# Is Obama all that different from other Presidents? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 14, 2011, 9:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-obama-all-that-different-from-other-presidents/588993 "2011-07-14T09:22:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-obama-all-that-different-from-other-presidents/588993/21 "2011-07-14T15:21:22Z")
> [@Profound\_Gibberish](#): > > Obama is black, and that brings out the latent racism in all of us, and absolutely frightens the active racists out there. Half of the crap that is piled on him now would not be there if he were white. > > –PG: Middle Class, Middle-Aged White Male All of us don’t have latent racism. Speak for yourself. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-obama-all-that-different-from-other-presidents/588993/22 "2011-07-14T15:21:25Z")
> [@HumanBear](#): > > That’s true to a point, but calling him a Liberal does seem a bit much even in the sphere of US politics. I guess one of the things I was asking is, do people really think he’s so ultra-liberal, and if they do what evidence do they have? Well, as you said, it’s “politics”, so we’re not talking about truth. People (his opponents) are going to call him a liberal because that’s a dirty word in the US, and they want to paint a negative picture of him. He’s maybe a little more liberal than Clinton was as president (or at least how he governed once the Republicans gained leadership in Congress), but I would say by any objective measure he’s pretty centrist (wrt American politics). The reality of US politics is that any president has to be pretty centrist since that’s where the political center of gravity is, by definition. He isn’t going to survive, politically, if he tries to govern as strong lefty. ---
**Author:** ![RaleighRally](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ed655f/32.png) [@RaleighRally](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaleighRally)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-obama-all-that-different-from-other-presidents/588993/23 "2011-07-14T15:24:37Z")
What is his position on immigration? Does he support the working class fear of wage dumping? ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-obama-all-that-different-from-other-presidents/588993/24 "2011-07-14T15:29:48Z")
> [@HumanBear](#): > > I have seen a few times on this board that some people seem to think Obama is behaving significantly differently than his predecessors, or he at least thinks significantly differently. As an outsider, British, he doesn’t seem particularly radical to me, and all the things he’s done so far seem relatively sensible. Perhaps the only radical thing I can thing of being the healthcare changes, and that was nowhere near as radical as many people wanted. > > So is Obama all that different? Is he as left-leaning as he’s sometimes portrayed? He strikes me as a pragmatic man who has inherited a tough situation, and has been trying hard to work with everyone to find a solution, sometimes ending up with solutions that no-one likes because of compromise. I don’t feel any waves of evil from his administration, and while I understand that the Republicans would like different things I don’t understand the demonization of Obama at all. > > Am I just not well informed? We have a 2 party system. But it is very expensive to run in America. We have an overly long campaign period that has people running for over a year and a half. So both parties have to appeal to the wealthy and corporations for campaign money. Eventually they are both beholden to big money and big business. The rub is that the Dems have a conscience about the poor. They try to help them out. The Repubs do not care about the unfortunate. They are just collateral damage in the rush to international corporate governments. Obama could not be president if he threatened the wealthy. He does not. But he is apt to cost them a little of the control they demand,. The Repubs will give them what they want. The differences are not huge, but they are real. ---
**Author:** ![PigArcher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bcef8e/32.png) [@PigArcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PigArcher)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-obama-all-that-different-from-other-presidents/588993/25 "2011-07-14T16:12:55Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > All of us don’t have latent racism. Speak for yourself. Everyone has latent racism, it’s human nature to fear those perceived as “different”. But like many aspects of human nature, the degree to which it affects a person’s state of mind and outward behavior varies considerably. It may not affect you very much, but to claim that some people are just immune to racist attitudes is not realistic. