Obama is a very middling President in almost every sense except fundraising and public speaking, both of which he’s very good at.
As noted, that’s completely wrong, and many projects last longer than two years.
Wrong and totally naive.
Aside from the date error and the fact that spending bills are not passed every day, this is overly simplistic. It may be theoretically possible to eliminate a program from any federal budget, but that doesn’t mean it’s politically possible or a good idea. Obama and Congress could stop paying for the wars if he wanted to, but then you’d have unpaid soldiers without equipment. They could eliminate Social Security and Medicare and save tons of money instantly, but most of the people using those programs would be screwed. Voters would be apoplectic with either idea and people would die. Not every program is that vital or dramatic, but this is just a silly oversimplification.
The past always matters, and fortunately, even the people in the debt ceiling negotiations seem to recognize that drastic and unplanned changes in federal programs would have a lot of severe consequences that are not desirable.
And you’re welcome to that opinion. But if you think every president who comes along is the worst ever until the next one, people will stop taking you seriously. This is called doomsaying.
At best this is technically true and it demonstrates no understanding of how the government, the budget, the economy, or governing work. It’s true the president and Congress can eliminate tons of programs and ignore the consequences to the lives and jobs of the people who benefit from them, but that’s not a very good idea for reasons that ought to be obvious.
I never said that, but you just did.
No, you just implied it with statements like this:
Since those trends have been growing for decades and the last two presidents have been, in your opinion, the worst, doesn’t it follow that the previous presidents - under whom those trends began and grew, paving the way for what came after - were the worst before them?
I definitely did not say Obama was the worst president ever in any way. You seem to be mistaking my characterization of your opinion for my own opinion.
Originally Posted by Susanann
I never said that, but you just did.
Again, you are making statements that are not true. You are making statements about me that I never said. I only mentioned “2” presidents. FYI, there have been over 40 presidents. Moreover, most of the 44 presidents did not start more wars than the previous president - obama, as stated in the OP question, is, in fact, unique. obama is unique in warmongering, and obama is unique in creating annual trillion dollar federal deficits. obama uniquely gave us 40 million people on food stamps. obama uniquely gave us over 20 million unemployed or underemployed.
And no, it does not “follow” that every president since Washington has been worse and worse. For example, there have been many peace-making presidents that followed many war-making presidents. There is no reason a new president coming “needs” to follow obama’s policies, there is no reason why a new president “needs” to go to war, “needs” to make more wars, “needs” to give us even more debt.
In fact, I personally hope the next new president gets us out of all of obama’s wars, I hope she reins in the huge deficits that obama gave us, I hope she repeals obamacare, etc etc.
.
This is a ridiculously bad criteria, and in the case of Obama, you’re wrong anyway. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq started under Bush. So did the drone attacks in Pakistan, and I hesitate to count that as a war, but you do. Obama has continued those three (nevermind that the commitments in Afghanistan and particularly Iraq are decreasing). Your argument seems to be that he’s started wars in Libya and Yemen, both of which are questionable but the argument can be made. But the real problem with your argument is you’re saying two is more than three. That’s hard to argue and I’m eager to see you give it a try.
He isn’t, though. It’s hard to argue that someone who continues a lot of longstanding trends is unique (and no surprise, you’re failing). Presidents were racking up debts before Obama, starting and getting involved in conflicts that weren’t in response to direct threats before Obama, and expanding the size of the government before Obama. He’s squarely in the mainstream on a lot of this stuff even if he is left of center on a lot of it.
And yet it keeps happening because that’s the way the government has evolved, and in large part it’s a role the U.S. citizenry is comfortable with the government playing. Even the allegedly socialist health care law is of a piece with increasing government involvement in health care, which spans the creation of Medicare in the '60s through the introduction of Part D in the 2000s.
Yes!
obama uniquely will go down in history as the one who gave us never-ending continuous wars from the very beginning to the very end, obama** uniquely **will go down in history as the one who gave us never-ending Depression, obama uniquely will go down in history as the one who gave us never ending $$ trillion dollar federal deficits…and all of these at the same time!
