Part of the idiocy of partisan bickering is that the response of “your side’s plan is flawed because of ” results not in the discussion of X, but “yeah, but your side did the same thing a few years ago, so our side is totally justified. And it was evil when you did it, but okay when we do it” - how is this productive in any way? It’s so childish that it can be dismissed chilidishly too: two wrongs don’t make a right.
Bush and the Republicans completely screwing us over doesn’t somehow make it acceptable for the democrats to do it now.
And Obama using the phrasing “first term” is succint and unambiguous. If he merely said “by the end of my term” there’d be some ambiguity of whether he meant 2012 or 2016. If he said “by the end of this current presidential term” that’s just clunky. What phrasing could he have used that would’ve been better?
I don’t think it is presumptuous to acknowledge the intention to run for a second term. After WW II, all presidents except Truman and LBJ ran for a second term (well, JFK also didn’t but I think it’d be unfair to hold that against him).
Except that’s not quite the reasoning being used. “Your guys fucked us over with these policies over the last eight years, so Obama has to do there things to fix your goddamn mess.”
Saying that the Obama administration is doing the same thing as the Bush administration in terms of deficit spending is like saying that I’m doing the same thing if I spend my paycheck on porn and Playstation 3 games or spend it on clothes for work and transportation to get to work. I mean, the money’s spent either way, so IOIYAD, right?
Sam Stone implicitly claimed that Obama’s claim of slashing the budget was bullshit. This can be evaluated on its own merits regardless of Sam Stone’s political affiliation. Yet Meeko’s immediate response was “How good did your president do?”. It’s an attempt to deflect the criticism based on the source and the source’s association with past failures.
FWIW, I agree that Republicans screwing things up dealt Obama a bad hand. Tax revenues are way down and we have massive shortfalls this year through no fault of Obama. However, if he decides to exploit the current situation to push through a spending agenda that ultimately results in continual deficits and growing debt down the road, then he should definitely be criticized for declaring that he was going to slash deficits and bring fiscal responsibility. The stimulus may be justifiable as a method of fixing the mess of the Republicans (I’m not making that case), but all the new non-stimulus spending isn’t.
You’ve convinced me - if this comes to pass, I definitely won’t vote to re-elect Obama in 2020.
For the record, I do suspect unwarranted optimism about future growth in the budget numbers. Which, of course, everyone does, but it doesn’t really help things any. Still, we’ll see how things are doing when the midterms roll around.