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-obama-all-that-different-from-other-presidents/588993/26 "2011-07-14T16:21:06Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Left and right in politics is relative. Is it? Or rather, let me say, should they be? ---
**Author:** ![RaleighRally](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ed655f/32.png) [@RaleighRally](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaleighRally)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-obama-all-that-different-from-other-presidents/588993/27 "2011-07-14T16:29:54Z")
> [@kenetic](#): > > Everyone has latent racism, it’s human nature to fear those perceived as “different”. But like many aspects of human nature, the degree to which it affects a person’s state of mind and outward behavior varies considerably. It may not affect you very much, but to claim that some people are just immune to racist attitudes is not realistic. According to cultural Marxist theories, only people of Northern European descent have latent racism. So it would be very easy for Obama to be “right-winged” on immigration. But I suppose he would then lose his support from the mighty Hollywood-lobby. You know, they never argue their points philosophically, they just beam television show after television show into every American home depicting the anti-immigration folks as the scum of earth. If you compare Obama to Bush, is he more left or right on immigration? ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-obama-all-that-different-from-other-presidents/588993/28 "2011-07-14T16:48:19Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Is it? Or rather, let me say, should they be? Good question. My take is that if you are a political scientist, you are going to want to be as objective as possible in defining your terms. You’ll want them to mean the same thing in the US as they do in South Africa. The problem is, most lay people use language descriptively, not prescriptively. I have no formal education in political science, so I’m not really sure if there is a consensus among those who study the subject as to which side of the various issues constitutes the right side and which the left side. And that always leads us to the question as to whether that 1-D model is really useful at the academic level. It makes good sound bites in a political campaign, but is it a good way to study a complex subject? ---
**Author:** ![PigArcher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bcef8e/32.png) [@PigArcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PigArcher)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-obama-all-that-different-from-other-presidents/588993/29 "2011-07-14T16:52:24Z")
> [@RaleighRally](#): > > If you compare Obama to Bush, is he more left or right on immigration? Bush at least proposed some sort of amnesty or guest worker program at some point, but when his supporters got all huffy at the idea that they may have to stop treating a bunch of brown-skinned criminals as 2nd class citizens he dropped it. AFAIK Obama’s never tackled the immigration issue, but it’s pretty hard to say who’s more “right” or “left”, much less actually defining what it means to be “right” or “left” on immigration in the first place. ---
**Author:** ![elbows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b3f665/32.png) [@elbows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elbows)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-obama-all-that-different-from-other-presidents/588993/30 "2011-07-14T16:55:11Z")
> [@](#): > > I don’t feel any waves of evil from his administration This, mostly. Even if they manage to disguise, it during the lying/getting elected, phase of the process, it rarely takes long for the evil to show which pile of money they’re beholding to. And he’s black, of course. It’s been a long, long, LONG time since they had someone in the White House who wasn’t doing something, somewhere, some time that revealed him to be a scumbag on some front or other. Whether it’s cheating on your spouse, endorsing torture, lying bare faced, or whatever. Whether they agree with his politics or not, I think, most people recognize he is trying hard to do the right things, and he is, at his core, a good person. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-obama-all-that-different-from-other-presidents/588993/31 "2011-07-14T16:55:52Z")
> [@kenetic](#): > > Everyone has latent racism, it’s human nature to fear those perceived as “different”. But like many aspects of human nature, the degree to which it affects a person’s state of mind and outward behavior varies considerably. It may not affect you very much, but to claim that some people are just immune to racist attitudes is not realistic. I don’t have latent racism. I don’t fear those perceived as different. Maybe most people do, but I don’t, so any such claims that include everybody are false. ---
**Author:** ![elbows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b3f665/32.png) [@elbows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elbows)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-obama-all-that-different-from-other-presidents/588993/32 "2011-07-14T16:56:34Z")
> [@](#): > > I don’t feel any waves of evil from his administration This, mostly. Even if they manage to disguise it, during the lying/getting elected, phase of the process, it rarely takes long for the evil to show which pile of money they’re beholding to. And he’s black, of course. It’s been a long, long, LONG time since they had someone in the White House who wasn’t doing something, somewhere, some time that revealed him to be a scumbag on some front or other. Whether it’s cheating on your spouse, endorsing torture, lying bare faced, or whatever. Whether they agree with his politics or not, I think, most people recognize he is trying hard to do the right things, and he is, at his core, a good person. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-obama-all-that-different-from-other-presidents/588993/33 "2011-07-14T17:01:04Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Is it? Or rather, let me say, should they be? What would be the point? > [@Abraham Lincoln](#): > > The Jefferson party was formed upon its supposed superior devotion to the personal rights of men, holding the rights of property to be secondary only, and greatly inferior. […] The Democrats of today hold the liberty of one man to be absolutely nothing when in conflict with another man’s right of property. Republicans, on the contrary, are for both the man and the dollar, but in cases of conflict, the man before the dollar. > I remember once being much amused at seeing two partially intoxicated men engage in a fight with their great-coats on. The fight, after a long and rather harmless contest, ended in each having fought himself out of his own coat, and into that of the other. If the two leading parties of this day are really identical with the two in the days of Jefferson and Adams, they have performed the same feat as the two drunken men. ---
**Author:** ![black\_rabbit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f19dbf/32.png) [@black\_rabbit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/black_rabbit)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-obama-all-that-different-from-other-presidents/588993/34 "2011-07-14T17:09:37Z")
> [@RaleighRally](#): > > If you compare Obama to Bush, is he more left or right on immigration? What’s left and what’s right on immigration? The laissez-faire capitalist free-trade pro-immigration position? The populist/protectionist anti-immigration position? The internationalist/populist/social justice-driven pro-immigration position? ---
**Author:** ![Dick\_Dastardly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c4cdca/32.png) [@Dick\_Dastardly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dick_Dastardly)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-obama-all-that-different-from-other-presidents/588993/35 "2011-07-14T17:25:20Z")
Gotta say Der Trihs is right on the money. In elections now you’ve got the choice between a corporatist Democrat or an insanelt corporatist Republican. The choice between right and righter, and if the right guy wins any policy he proposes that doesn’t benefit the top 1% and corporations entirely will see him labelled as a socialist. ---
**Author:** ![PigArcher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bcef8e/32.png) [@PigArcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PigArcher)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-obama-all-that-different-from-other-presidents/588993/36 "2011-07-14T18:51:35Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > I don’t have latent racism. I don’t fear those perceived as different. Maybe most people do, but I don’t, so any such claims that include everybody are false. Okie then, you’re a perfect human being, totally different from and superior to the rest of us. Congratulations. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-obama-all-that-different-from-other-presidents/588993/37 "2011-07-14T19:28:08Z")
> [@kenetic](#): > > Okie then, you’re a perfect human being, totally different from and superior to the rest of us. Congratulations. :rolleyes: Far from perfect. Just not affected by racism, despite the efforts of others to influence me. But I have plenty of other faults, just ask my wife 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-obama-all-that-different-from-other-presidents/588993/38 "2011-07-14T19:45:47Z")
> [@kenetic](#): > > Okie then, you’re a perfect human being, totally different from and superior to the rest of us. Congratulations. :rolleyes: Actually you can ask **Mangetout**. One of my faults is saying everybody does things when I know it couldn’t mean absolutely everybody. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-obama-all-that-different-from-other-presidents/588993/39 "2011-07-14T20:08:50Z")
> [@kenetic](#): > > Everyone has latent racism, it’s human nature to fear those perceived as “different”. The obvious flaw in that argument is that it presumes that everyone on Earth has the same definition of “different”. Race is an artificial distinction created by slavers and imperialists to justify their depredations, not some objective or instinctive form of categorization that everyone automatically takes seriously. Most people throughout human history have not been racist, for the simple reason they didn’t even have the concept of race in the first place. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-obama-all-that-different-from-other-presidents/588993/40 "2011-07-14T21:39:59Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > The obvious flaw in that argument is that it presumes that everyone on Earth has the same definition of “different”. Race is an artificial distinction created by slavers and imperialists to justify their depredations, not some objective or instinctive form of categorization that everyone automatically takes seriously. Most people throughout human history have not been racist, for the simple reason they didn’t even have the concept of race in the first place. Semantics. Call it tribalist or ethnicist or whatever and it boils down to the same thing. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-obama-all-that-different-from-other-presidents/588993.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-obama-all-that-different-from-other-presidents/588993.md?page=3)