With obama, the American people never had “1” single day without war. with obama, the American people never had “1” single day of prosperity. That is quite an accomplishment. There was no peace, and no prosperity with obama.
Well, you can keep working on it, I suppose, but the outcome is still going to be that only the historians attached to the right-wing think tanks are going to see it that way. The effort to burnish Bush is never-ending…
The “depression,” of course, began before he took office. Unless you were serious about the past not existing.
Regardless, I think we’re going off topic here. It’s your opinion that he’s the worst president ever. I don’t care. The question the OP asked was if he’s that different from other presidents, and despite the fact that you do think he’s worser at everything than everyone, his policies and governing are not completely different from decades of presidents before him - not in terms of deficits, activist foreign policy, and so on.
I guess you never heard of** Harry Truman?.**
Truman inherited a country that was in a world war as well as a country with a dozen years of economic depression. A president cannot face a tougher situation than Truman faced. There is… no way …anyone can compare obama with Truman.
Truman didn’t complain about the problems he inherited, nor did Truman blame Roosevelt for all of his problems, Truman just fixed the problems, ended the war, and gave us prosperity. Regardless of his predessesors Truman gave us the first economic prosperity since 1930, and although he gave us the Korean War for part of his presidency, Truman also gave us 5 years of peace.
Wars - You mean the wars Bush started? Afghanistan and Iraq? Obama’s started to wind those down already.
Or did you mean some other wars that we’re in now? Are you referring to our actions in Libya? Is there a war that Obama (not Bush) started that I don’t know about?
Deficits - you mean the deficits that were created when Obama started putting the actual costs of the wars that Bush started back onto the books, when Bush was keeping them out of the budget to hide the actual costs?
Obamacare - you mean Romneycare, the health care system that Mitt Romney championed and put into place in Massachusetts, and that the majority of Americans support?
In America (you know, where Obama was born), a person of biracial ancestry who appears to be less than 100% white is treated as their minority ancestry in the vast majority of circumstances. Therefore, a man like Obama who appears black will be treated as black by the vast majority of people who interact with him. And we know extraordinary amounts about Obama’s personal history, in spite of the fact that you continue to insist that we do not.
Originally Posted by Susanann
obama uniquely will go down in history as the one who gave us never-ending Depression
Irrelevant. It does not matter if it started in the last year of the previous president.
obama** uniquely** is the only one who gave us never-ending wars AND never-ending depression for every single day for the entire time. Not “1” single day of peace. Not “1” single day of prosperity. That is unique. Even bush (the second worst president) gave us at least some days of no war. Even bush gave us some days of lower unemployment and at least bush gave us much fewer people dependent on government food stamps in order to be able to eat a daily meal.
Speak for yourself.
I’m actually speaking from the point of view of a social scientist who teaches social interaction and who is aware of the many, many, many pieces of research on race, perception, and interaction.
The depression was long over by the time Truman became president.
Except perhaps for the situation FDR faced. And the situation the presidents before the Civil War faced (and most of them screwed up royally). After that, Obama rates pretty highly among the guys who were dealt a bad hand when they were inaugurated.
You can compare anything with anything.
Given that he was FDR’s vice president, that’s hardly surprising.
Truman took office three weeks before Germany surrendered and with the Manhattan Project well under way. I’m sure he could’ve blown it somehow, but it’s absurd to say “he ended the war.” If FDR had lived a few more months, the same thing would have happened. And the Great Depression ended before he was even vice president. There was strong economic expansion in the years before Truman became VP and president.
Again, wrong.
…A conflict that technically is still going, and the consequences of which are very much alive…
Your views on all of this stuff are very simplistic (and that’s when they’re not flat out wrong). Hitler shot himself in the third week of Truman’s presidency. It’s ridiculous to talk about the situation as if Truman brought FDR’s war to a close when the war had been drawing to conclusion for years. If your view is that the president gets 100 percent of the credit for everything that happens between his inauguration and his farewell and nothing that happens before his term is relevant, that’s a hopelessly naive and uninformed view of history. Nobody should take that kind of thinking seriously.
