I have posited elsewhere on these boards that Obama and Bush differ only in tone, coherency and skin color.
But there is one other thing in which they differ. Bush, while he lied many times in office about how he was going about it, at least did most of what he said he would during his campaign, specifically, make war and fuck the poor.
But Obama? Fool that I am, I listened to his campaign promises and actually believed he could and would deliver reform and transparency, get us out of war and return power to the people (if they ever had it). Here’s his latest renege. I have little interest in the issue raised here and this thread is not about Turkey or genocide. It’s just another example of Obama’s little tap dance while backtracking.
As to their differences, to tone, coherency and skin color I must add that Bush was at least a relatively honest campaigner.
I must’ve missed that in the 2000 campaign ads and debates. Were those the ads they played after 10 PM?
Where did you get the idea that Obama was going to get the US out of war? He said he would withdraw forces from Iraq - which he is doing, though Bush beat him to the punch through the Iraqi government agreement that gave a 2011 complete withdrawal date. But more importantly, Obama pledged to increase the US troop commitment to Afghanistan. He was never an anti-war candidate.
As for the article, you are right that this is another instance of Obama backtracking, with the other major one being his pledge to make sure that the health care reform negotiations would be televised. But unlike the health care pledge, this pledge was stupid to make in the first place particularly given Turkey’s ambivalent status towards becoming more Westernized and the chances of tilting that precarious balance.
In early 2008, Presidential candidate Obama pledged to bring the troops home in 2009. But your right, later that year Bush (via the US Ambassador) & Iraq put into effect the Status of Forces Agreement that stated US troops would be drawn down and fully removed by the end of 2011. This is an executive agreement, so theoretically the President can revoke it. President Obama is following it.
One might get the idea that Obama pledged to get the US out of Iraq earlier than he now currently plans too.
Thank you for your post. Nice to see a mea culpa from an Obama voter.
Let’s both try and do better in 2010 and 2012.
But honestly, it was all there for anyone to see all along. The 20 year association with Rev Wright, the campaign kickoff in the living room with former domestic terrorists, the victimization shakedown racket of ‘community organizing’ in Chicago, Van Jones, ACORN, the double-talk about trade with Canada before the election, and my personal favorite…the debate with Hillary with Charles Gibson where he said he didn’t care if high tax rates resulted in lower overall government revenue, as long as it addressed inequality.
People read into the man, what they wanted to read into him. The election was the biggest ‘feel good’ moment of the last century.
Bush wasn’t all that great. But there have been very few politicians in the last 50 years or so that have had the balls to make it clear what they stood for, and then follow through once elected. Margaret Thatcher comes to mind.
He’s probably talking about how Bush popularized the term Compassionate Conservative and repeatedly stated that he didn`t think it was appropriate for the U.S. to engage in nation building. Oh wait, that would be the opposite of what Bush really did.
According to Politifact, who are tracking whether or not he is keeping his campaign promises, he has kept 58% of them (either kept the promise or compromised a bit compared to promises broken or completely stalled). Of the total number of promises they are tracking (500), more than half are still in the works and are not included in the 58% above.
Numbers for President Bush are harder to find (i.e. I cannot find an evaluation of this yet, but I will continue to look), but I did find this sentence in the Wikipedia article for President Bush’s first term:
Fianally, regarding transparency in government, I agree that it is not as good as President Obama promised, but it is arguably a hell of a lot better than it was under President Bush (or any other administration since President Nixon for that matter). See here for discussion fodder.
From what I remember President Obama has stuck with his campaign promises but, as with any intelligent adult he lets reality modify his plans. Your link is a perfect example of that. Think of the storm of shit he would cause by referring to the Armenian Genocide as a genocide. He said something naive during the campaign. It was an honest communication of his point-of-view. I’m just glad he lets facts get in the way of his fantasies.
Given the bullshit of the last 10 years, I’m sorry that our President’s acceptance of facts is so upsetting to you.
Suppose there are two candidates for President whose platforms you know. Pretend for a moment that you could exactly predict what each of those candidates could accomplish if elected. Suppose that the platforms and future accomplishments were as follows:
A candidate whose platform you largely agreed with. You realize, however, that he wouldn’t be able to get a large part of those promised programs passed, both because there wouldn’t be quite enough members of Congress who agreed with them and because there would be a lot of money spent on lobbying against these programs. He would only get a minority of the programs passed. Furthermore, there are various programs proposed by the other candidate that you very much disagree with. This first candidate would be able to prevent Congress from passing any of those bad (in your view) programs.
A candidate whose platform you largely disagreed with. He is better at getting his programs passed than the first candidate, though. He would get most of them passed, much to your distress. None of the programs you like would get passed. This candidate doesn’t pretend to agree with people like you, and he frequently makes it clear that people like you have no business running or even proposing government programs.
Now if you were to evaluate these candidates according to which gets his programs passed most often, you would have to say that the second candidate is the better one. Would you really want to vote for the second candidate though? Wouldn’t you prefer the first candidate? Don’t say that you want some other candidate instead of these two. That option wasn’t offered. In the U.S. political system, we only get two options. If you want to change that, do so, but don’t claim that we have that option now.
That is the set of options offered to most of us most of the time in U.S. Presidential elections. We can vote for somebody who largely agrees with us, although they can only accomplish some of the goals we have, or we can vote for somebody who disagrees with us who might get some things passed that we hate. People on both sides of the political spectrum have these options, in fact. There’s no way to get the country to change a huge amount in a single Presidential election with the political system as it now stands.
I don’t judge people for what they think, what they say or what they do. People are people, I’m a person and in my 69 yrs, I’ve dealt my share of misguided hypocrisy and selfishness to the world. I’m sorry for that. And I’m glad I was never in the running for President.
But I have no regrets. I made a lot of mistakes based on misinformation but, along the way, I have learned empathy. There cannot be peace and honest govt until we each learn that lesson.
I’m not 100% sure that the OP is saying that he should have voted for McCain.
As disappointed as I am in some of President Obama’s actions, given my choices in 2008, I would vote for Obama 100 times out of 100, even in hindsight. I only wish he were a Socialist.
Just so I get a handle on what you were saying, and the purpose of this thread, you do not regret your '08 vote? Do you generally agree with how the posters on this thread, like IdahoMauleMan, seem to be receiving what you’ve said here?