You were the one that implied that some people vote their conscience and other people vote for Clinton or McCain.
My belief is that most people vote their conscience. They may be wrong but I don’t believe they’re willfully wrong. I don’t think anyone goes into the voting booth and says to themselves “Jones is obviously the best candidate for the job. But I’m going to vote for Smith because I want to wreak evil upon America.”
I base my belief on the fact that no president has ever succeeded based on receiving the admiration of Congress. They might admire you - but then they’ll vote against you. A president who’s likeable can be safely defied - there’s no consequences for voting against his agenda.
Clinton isn’t worried about being likable. She’d go to Congress and tell them, “Here’s my agenda. Those of you who vote for it, will be my friends and will be rewarded. Those of you who vote against it, will be my enemies and will be punished.” Then as long as she’s got the power to reward and punish, she’ll succeed.
This is the way successful presidents have run the country. People knew if they defied someone like Johnson or Nixon or FDR, that there’d be consequences.
That didn’t work at all with her health care proposal. In fact it alienated people who should have been her allies, became a total fiasco and contributed to the Republicans winning control of Congress in 1994, which changed the course of the Clinton administration. Eliot Spitzer tried that same confrontational approach here in New York, and even before he was outed as a whoremonger, he’d completely fucked up and alienated the legislature. And he had a Bush-like approval rating to boot. That approach only works if you do it right, and not everybody does it right. I actually think Clinton’s chief failing, despite her intelligence and thoroughness, is that she just lacks that ability to get along with people politically, and picks fights when it isn’t necessary.
[deleted]Nevermind. I just realized I was making the same points as Marley23 above with different words.
What? No, I said nothing of the sort.
Shayna expressed a desire to vote for Obama if he was the nominee but not for Clinton. People here immediately attacked her because there’s this attitude that you have to choose a party and vote for any candidate they run regardless of how you feel about them.
I was trying to defend the idea that just because you want to vote for a particular candidate did not mean that you would blindly support any candidate that their party ran. She doesn’t have to vote democrat for president. She can choose to vote for particular candidates. Not only are attacks because of this not justified, they’re repulsive.
Blind loyalty to parties, and the “us vs them” mentality it entails is probably the biggest problem in our political system. Even on a pretty smart place like the SDMB, the ignorant, destructive tendencies towards it are deeply entrenched.
I said you needed two things. The willingness to use your power and the power itself. Clinton, as First Lady, and Governor Spitzer found out they didn’t have the power they thought they did. Both were obviously mistakes. But Clinton has shown she learns from her mistakes and doesn’t repeat them.
Well, if I misunderstood what you were saying, I apologize. But I read these things.
And you seemed to be implying that only some of the candidates could actually be liked and only some of them could be voted on with a conscience.
And I feel this is far from the situation. I think we’re actually very fortunate right now. We’ve got three viable candidates and all three of them are good candidates. The bad candidates seem to have all been flushed out of the running.
As I’ve said I’m backing Clinton. But I also feel that Obama and McCain are both good candidates. Either of them would probably be a good President. I just believe Clinton would be a better one.
But a lot of people seem unwilling to make the a similar admission. Once they’ve chosen one candidate, they seem to have to demonize the others. They can’t just say their candidate is the best candidate; they have to claim their candidate is the only good candidate and every other candidate is wrong. And the people who support those other candidates know they’re wrong so they must be wrong too.
And Shayna, who you say you were defending, has been one of the clearest examples of this attitude. I don’t see why she needs to be defended from the “us vs them” mentality when she’s the one waving that flag.
SenorBeef implied nothing of the sort. He was responding to the notion that you have to vote along party lines, no matter who your candidate is or how you feel about them. I believe he avoided naming a specific candidate to avoid people making this assumption.
This is actually what I’m concerned about with the Clinton presidency and one of the things I didn’t like about the Bush presidency and the current crop of republicans. Why does someone who won’t support your policies automatically become your enemy? What if you don’t have a large enough majority to shove your agenda down your opponents throat? Does this apply to diplomacy as well, because it’s behavior like that that is making it so hard to get any sort of help with Iraq.