The economy went into recession in mid-2007 and came out of the recession in June 2009. By your reasoning, Obama inherited a recession and make it into a recovery. So he ought to get all the credit for the improvement because it happened after he took office. According to your own ‘the past doesn’t count and cause and effect depends on the calendar’ logic.
Again, three of the conflicts you’re discussing started a long time before Obama took office. U.S. soldiers were in Afghanistan starting in November 2001, so they had been there for more than seven years when he was inaugurated. The drone attacks in Pakistan started shortly after the Afghanistan war. The invasions of Iraq started almost six years before Obama’s inauguration. But somehow the wars weren’t “never ending” until Obama took over. You cannot possibly argue with any shred of credibility that it’s worse for Obama because there was a brief period under Bush when the national security apparatus hadn’t yet failed. Your argument actually penalizes Obama for the fact that Bush failed to wrap up the wars (which is something Obama has made more progress on). Somehow the wars were not so bad for six and seven years of Bush, but since they were already in progress when Obama took over, now they’re “never ending?” That’s absurd. It’s self-contradictory and staggeringly illogical.
Again, wrong. The economy is bad, but the recession ended two years ago.
He’s got between 1 1/2 and 5 1/2 years left in office, so it’s preposterous to make this judgment at this point.
Correct. He sat on his ass for eight months until a huge terrorist attack, then got stuck in two wars he screwed up royally thanks to a total lack of planning. And do you really believe the president is like Santa Claus and “gives” the country war or peace?
Correct. He did nothing while the economy stagnated and enormous housing and credit derivate bubbles developed, and when those burst at the end of his second term, he didn’t do much to help. Of course, I understand those problems began before Bush, so he deserves much of the blame but not all of it. Under your argument, that’s not possible.
That is why you will never understand. They ARE different.
What you, and obama, do not understand, is that never-ending trillion dollar deficits ARE different!
There is a big difference between small manageable debt, and huge debts that can never be paid. Before bush, and esp before obama, the debt of the USA was manageable and well within the income of the USA. Not unlike an American working family with a car loan and a mortgage on a home-which fits their income. There is nothing wrong with ordinary manageable reasonable payable debts, either by families or by a government. There is a difference between getting a reasonable loan which you intend and expect to pay back, and stealing money by borrowing tens of trillions of dollars which you never intend nor will be able to pay back.
The difference is that obama’s annual never-ending Trillion dollar deficits are NOT the same thing, just like an average American working family borrowing tens of millions of dollars every year after year is not the same thing.
A $$$20 trillion dollar loan is NOT the same thing as an $8000.00 loan. Debt is not debt, not when it is humongous. Huge tens of trillions of debt that you never intend to pay back, nor that you ever will be able to pay back, huge trillions of debt that can destroy the US dollar as well as destroy the entire country is NOT the same thing.
obama’s deficits are** immoral.**
If you cant understand this, then there is no point to continue further.
Come back when you can get some perspective.
What I don’t understand is your fondness for the word “never ending.” He’s been president for 2 1/2 years.
There is no question the deficit has increased a lot, but I doubt your assessment.
The deficit was very large before Obama. It has gotten bigger, in large part because of the stimulus package, the wars that started before he took office, the economic slump, and the 2001 tax cuts. What I really can’t understand is how two wars is more wars than three wars. Can you explain your arithmetic?
In any event, HumanBear, these are the types of arguments you see when people try to say Obama’s administration is radically different from previous 43 or the handful of most recent administrations. ‘He’s nothing like his predecessors because there were defecits before and now they are bigger.’ ‘He’s nothing like them because there were wars before and there are still wars.’ ‘He’s nothing like them because the federal government was big and doing a lot of stuff before, and now it’s still like that but more.’
Yes, I wonder what percentage of the population thinks like this. I wonder what Susanann thinks of Bush. Did you like him Susanann, or is Obama just an even worse version of him?
If you look upthread, you’ll see Susanann says Bush was the worst president before Obama. She’s expressed that view many times, at least during Obama’s tenure (I don’t know what she said about him at the time). But from what I’ve seen she’s been consistent in panning G. W. Bush.
ETA: I actually did take a minute just now to look at some of her older posts and it looks like she didn’t have anything good to say about Bush during his tenure either.