
Race relations will be improved. Some ignorant folks on the right will have their attitudes changed. Fewer on the left will think that America still has it out for the black man.
The Dems will have to deal with national security and, if they can’t blame problems on Bush, will have to accept the problems that they have an obvious hand in.
Well, the last Democratic President did a much better job with national security than Bush has, so I’m not overly worried about that.
And even though Bush has deserved almost any amount of blame, it’s true that his own wretchedness has made him a convenient scapegoat. If Obama wins and has (as seems likely) a sizeable Democratic majority in Congress, they’re going to need to roll up their sleeves and actually start fixing stuff.
(Granted, the past two terms have been so monumentally fucked-up that even a great President could get bogged down for two whole terms just trying to undo the damage.)
I honestly don’t feel more secure when Uncle Jed grabs his shotgun because Granny saw a critter in the back yard that she thought was from another planet. It requires no courage to shoot at people you don’t like. It requires a lot of courage to go to their house and knock on their door and ask them what the hell is going on. In that regard, Obama is a man of courage compared to McCain, and I would feel safer with him at the nation’s helm.
The United States might actually regain some of the international goodwill (or at least willingness to trust us) that we’ve lost with a pointless and illegal war in a sovereign nation…one that we’ve seriously fucked up at just about every point, at that.
We can finally shut down that reputational black hole, Guantanamo, give them all actual fair trials instead of extra-constitutional kangaroo courts, and hopefully apologize to the world for our brief but significant insanity.
It seems to me that this is the biggest silver lining for Republicans, and you’ve already spun it to proper 90-degrees-to-reality angle. After two terms of screwing things up, a Democrat administration will have to come in and clean things up for the Republicans… and when it doesn’t go perfectly smoothly, the Pubs will be able to blame everything on the Dems.
Of course, there are those to whom anything Obama actually does, or tries to do, to help redress racial inequities in America will be taken as proof of racism on Obama’s part. Preposterous, but there you are. See the OP in this thread.
Or to spin it another 90 degrees, the Democrats will come in, screw things up even more, and say it was the Republican’s fault for leaving such a mess.
The truth is all of the above. The one thing you can be sure of:
If the economy turns around after an Obama win, the Republicans will claim it was already turning, and if anything Obama just slowed the growth.
If the economy tanks, the Republicans will blame Obama, and Obama will say there was nothing he could do because the trajectory was already set by the Republicans.
Regardless of what happens, there will be enough wiggle room for partisans on both sides to make the above claims, and we’ll never settle who really fixed, or broke the economy.
You can say the same thing about the war. To this day, Democrats believe that Vietnam was getting worse and the anti-war movement ended a bad war. Republicans believe the war was turning around and victory was in sight, until the nasty Democrats pulled the rug out from under them, causing a disaster. If Obama pulls all the troops out of Iraq and it descends into civil war, the Republicans will claim the U.S. was winning and the dems snatched defeat from its jaws. If Obama pulls out and all is peaceful and things improved, the Republicans will claim that the war was already won and they would have pulled out as well.
Same old, same old.
Some things are a mater of interpreting the evidence in a certain slanted way. Some things are a matter of denying the majority of the evidence out of ignorance or blind party loyalty.
Believing victory was in sight in Vietnam seems like the latter. I haven’t done an in depth study myself but I haven’t heard any rational evidence to support that theory.
Blatantly promoting a lie out of some misguided sense of party loyalty is a bit more than “Oh well it’s politics” It’s a terrible disservice to the public that voted for you and is paying your salary.
This points to another bit of silver for the Republicans in an Obama win. Without a clear party leader, and the need to support him at great cost, the various factions within the party will finally be able to fight it out for the future direction of the GOP.
I do see that as a plus. I sincerely believe the liberals, moderates and conservatives of this country need each other. Through examining and looking at the issues from different perspectives we arrive at better conclusions. The problem is we have to fight for honest debate about the issues rather than the BS that has been going on.
We have to reject dishonest sound bite slash and burn politics from either party.
The “silver lining” for the pubbies is that they get marginally more mileage out of the whole “We’re poor persecuted conservatives!” garbage that they love throwing around.
Oh, and they get to blame someone else for anything bad that happens, up to and very much including the ghastly effects of conservative ideology being put into practice. Pubbies are off the hook!
Actually, the silver lining for the Republicans is that they are pulled farther toward the center of politics, divorcing themselves from the policies pushed by the radical religious right. The Republicans have the albatross of Bush hanging around their necks, and they need to find some way to lay claim to be the stewards of sound fiscal policy (or as McCain says, “reclaim it,” as if they once had it, cf Trickle-Down Economics).
Right now the Republican party has been so long hooked to the Bush presidency, like dogs to a sled, that now the sled has foundered they have no leadership. Bush didn’t encourage any of his dogs to bark, so there was no lead dog to take over when he was done. They’ll find one — and it isn’t McCain, because he’s not Republican enough for some tastes, but they’ll find another party leader.
I think the silver lining for everybody, no matter who wins, is that we might see an end to Party Before Country and “my nation, right or wrong” and the insular Bush politics of “shut up and say yes” where nobody ever disagrees lest they be attacked. Discussion and debate make the country stronger, but this past administration can’t see that.
Such as? What national-security problems have the Dems caused other than by complicity in Republican policies?