It’s not about being “likable.” It’s about working with people, even those on the other side of the politcal fence, to get the job done.
If your point is that a Hillary presidency would be positively Nixonian, I agree.
Somebody who won’t support your policies isn’t your enemy but they are your opponent. To pretend otherwise is foolish.
Let’s use your example of Iraq. Should the next president say “Well, some people in Congress sincerely believe we should keep troops in Iraq. I disagree but I want to show I respect their opinions. So I guess we’ll compromise. They want 150,000 troops to stay there for ten years. I want all the troops to come back now. We’ll split the difference and keep 75,000 troops in Iraq for five years. Then we’ll see how everybody feels about it in 2013.” Or should the president say, “I think the troops should be withdrawn from Iraq. A majority in Congress agrees with me. Some people disagree however. That’s unfortunate but I’ve made my decision and I’m going to carry it out.”
There’s a lot to be said for having politicians who will make good decisions and then act on them, even if they’re not the most popular decisions. A lot of our recent problems have stemmed from a Congress that keep trying to meet George Bush halfway instead of just telling him no.
That has to be one of the most flawed examples I have ever seen. Just because you respect your opponents doesn’t mean you are automatically going to concede half of everything to them. That you don’t see that says much about you.
There’s also a lot to be said for having politicians who will make bad decisions and act on them, even if they’re not the most popular. A lot of our recent problems have stemmed from a president and the republicans who weren’t willing to meet those who wanted to exhaust every peaceful resource first and simply told them no.
If you don’t at least listen to those who disagree with you, how will you ever know if you are wrong? Having a “D” next to your name doesn’t make you any more correct than someone who has an “R” next to theirs.
What an interesting aside!
Is a President most effective because they can bully their way through Congress and force their views down them throats of their opponents by way of threats, or by way of cajoling the opposition along and even some compromise?
Seems to me it takes both. Threats do not have any force with out the power to deliver on them, and that only comes from having a base willing to follow you.
Did Reagan get his agenda through because of his mean streak, punishing those who opposed him mercilessly? Was Nixon’s infamous vindictive streak particular effective at getting his agenda through and making him an effective President? Did FDR have the power to threaten because he threatened or because he had followers who willingly gave him that power first, having won large majorities his second term?
Anyway, unless a President has a mandate (something a Clinton administration will not have by way of design, but an Obama administration has a chance for) (s)he has no effective power to threaten with. Acting as if you do, making threats that you cannot deliver upon, will only embarrass you and lock down the government. Better to go the cajoling and compromising route until you really have that much power anyway.
Obama will get more done.
Agreed. Simply forcing your agenda through creates enmity and makes you look foolish when you are wrong. Simply compromising on everything makes you look weak. You have to know when and what to apply both. That is what separates the bullies and the sissies from the leaders.
No one is required to make a similar “admission” if they don’t believe it’s true, and I don’t. Just because you think there are 3 good candidates running, doesn’t mean everyone has to agree with you. I honestly think we have 1 good candidate running, and 2 terrible ones. An “admission” of anything contrary would be a lie.
Utter nonsense. First of all, I wouldn’t begin to know what you know, let alone claim that you know you’re wrong but won’t admit it. I’ll leave that to you, as you just did above, by claiming that I ought to at least “admit” that there are 3 good candidates running.
Secondly, I don’t know how you can pin the allegation of waving a flag of the “us against them” mentality on someone who clearly doesn’t espouse that, given that I refuse to vote for whomever the Democrats put up as a candidate just because they’re the Democrat.
And lastly, you’re certainly free to classify my contempt for Hillary Clinton as “demonizing” her in your own mind, but as far as I’m concerned, stating my opinion that she is divisive, arrogant and generally ill-suited to the office of the Presidency is simply stating the truth as I see it.
So who here thinks the GOP, which will probably still have filibuster power and has a strong history of simply obstructing anything the Democrats try to do regardless of merit, is suddenly going to roll over and work with Obama just because of his personal charisma? Has any discussion, public or private, by anyone, of the GOP leadership’s obligation to country above party over the last 13 years fundamentally changed their behavior? Is Obama the one person with the power to change all that? If he is, what evidence of it has there been over the last 4 years?
Unless you believe that the Republicans are either going to be so distinct a minority as to powerless (which is a real possibility, but not one to count on yet), or that they will suddenly melt before him in awe and mend their reflexive-obstructionist ways, you do have to consider the candidates’ knife-fighting abilities as well. It does matter.
We’d have had no Civil Rights Act, as obvious and noble as it seems now and even then, without LBJ twisting arms and making deals and even threats. The word “Nixonian” has been used as pejorative here, but without regard to the liberal domestic-policy accomplishments that his close-in work made possible. It isn’t a character flaw to be able to do that; it’s a basic requirement for a leader to get the job done.
I think I know which of the remaining candidates is likely to be better at that.
I think McCain is a lousy candidate. He loves him some wars. His bomb ,bomb ,bomb Iran was not funny. He scares an old peacnik like me to death.
But I heard potential criticism of Obama I had trouble answering. Is his entourage outsiders? Will he bring in a bunch of people like Carter did. ?That would make change very difficult to achieve. We need a fast and strong change. Would he be too far outside the political system to accomplish anything.?
[ul][li]Republican Senator Kirk Dillard’s endorsement, in a commercial he filmed in support of Barack Obama’s U.S. Senate bid, wherein he said, “Senator Obama worked on some of the deepest issues we had, and he was successful in a bipartisan way. . .Republican Legislators respected Senator Obama. His negotiation skills and ability to understand both sides would serve the country very well.”[/li][li]The Coburn-Obama Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006[/li][li]The Lugar-Obama Nonproliferation Act.[/li][li]The Death Penalty Reform Legislation he was able to pass in the Illinois Legislature. “I thought the prosecutors and law enforcement would kill it,” said Peter Baroni, who was then a Republican aide to the Illinois Senate’s judiciary committee. “He (Obama) was the one who kept people at the table.” In the end, police organizations supported the recording mandate, and the measure passed the Senate unanimously.[/ul] Please, for our elucidation, provide a similar list of support for the idea that Hillary Clinton would be successful in either working together with, or strong-arming, her Republican counterparts to get legislation passed. [/li][quote=ElvisL1ves]
It isn’t a character flaw to be able to do that; it’s a basic requirement for a leader to get the job done.
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No it’s not. And that’s part of your problem right there; you have bought into the politics of old. And that’s part of why Obama’s supporters support him, because he represents a change to the politics of old, and we believe he can make that happen based on his past success in doing so.
And wanting the democrats to turn around and do the exact same party over country behavior is better how? To be perfectly honest, I don’t believe that anyone on the democrats or the republicans has even tried. Both sides have turned any sort of electoral victory into their own personal mandate. As for Obama being the one person who can change that? I don’t know. I hope so, but I can’t say for certain. He does seem to be (imho) the one person at least talking about it. All I’ve heard from Hillary is “fight fight fight.”
Again, this cuts both ways. Hillary is going to have real problems trying to force the republicans to do what she wants, even with her formidable knife fighting abilities, without them being in the powerless minority. Silly democrat. Bringing a knife to a siege.
Agreed, but it needs to be properly applied. Without the power to enforce any threats made, they are meaningless. Making deals? That sounds like compromise to me, unless Hillary’s deal making skills are so top notch that she won’t have to give up anything to get something.
There you go. Assuming that what you know is what is correct. It strikes me as hypocritical to burn Bush for his stubborn, unchanging ways and to promote Hillary’s same tendencies as virtues.
Yeah, right. And an Obama presidency will be just like Jimmy Carter’s.